The FCC created its first two innovation zones, in New York and Salt Lake City. They're city-scale test beds for advanced wireless communications and network research, including 5G networks, it said Wednesday. The beds extend the geographic areas where licensed experimental program licensees can do tests, allowing “flexibility to conduct multiple non-related experiments under a single authorization within a defined geographic area” while “protecting incumbent services against harmful interference,” it said. Experimental program license holders licensed to operate elsewhere may use the zones, it said. An Office of Engineering and Technology public notice Wednesday provides details, on docket 19-257.
AT&T asked the FCC to "promptly" issue a declaratory ruling pre-empting "state discrimination" against VoIP customers, posted in docket 19-44 Monday. Alabama 911 districts wrote Sept. 10 (see 1909110027). The sides disagree on whether states have authority to require interconnected VoIP providers bill 911 charges to customers. AT&T said "there is no room for states to make policy decisions that result in discrimination against VoIP customers, because Congress has prohibited such discrimination."
Closing the digital divide should move beyond talk of infrastructure to finding out why so many passed by broadband don't adopt it, said an opinion in Friday's Washington Post by Brookings Institution's Blair Levin and Larry Downes of Georgetown University's Center for Business and Public Policy. Those without home internet are "predominantly poorer, older and less educated Americans," demographics found more often in cities than rural areas, they said. Convincing those without broadband it’s relevant is the key challenge, they said.
Virgin Islands Telephone recommendations for network resiliency and redundancy via USF funding include weighting "core network miles more heavily than individual end-user connections" and dealing with such connections based on locations served, not aggregate miles. "Core network miles affect potentially thousands of customers; stormhardening them is more valuable than hardening individual customer lines/connections," said the telco, doing business as Viya, on how to vet participants in a proposed Connect USVI Fund auction. A filing posted Thursday in docket 18-143 reported on meetings with an aide to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and with Wireline Bureau staff. Commissioners are tentatively scheduled to vote Sept. 26 on rules to allocate $950 million for the Uniendo a Puerto Rico Fund and the Connect USVI Fund to help rebuild networks in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands after 2017 hurricanes (see 1909040028).
Legislation to prevent the California Public Utilities Commission and other state entities from acting on consumer complaints against VoIP services will sunset Jan. 1, the Communications Workers of America said Thursday, after a new bill to extend the deregulation didn't move to the floor this week (see 1909110016). CWA noted members and groups including AARP and The Utility Reform Network lobbied against the bill (see 1906280034).
Clarify the technical definition of interconnected VoIP and authority states have over emergency communications funding policy (see 1903290030), Alabama 911 districts continue asking, posted Wednesday to docket 19-44. They said the FCC should rule that if it pre-empts any state law, "it does not preempt a state's authority to impose 911 fees on a different per unit basis for IVoIP than is used for traditional telephone service." A proposal from AT&T's BellSouth "would disrupt current 911 funding and impose a heavy-handed federal mandate," it said. The districts responded to recent ex parte from phone companies on a petition for declaratory ruling after Autauga County Emergency Management Communication District et al v. BellSouth (No. 2:15-cv-00765-SGC).
With California's AB-1366 going nowhere this year and the law restraining state authority over broadband to expire at year's end, California needs to move on a plan to connect all residents to affordable fiber access, Electronic Frontier Foundation Legislative Counsel Ernesto Falcon blogged Tuesday. With cable ISPs not getting major fiber-centric competition from telcos, policymakers need to find out why the "largest telecoms" have "willfully decided not to invest in future-proof networks" and they should push policies aiding small ISPs and local governments that "shoulder the burden of building fiber networks," EFF said. AB-1366 would have extended until Jan. 1, 2022, a prohibition on state regulation of VoIP or IP-enabled services. Falcon emailed us Wednesday that the bill failed to make a Tuesday deadline to be brought to the legislative floor, meaning it can't be voted on this year. It "remains alive for 2020 debate," he added.
A Senate-adopted amendment to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) on the state's data breach notification requirements (AB-1130) is likely to get final passage before the Assembly as well, Mintz privacy lawyer Cynthia Larose blogged Friday. The amendment, adopted Thursday 26-12, expands the types of data that would trigger a required data breach notification to include tax identification, passport and military identification numbers and other unique ID numbers issued on a government document. A Senate Rules Committee analysis said the amendment -- sponsored by state Attorney General Xavier Becerra -- was in part reaction to the Starwood Hotels/Marriott guest database data breach (see 1811300038), with millions of unencrypted passport numbers being exposed, though such data isn't currently part of state data breach statutes. It said opposition, led by the California Chamber of Commerce, complained the amendment expands the CCPA's "onerous private right of action, which creates significant class action litigation risk for breaches or unauthorized disclosures of biometric data without any consideration of harm."
A bipartisan group of state attorneys general is investigating Facebook for antitrust violations, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) announced Friday. AGs from Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Washington, D.C., are helping James lead the effort. The probe “focuses on Facebook’s dominance in the industry and the potential anticompetitive conduct stemming from that dominance,” said James. The group will use “every investigative tool at our disposal to determine whether Facebook’s actions may have endangered consumer data, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, or increased the price of advertising,” she said. The FTC is also probing Facebook on antitrust grounds (see 1907250049). Meanwhile, a related group of state AGs confirmed it will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. Monday outside the Supreme Court (see 1909030053) to announce a “multistate investigation into whether large tech companies have engaged in anticompetitive behavior that stifled competition, restricted access, and harmed consumers.” That group is targeting Google, according to officials.
State regulators found much to like about coming FCC Lifeline changes, when we surveyed all NARUC Telecom Committee members in August. All respondents are happy their federal counterparts appear poised to clarify states can continue being the ones to decide whether telecom/broadband providers can be designated as eligible for the USF program for the poor. Many like the idea of the Universal Service Administrative Co. sharing more information. No state commissioners reported getting information from the FCC about the order and Further NPRM (see 1908190028) that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai circulated to his colleagues Aug. 19. Some want the FCC to release a draft before its members vote, such as having it on the Sept. 26 open meeting agenda. Commissioners of both political parties and from several states seek more changes to Lifeline than what the FCC says are in the draft. The state officials want to prevent those eligible for services including subsidized broadband from being incorrectly deemed ineligible. Its annual budget is some $2 billion-plus, actual support about half that. NARUC worries about lack of a Lifeline application programming interface for subscriber sign-ups, and wants the agency to halt minimum-service standard increases as sought in its resolution and by CTIA and others. The draft doesn't address that petition, and the comment cycle ended Aug. 15, the FCC says. In July, NARUC members asked the FCC to delay implementing in December a 2016 plan to increase the amount of data carriers must provide Lifeline customers monthly; to slow the rollout of a Lifeline national verifier (NV) that may have inaccurately deemed some subscribers ineligible; and to make other changes. State commissioners still seek those changes. Some hope they occur in time to prevent the program from ratcheting up requirements that could mean the telecom products would cost the poor more. One way that NV administrator USAC makes it easier for would-be Lifeline customers is by letting them check their eligibility online, based on their state, said Pennsylvania Assistant Consumer Advocate Barrett Sheridan. Challengers to the 2016 Lifeline order, enacted under a Democrat-led FCC, essentially agreed to drop their case if the agency reversed the order giving eligible telecom carriers the option to get nationwide OK. At the time the option was OK'd, then-Commissioner Pai opposed the national ETC broadband designation, a spokesperson noted now. "When he became Chairman, he announced he would work to reverse that," the representative emailed Thursday. "The draft Order follows through."