The New Hampshire Executive Council approved a $13 million contract Wednesday for FairPoint Communications to provide broadband and wireline service in state facilities through 2020. The council delayed a planned vote on the contract last month after Councilor Colin Van Ostern, a Democrat, raised concerns about the telco’s service quality in the state (see 1412230053). FairPoint agreed to hold public meetings around New Hampshire on its service quality before the contract takes effect in July. Ostern asked FairPoint to hold at least one meeting in each of the state’s five executive council districts. FairPoint has been facing ongoing service quality complaints in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont due to an ongoing strike of about 1,700 of its workers in the states. FairPoint and representatives of two unions -- the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers -- have been in federally mandated negotiations since Jan. 4.
Google confirmed Tuesday that it will deploy its Google Fiber service in the Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, metropolitan areas. Google’s announcement at least partially ended speculation about its deployment plans, which it had delayed announcing in December (see 1412230051). Dennis Kish, vice president-Google Fiber, said Google is still negotiating possible deployments in five other metropolitan areas -- Phoenix; Portland, Oregon; Salt Lake City; San Antonio; and San Jose -- and plans to make decisions on those areas later this year. Google Fiber has already deployed in the Austin, Kansas City and Provo, Utah, metropolitan areas. Google said its planned deployments in Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham will reach into 14 neighboring suburbs of those cities and it will begin construction in those areas the next few months.
The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) said its top federal advocacy priority for 2015 is improving cybersecurity. “Our nation must do more to combat the asymmetrical, sophisticated threats our government networks face on a daily basis,” said NASCIO President Stuart Davis in a Thursday news release. NASCIO will seek more federal resources for state-level cybersecurity programs and better access to cybersecurity professionals, the group said. The group’s other top priorities include reducing regulatory hurdles to state-level information technology, FirstNet planning and collaborating with the federal government on improving broadband connections to schools and libraries.
The New York Public Service Commission (PSC) is again delaying consideration of Comcast's planned buy of Time Warner Cable. Comcast and TWC agreed Tuesday to a PSC request to extend the deadline for a PSC vote on the deal until Feb. 26, more than a month past the previous deadline, which had been Thursday. The PSC must now issue a final order on Comcast/TWC by March 3.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) urged the state’s legislature Tuesday to cut $470 million in state telecom and TV taxes, the first in a series of $1 billion in cuts over the next two years. This year’s portion of the tax cut would save every Florida family “around $40 a year for spending as little as $100 a month between cell phone, cable and satellite bills,” Scott said in a news release. Florida levies a 9.17 percent tax on nonresidential landlines, wireless and cable services, and a 13.17 percent tax on satellite services.
Idaho Gov. Butch Otter (R) asked the state’s legislature to provide $8.9 million in funding for the Idaho Education Network (IEN) broadband network for the upcoming fiscal year, saying during a Monday news conference that he wants to rebid the contract for the network. IEN is in limbo after a state district court judge ruled in November that the contract that established the network in 2009 was illegal because the state later stripped original contractor Syringa Networks of its role in the network and gave it to what was then Qwest, now known as CenturyLink. “We still have to review with the judge, we still have to review with the participants, a path forward,” Otter said. The state legislature appropriated $11.4 million last year to keep IEN running, replacing funding provided by the federal government until 2013. The FCC had been paying 70 percent of the IEN’s costs via the E-rate program, but stopped funding the project amid Syringa’s lawsuit. Idaho’s education and administration departments cautioned the state’s school districts last week to find backup broadband services for the coming fiscal year in the event the state is forced to discontinue IEN. “We want to be proactive about ensuring that Idaho school districts are held harmless no matter the outcome of legal or legislative action,” state officials said in a letter to the school districts.
The Missouri House’s HB-437 is the latest “attempt to erect barriers to the deployment of broadband networks,” the Coalition for Local Internet Choice said Monday. The bill, introduced Thursday, would bar any municipality from offering broadband or other competitive services unless the municipality already offers the service, a private company isn’t offering the service within the municipality’s boundaries, the service would have an annual fiscal impact of less than $100,000 or a majority of voters approve the service offering. “It is ironic that while the International CES show in Las Vegas spotlighted hundreds of new devices and applications that require big bandwidth, legislation would be introduced in Missouri that would impair the development of networks that enable that bandwidth,” CLIC said in a statement. HB-437 “is about fairness,” Rep. Rocky Miller, the Republican who sponsored the bill, emailed us. “This bill is meant to even the playing field and eliminate socialized/non-commercial services provided by municipalities. I simply want to vote to allow for my city to provide a service if that service is already being provided by another company.” Miller said the bill would prevent “unfair competition” and still lets municipalities offer services if voters approve them. Missouri law restricts all political subdivisions from providing certain telecom services but exempts 911 and “Internet-type” services.
The California Department of Education (DOE) awarded almost $27 million in Broadband Infrastructure Improvement Grant (BIIG) funds Wednesday to 227 of the state’s public schools. The California Legislature approved BIIG funding in June to help recipient schools improve their broadband Internet connections so they would be capable of administering the state-mandated online Smarter Balanced Field Test to students in the third through eighth grades and high school juniors. “These state grants provide the critical last step needed to connect an additional 63,000 students to the state education network that will give them access to technology, which will prepare them for college and careers, and let them take the new computer-based California assessments,” state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said in a news release. The DOE selected the recipients from a list of more than 300 schools identified as having the most problematic Internet connections. Thirty-two of the recipient schools are in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Other major city school districts receiving funding are Oakland and San Diego, the state DOE said.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday that he is ending the city’s ban on cellphones in its public schools. De Blasio said the city will offer a variety of policy options that individual schools can choose to adopt, which may range from allowing cellphone use in some classes for instructional purposes to requiring students to store cellphones during the school day. The new policies will replace the ban on March 2, de Blasio said during a news conference. De Blasio promised during his 2013 mayoral campaign to end the ban, which he said had been unpopular among parents since previous Mayor Michael Bloomberg implemented it in 2006. “The policy of the previous administration was simply out of touch with modern parenting,” de Blasio said. “We’re now going to make this a policy that works with parents.” De Blasio noted that schools were enforcing the ban unevenly and that some students were forced to pay for cellphone storage, which Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer said in a statement “amounted to a regressive tax.” The New York City Parents Union praised de Blasio’s announcement, saying in a statement that “we will feel more comfortable knowing we can keep in contact with our children while they are commuting to school.” Council of School Supervisors & Administrators President Ernest Logan said in a statement that “our collective priority is educating students in a safe and secure environment. We hope these new policies do not undermine that goal.”
Comcast and Time Warner Cable agreed last week to extend the deadline for the New York Public Service Commission to complete its review of the proposed Comcast/TWC deal. The PSC previously had faced a Dec. 31 deadline for completing its review, but didn’t vote on whether to approve the deal during its last regular 2014 meeting Dec. 11 (see 1412090048). The PSC must now vote on the deal by Jan. 22 and issue a final order by Jan. 27, Comcast said in a filing.