Charter Communications should cease and desist saying it complied with -- and exceeded -- New York state obligations to expand its broadband network, agency officials said Tuesday. “These misrepresentations, coupled with Spectrum's overall pattern of unacceptable conduct in New York, call into question the continued viability of Spectrum as a regulated telephone/cable company in this State,” said New York Public Service Commission General Counsel Paul Agresta in a letter to CEO Thomas Rutledge. Spectrum is a Charter brand name. The Department of Public Service referred the matter to the New York attorney general and the SEC, Agresta said. The agency seeks a log of “all such advertising in advance of potential direct enforcement action for penalties” by the New York Public Service Commission, he said. “Preserve all documents, including email, text messages, voice mail, recordings, and other documentation relating to the aforementioned matters.” Charter never told customers about missing a December buildout target that was a New York condition of the carrier's Time Warner Cable acquisition, but instead “continues to assert in advertisements and publications that it has complied with -- and even exceeded -- its commitments to New York,” Agresta said. “Those representations are demonstrably and materially false.” The PSC earlier fined the MVPD $2 million over the charge that it missed the buildout target (see 1806140063). It’s not the first time New York claimed the company misled consumers, added Agresta, referring to the state AG’s lawsuit about the company’s advertised internet speeds that last week got court OK to continue (see 1806210060). “The situation regarding Charter/Spectrum is getting more serious with each passing day,” said PSC Chair John Rhodes, agreeing the company is misleading consumers. The operator “built out our broadband network to more than 42,000 unserved or underserved homes since the merger,” a spokesperson responded. “We find it baffling that the PSC thinks that some New Yorkers count and others don’t, given their belief that access to broadband is essential for economic development and social equity.” New York is unlikely “to do anything drastic,” cable consultant Steve Effros emailed Tuesday. “The regulators, after all, have made strong accusations against most operators in the State at one time or another. This reflects either unreasonable expectations or a regrettable form of negotiating leverage.” Effros doubts New York could find another company to replace Charter that could better meet the state’s timing demands.
California Assembly members planned another stab at the state Senate’s net neutrality bill, with a key committee proposing simplified language to mandate compliance with the FCC’s now-reversed order. Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee staff suggested the change before a Tuesday hearing on SB-822 and after sponsor state Sen. Scott Wiener (D) claimed a different committee “mutilated” his bill (see 1806200048). Net neutrality advocates prefer language passed by the Senate. Lawmakers also could pass state privacy rules after replacing the text of last year’s ISP privacy bill (AB-375) with language similar to a California privacy ballot initiative for November (see 1806220061 and 1806060063).
A rural North Carolina town with a population of fewer than 1,200 has two fiber networks -- and may disconnect residents and businesses from one -- due to the state’s municipal broadband laws. Greenlight, the fiber-to-the-home service provided by neighboring Wilson, planned to end service July 12 due to the arrival of a fiber-to-the-premise network by Altice's Suddenlink; a $280,000 offer by National Network Holdings, though, could preserve Greenlight. Current and former Pinetops officials are happy with Greenlight and questioned motives behind Suddenlink’s allegedly disruptive deployment. Altice said it aims to provide great service.
TRENTON -- New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) should end state 911 fee diversion that keeps local 911 agencies from receiving any money, said FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly and New Jersey county and wireless officials at a Thursday news conference. With lawmakers in the thick of budget season, “they may not see the light yet,” O’Rielly said in an interview later. The FCC in February identified the state as the nation’s biggest diverter, saying it used about 89 percent ($108.1 million) of the revenue for other purposes in 2016.
A California state senator said an Assembly committee may have violated rules when it voted for substantive changes to his net neutrality bill (SB-822). At a testy Wednesday hearing, the Assembly Communications and Conveyance Committee voted 8-0 to adopt a committee amendment made public less than 24 hours earlier, with the vote occurring before any testimony. “What the committee just did was outrageous,” state Sen. Scott Wiener (D) told the Assembly committee's chairman, Miguel Santiago (D). Wiener later asked to withdraw the “mutilated” bill from the committee’s consideration, but the committee held a vote to move the amended bill forward anyway.
A federal court ruling that invalidated West Virginia one-touch, make-ready (OTMR) rules doesn’t stop states from making such rules if they first reverse pre-empt the FCC on pole attachments, said NARUC General Counsel Brad Ramsay Tuesday. West Virginia’s OTMR rules are pre-empted by federal law and the state may not apply or enforce them, U.S. District Court in Charleston, West Virginia, said in a Monday judgment (in Pacer). The court granted a joint motion for summary judgment by Frontier Communications, the West Virginia Cable Telecommunications Association (WVCTA) and Communications Workers of America (see 1803080028). The Public Service Commission didn’t “dispute that Article 4 conflicts with the Federal Communication Commission’s regulatory regime governing pole attachments,” nor that “Article 4 is preempted because of the conflict under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution,” so “there is no issue for this Court to determine,” wrote Chief Judge Thomas Johnston in the four-page opinion (in Pacer). “The Court must enjoin the enforcement of Article 4.” Johnston noted future actions by the state legislature or others “could lead to the dissolution of the injunction.” The state commission declined comment. NARUC’s Ramsay emailed that the decision “says nothing about whether a state can” make OTMR rules. West Virginia never reverse pre-empted the FCC to regulate pole attachments itself, and the state conceded that in the case, he said. It doesn’t mean a state that reverse pre-empted the FCC can’t make such rules, or that West Virginia can’t now reverse pre-empt and then make OTMR rules, he said. The court ruling pleased WVCTA, said Executive Director Mark Polen in an interview. Cable companies weren’t causing problems, with the law really a “punitive statement against Frontier made by the legislature and some of their competitors,” he said. WVCTA didn’t see any companies try to invoke the OTMR rules after the law took effect last summer, he added. Polen heard some talk in the legislature about West Virginia reverse pre-empting the FCC on attachments, but it didn’t seem to have legs there or at the PSC, Polen said. WVCTA is “comfortable” following the federal regime, he said. A Frontier spokesperson applauded the ruling, emailing that the law “would have allowed unsupervised attachments on our poles that would have been potentially dangerous or unsafe to our employees and the public.” The spokesperson didn’t respond to Polen blaming Frontier for the state law. Pennsylvania last week said it's weighing reverse pre-emption (see 1806140057). Courts have clashed on the legality of local OTMR rules, with one federal court ruling against requiring the practice in Nashville and another supporting a similar ordinance in Louisville (see 1711270051).
A New Jersey bill to promote local journalism and civic information through a consortium of five state universities cleared the Senate Higher Education Committee in a unanimous Monday vote. An amendment to S-2317 removed a $20 million appropriation from the bill, with the group to be funded $5 million via a separate budget resolution. Sen. Thomas Kean (R) said he would support on the condition it’s amended to require both political parties be represented on the committee. New Jersey faces a local news crisis, with thousands of journalists laid off, said Free Press Action Fund State Director Mike Rispoli at the livestreamed hearing. Without local news, “it’s the public that suffers,” he said. Rispoli supported Kean’s proposed amendment, saying keeping people informed locally shouldn’t be partisan. Dearth of local news especially hurts minorities and the poor, said Chenjerai Kumanyika, a Rutgers University professor and co-producer of Gimlet Media’s Uncivil podcast: “This consortium offers an inspiring vision of hope to address those historic inequalities.”
Apple is rolling out technology so 911 operators can more precisely locate callers, which investors in its vendor RapidSOS including ex-FCC chairmen and some others told us is a major boost for next-generation 911 deployment (see 1806150042).
The Lifeline national verifier is operational in Utah and five other “soft launch” states, the FCC announced Monday. Universal Service Administrative Co. got Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) accreditation Friday, said USAC Communications Director Jaymie Gustafson in a Monday interview. The reveal surprised observers, coming less than a week after the USAC official told a Utah Public Service Commission workshop the release date was unknown. Growing delay brought scrutiny from states and others (see 1806070022), as has an FCC proposal to cut Lifeline support to resellers (see 1806150048).
San Jose revealed separate 5G wireless pacts with Verizon and Mobilitie after the city council last month approved a small-cells deal with AT&T (see 1805020046). San Jose also announced Friday an expanded AT&T agreement under which the carrier would test smart-city tech that may include LED smart lighting, public Wi-Fi and infrastructure monitoring services. Under the other agreements, Mobilitie will deploy small cells, while Verizon plans to deploy small cells and fiber, upgrade several macro-cell towers and pilot traffic-management smart city technology, the city said. The City Council plans to vote on the agreements at its June 26 meeting. The companies together are expected to invest $500 million to install small cells on about 4,000 city-owned light poles, plus add fiber and associated infrastructure, San Jose said. They will contribute $24 million over 10 years to the city’s digital inclusion fund, the city said. “We hope that these public-private partnerships can serve as a national model for equitably deploying next generation broadband technologies in a way that puts the public’s interest first,” said San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, who resigned in protest from the FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (see 1801250049). The deals reflect “what happens when both sides agree to serve the community rather than wait for an external force to put their thumb on the scale,” said Best Best local government attorney Gerry Lederer. He highlighted the agreements’ inclusion of a sliding scale for rent, upfront commitments to a digital equity fund and large upfront payments for permit costs and process improvements. The deals couldn’t have happened without Gov. Jerry Brown’s (D) veto of last year’s California small-cells bill, said Lederer, saying the FCC should avoid disrupting such agreements. Contrary to the current FCC view, local governments should have more authority and freedom, Brookings Institution fellow Blair Levin said in a Friday report. The BDAC has “worthy goals,” but “suffers from significant failures of design and execution,” including a membership dominated by industry, he said. The BDAC and FCC probably “will adopt a framework in which industry gets all the benefits with no obligations, and municipalities will be forced to bear all the costs and receive no guaranteed benefits,” he said. “This kind of process will result in a transfer of wealth from public to private enterprises -- and leave American cities and metropolitan areas no better positioned to tap into digital telecommunications to unlock innovation and shared economic prosperity.” The FCC didn’t comment.