It's possible some states will miss Wednesday's filing deadline for NTIA’s broadband, equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program, Incompas CEO Chip Pickering said Thursday in an interview. However, he said he remains optimistic about the BEAD program’s future. “It will have some failures, a lot of success, and overall, it will move the country ahead.”
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Senior Editor, is the state and local telecommunications reporter for Communications Daily, where he also has covered Congress and the Federal Communications Commission. He has won awards for his Warren Communications News reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, Specialized Information Publishers Association and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of dystopian science-fiction novels. You can follow Bender at WatchAdam.blog and @WatchAdam on Twitter.
Altice urged the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to quickly OK a settlement resolving the board’s service quality probe. The settlement has Altice pledging to spend $11 million on its network and making other broadband adoption, network resiliency and customer service commitments. “It’s an important settlement” for local governments, said Best Best attorney Gerard Lederer, who represented Piscataway, New Jersey, in the proceeding.
Wisconsin state legislators should greenlight a new grant program supporting migration from the state’s “woefully outdated” emergency call system, Wisconsin State Telecommunications Association Executive Director Bill Esbeck said Wednesday during an Assembly State Affairs Committee hearing. The committee mulled AB-356, which directs the Wisconsin Department of Military Affairs to award grants that reimburse next-generation 911 (NG-911) costs of ILECs acting as originating service providers. Covered costs would include IP-based transport, database management and the purchase, installation and maintenance of equipment. The bill would limit the department from awarding more than one grant per ILEC per fiscal year. The state’s current 911 fund, which gets revenue from a 75-cent monthly charge on customer bills, will provide enough money but doesn’t allow cost recovery after the NG-911 transition, said Esbeck. He said that five of 72 Wisconsin counties have connected to the state’s emergency services IP network, but ILECs in those places have yet to cut over to it. Wisconsin’s 2023-2025 biennial budget restricted diverting 911 fee revenue for unrelated purposes, Esbeck noted. In 2009, the state renamed its 911 money as a “police and fire protection fund” and diverted cash to a general fund, he said. The new grant program would support NG-911 only, said AB-356 sponsor Rep. Tony Kurtz (R). While future legislators or governors could change state law to resume 911 fee diversion, “I think everybody in the state understands how important this is,” he said. “We’d be very foolish to change that.”
The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities unanimously agreed Wednesday to submit to NTIA both volumes of the state’s initial proposal for the broadband, equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program. Meanwhile, with the filing deadline one week away, Wisconsin submitted its plan Wednesday and California signaled it will follow soon. Also, at the livestreamed New Jersey BPU meeting, commissioners voted 4-0 to kick off the statewide franchise renewal process for Altice’s Cablevision.
Don’t let anyone say a Wisconsin privacy bill is moving too fast, state Rep. Shannon Zimmerman (R) said during a livestreamed hearing Tuesday. The Wisconsin Senate Consumer Protection Committee heard testimony on Zimmerman’s AB-466 and Senate companion SB-642 but didn’t vote. The Assembly last month unanimously passed AB-466, which would allow consumers to request and delete information that certain data controllers hold (see 2311150039). Versions of the bill appeared in three straight legislative sessions, said Zimmerman. “That’s six years of my life.” Zimmerman said he wants to avoid a state privacy law “tapestry.” Instead, the Republican hopes to push Congress to make a good federal law, he said. Wisconsin’s bill is similar to Virginia’s “pretty darn good” privacy law, he added. The main difference is that, in Wisconsin, consumer complaints wouldn’t go to the state AG, Zimmerman said. Instead, they would be handled by the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, an existing state agency that seems more suited to the task, he said. The AG would remain the Wisconsin bill’s sole enforcer, however. BSA|The Software Alliance supported the bill during Tuesday's hearing. In the absence of Congress approving a national privacy bill, “and I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel anytime soon,” Wisconsin should be the 14th state with a privacy law, Head of State Advocacy Matthew Lenz said. The bill "imposes strong obligations on all companies that handle consumer data," while being "interoperable" with other states' laws, he said.
New Jersey privacy legislation will go to the Assembly floor, despite opposition from tech and business groups, the chamber’s Judiciary Committee decided Monday. In a 4-0 vote, with one abstention, the panel advanced the proposal with amendments. One change increased the time businesses would have to cure violations to 18 months, from six in the original bill (A-1971/S-332). Industry groups especially objected to the bill's creation of a rulemaking process at the Department of Law and Public Safety’s Consumer Affairs Division.
Louisiana is the first state to get full NTIA approval of its initial proposal for the broadband, equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program. NTIA approved volume 2 of the state's plan, the agency said Friday. On a videoconference with reporters Thursday, outgoing Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) said he has no concerns that Gov.-elect Jeff Landry (R) “will depart from the commitment that we have made in our submission.”
Don’t cut a free broadband requirement from California Advanced Services Fund public housing account (PHA) rules, The Utility Reform Network (TURN) urged this week. The California Public Utilities Commission posted comments and replies this week on a staff proposal in docket R.20-08-021. TURN reacted to a suggestion by the California Emergency Technology Fund (CETF) to consider removing the proposal's requirement to provide five years free.
California’s largest tribe rejected multiple AT&T recommendations for the state’s participation in the broadband, equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program. The California Public Utilities Commission received reply comments Thursday on volumes one and two of draft BEAD initial proposals (docket R.23-02-016). The Yurok Tribe disagreed with AT&T that project area units should be as geographically small as possible. "AT&T says that requiring minimum geographic units to be equivalent to a contiguous tribal land area could ‘eliminate synergies and increase costs,’ but that’s precisely the logic that has led to a patchwork of service on tribal lands, and the chronic underinvestment of incumbent providers in remote, rural tribal locations,” the tribe said. In addition, Yurok disagreed with AT&T that applicants should have prior experience with technology they plan to deploy. "This suggestion would, quite obviously, completely disqualify a number of new providers seeking to bring quality service to areas long ignored by incumbent providers from eligibility." And the tribe disagreed with the carrier to score more points to larger projects. "Doing so would reward incumbent providers at the cost of new providers, as incumbent providers are better positioned to develop larger projects that serve more locations.” AT&T made the suggestions in its opening comments (see 2311280053). The San Diego Association of Governments urged the CPUC to better prioritize equity. "The current scoring rubric allocates only 10 points out of 100 for projects targeting low-income and disadvantaged communities,” the San Diego group said. While CPUC must comply with NTIA rules, “we contend that this limited point allocation may not serve as a sufficient incentive for ISPs to invest in areas of utmost need.” USTelecom replied, "California should rely on ACP participation and a comparability test to meet BEAD’s affordability requirements and affordability should not be scored on a sliding scale.” If the state adopts low-cost and middle-income affordability plans, “providers should be able to adjust prices to capture inflation, cost of living increases and other costs outside of the providers control such as taxes,” said USTelecom: And don’t prioritize open access. The CPUC’s independent Public Advocates Office urged the CPUC to reject recommendations to modify "affordability requirements in ways that would prioritize private interests over the public interest.”
California should be cautious about adopting limits from other jurisdictions’ privacy laws as it decides how to apply rules to AI, California Privacy Protection Agency Chairperson Jennifer Urban said Friday. But board member Alastair Mactaggart raised concerns that the CPPA is proposing too broad a definition of automated decision-making technology (ADMT) during the board’s virtual meeting. The CPPA board discussed pre-rulemaking proposals on cybersecurity audits, risk assessments and ADMT that privacy experts say could affect many industries, including communications and the internet (see 2312060021).