A one-touch, make-ready ordinance in Louisville attracted a second lawsuit from industry. Following AT&T, Charter Communications subsidiary Insight Friday challenged the Metro Government law in U.S. District Court in Louisville (Case No. 3:16-CV-625). The federal court should "disallow Louisville’s action allowing competitors to trespass on, convert, take possession of, and potentially damage, Insight’s property,” said the cable complaint (in Pacer). Only the Public Service Commission may regulate privately owned utility poles in the state, said Insight. It said the Louisville policy allows Google to take actions “without prior notice and puts strict limitations on Insight’s ability to uncover any possible damage caused to its plant by its competitor or even to assure that it is able to recover the costs of necessary cures. The One-Touch procedures also could allow Insight’s competitors (intentionally or unintentionally) to damage or disrupt Insight’s ability to serve its customers, creating an inaccurate perception in the market about Insight’s service quality and harming its goodwill.” Google pushed for one-touch policies meant to speed new pole attachments as it tries to increase deployment of its competitive fiber network. But existing pole riders opposed such policies. In February, AT&T sued Louisville, saying the city was pre-empted by state pole attachment rules; and last month, it sued Nashville, saying the city was pre-empted by the FCC (see 1609230039). Insight’s suit echoed in part AT&T’s challenge of one-touch, but the Charter company also claimed AT&T and Google benefit from less local regulation of their competitive video services. The court should "bring parity in regulation to Louisville by applying the same regulatory burdens on Insight that it applies to AT&T and Google so that all similarly situated speakers are treated equally in their ability to communicate,” Insight said. "Fair competition requires that the government, whatever its motives, treat similarly situated speakers the same and not unfairly weight one side of the regulatory scale.” Mayor Greg Fischer’s (D) office, AT&T and Google declined comment Tuesday. The city must file an answer to the separate AT&T complaint by Thursday, said a Sept. 20 court order (in Pacer).
Google Fiber may start deploying wireless network technology after closing part of its Webpass acquisition Monday, the company said in a blog post. The California wireless ISP's point-to-point wireless capability is seen as a key part to the acquirer's evolving broadband strategy (see 1609070026). Google still needs regulatory approval by the California Public Utilities Commission for the acquisition of a Webpass telecom affiliate. The National Diversity Coalition opposed that deal at the CPUC last month, and one observer predicted the state review could take months.
The California Public Utilities Commission received a flurry of rehearing requests last week from telecom companies and consumer groups on two recent decisions. Thursday, Cox Communications and the California Association of Competitive Telecommunications Companies (CalTel) submitted separate applications to rehear a decision in docket R.11-12-001 to charge telcos automatic daily fines of up to $25,000 for failure to meet service quality measures (see 1608180060). The agency adopted the automatic penalties “without adequate factual, legal or policy support,” Cox said in its petition. The company also objected to requiring VoIP providers to submit copies of outage reports they provide the FCC. CalTel also requested rehearing Thursday, largely echoing its concerns about fining CLECs from an Aug. 30 petition for modification (see 1609060044), and sent a separate letter asking that CLECs be exempt from fines until the commission addresses either of its requests. Meanwhile, the Office of Ratepayer Advocates, The Utility Reform Network and other consumer groups asked for rehearing because they said the commission created “a loophole for chronic service quality violators to avoid paying a penalty.” Under the alleged loophole, a company can suspend a fine if it “purports to invest twice the amount of that fine,” but that rule isn't supported by the record, they said. Also, the order closed the proceeding without addressing several topics, including service quality standards for wireless and interconnected VoIP providers, an ongoing network study and several matters referred from other proceedings, the consumer groups said. Earlier, the CPUC received rehearing requests from CTIA and a group of small wireline companies on an order in docket R.14-11-001 to enhance public access to public records under the California Public Records Act. Both protested the CPUC delegating to staff the authority to decide whether a utility document is confidential, with the small telco application threatening a court challenge. “The Commission’s new process for public disclosure of confidential documents unlawfully delegates to Staff the authority to make final discretionary determinations and unconstitutionally empowers Staff to act on such determinations without notice to the affected public utility or the opportunity to be heard regarding the determination,” CTIA said in its request.
Critics of Verizon copper pressed the telco to resolve network issues at two state commissions. In Pennsylvania, Communications Workers of America filed testimony and photographic evidence Thursday that CWA said showed deterioration of the copper network. In New Jersey, the Division of Rate Counsel urged the Board of Public Utilities (BPU) to act on “systemic” problems with the Verizon network. A state senator told the board to require Fios across South Jersey.
A single national system for 911 data could promote upgrades to next-generation 911, said public safety and emergency-number officials. Comments were due Wednesday on a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration request for information (docket NHTSA-2016-0069) about setting up a nationally uniform data system for 911 public safety answering point (PSAP) call data and local and state 911 system operations data (see 1607070008). Commenters said possible barriers to a national system are convincing software vendors to share data and locating enough funding.
Lifting a Pennsylvania restriction on municipal broadband could spur state smart city initiatives, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto (D) said Wednesday. A Pennsylvania law forces cities and counties with broadband plans to ask their incumbent ISP to implement broadband before the governments can do so themselves. Changing the law “certainly would give us options that cities like Chattanooga have already been able to seize upon,” he said on a live-streamed Washington Post smart cities event. Google Fiber helped in Kansas City and other cities, he said. Pittsburgh could use better broadband, he said. “The amount of information that will be required and the broadband that will be needed will be possibly more than we can provide right now.” The city has dark fiber owned by the utility company, he said. “That could become really the backbone of a system that would then be able to be launched with wireless technology.” Pittsburgh has “been having conversations with DQE,” a subsidiary of the energy company Duquesne Light, he said. The mayor also spoke about Uber, which recently announced Pittsburgh as a test bed for its autonomous cars (see 1609070018). Peduto joked that fear of “robot cars” may be one of three reasons he isn’t re-elected, in addition to bike lanes and welcoming Syrian refugees into the city. People fear a self-driving car will cause an accident, but the reality is that humans cause many accidents, he said. “There will be accidents, but if the greater goal is to make the streets safer in the long term, we have to begin at some point, and we can’t wait for regulation to catch up to innovation.”
A California nonprofit that advocates for cellphone radiation warnings alleged a conflict of interest by a federal judge overseeing a dispute between CTIA and the city of Berkeley, California. CTIA is challenging in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals the city’s cellphone warning ordinance for RF emissions (see 1609130045). In a news release Tuesday, the California Brain Tumor Association urged Judge Michelle Friedland to recuse herself from the three-judge panel hearing the case. The nonprofit alleged Friedland’s husband, Daniel Kelly, works as an engineer at Tarana Wireless, which designs 5G wireless equipment and is funded by AT&T and T-Mobile USA parent Deutsche Telekom. The U.S. carriers are members of CTIA. Berkeley City Council Member Maxwell Anderson said: “It is appalling to learn that a judge in this case may have possible wireless industry conflicts of interest. It is especially important this be investigated given Judge Friedland’s husband is a key employee of a firm linked to several major players in the trillion dollar wireless sector.” The nonprofit’s head, Ellen Marks, said she hasn’t submitted the allegations to the court. CTIA declined to comment. The court didn’t comment.
The North Carolina gubernatorial election in November could change the fate of a small town that is losing fiber broadband due to the recently upheld state ban on municipal broadband expansion. While Gov. Pat McCrory (R) remains silent on Pinetops, the town is contacting his Democratic challenger, state Attorney General Roy Cooper, Pinetops officials said in interviews this week. Local business owners said they're devastated by the planned Oct. 28 disconnection.
It’s too risky to increase New Mexico definitions of broadband and unserved and underserved areas in the state’s Rural USF, Public Regulation Commission staff said Monday. In comments on proposed rules taking effect Jan. 1 for the RUSF, the PRC's Telecom Bureau staff urged only conservative actions to avoid litigation. That followed industry opposition in Oregon last week to a proposal to include “access to broadband” in the definition of basic phone service.
AT&T sued Nashville over the one-touch, make-ready ordinance passed last week. The lawsuit (in Pacer), filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Nashville, was expected (see 1609210065). “Tennessee municipalities do not have jurisdiction to regulate pole attachments,” an AT&T spokesman said: After working with the mayor, council members, Nashville Electric Service and others, “we have no other option but to challenge this unlawful ordinance in federal court.” The Nashville Metro Council passed the one-touch policy to speed the rollout of Google Fiber, a competitor to incumbent AT&T. The law is meant to speed network rollouts by new entrants by allowing all pole attachment work to happen in a single visit by a crew approved by the pole owner. Currently, each existing provider on a pole sends a separate crew to move its line to make room for the new one, a process that Google says causes long delays (see 1609020013). AT&T's suit argued that FCC pole attachment regulations pre-empt the Nashville action. The ordinance conflicts with Metro Nashville’s charter under Tennessee law and impairs AT&T’s existing contract with Metro Nashville in violation of the U.S. and Tennessee constitutions, the telco ISP said. Mayor Megan Barry stood by the ordinance. “One Touch Make Ready has been litigated in the court of public opinion, and the public overwhelmingly supports this measure designed to speed up the deployment of high-speed fiber in Nashville,” the Democrat said in a statement. “Now, we hope that this federal litigation is quickly resolved so that we can get on with the business of expanding access to gigabit internet throughout Davidson County.” The city and the council saw the suit coming, "but we hoped common sense maybe could prevail and AT&T would see that Nashville residents overwhelmingly supported One Touch policy," emailed Council Member Anthony Davis, who sponsored the ordinance. "I know our legal department will vigorously defend our rights to regulate pole policy and to decide what occurs in our city right-of-way." AT&T previously sued Louisville, Kentucky, for passing a one-touch policy (see 1602260043). Pole attachment policies are expected to be a continuing challenge for Google as it expands its gigabit network (see 1609070026).