Proposed laws banning regulation of VoIP by state commissions are sailing through two legislatures. Wednesday, the West Virginia Senate voted 33-0 to pass SB-180 prohibiting state regulation of VoIP. Tuesday, the Minnesota House Commerce Committee voted 11-5 to clear a similar bill (HF-1665) to be heard next in the House Job Growth Committee. The West Virginia Public Service Commission hasn’t tried to regulate VoIP, but putting a prohibition into statute would resolve industry uncertainty, Sen. Ed Gaunch (R) said on the Senate floor Wednesday: “The idea here is to give predictability to this industry.” The PSC hasn’t taken a position on the bill, a commission spokeswoman said. In Minnesota, the state Commerce Department opposed HF-1665. “Regardless of technology, if the service is the same, the consumer protections should be the same,” a department spokesman emailed. The Public Utilities Commission, fighting a Charter lawsuit in federal court over the same issue (see 1702160038), declined comment. The bill sets overly broad definitions of VoIP and IP-enabled services and removes important state and local regulatory oversight of the services, said a department fact sheet forwarded by the spokesman. The Voice on the Net (VON) Coalition supported the Minnesota bill in a Feb. 24 letter to the legislative committee that approved the bill Tuesday. “Passage of this legislation would align Minnesota with federal law and promote a competitive VoIP market,” VON Coalition Executive Director Glenn Richards wrote.

A telehealth bill floated this week in Texas could be a step toward resolving Teladoc's lawsuit against the Texas Medical Board, which ruled against the company’s practice in 2015, said Mario Gutierrez, executive director of the Center for Connected Health Policy (CCHP), a project of the nonprofit Public Health Institute. Republican State Sens. Charles Schwertner and Charles Perry introduced the legislation Monday. SB-1107 removes a requirement that patient and physicians must first meet face to face. It provides new definitions for telehealth service, telemedicine and store-and-forward technology. While CCHP doesn’t take a position on the bill, Gutierrez emailed that the measure “seeks to better define different forms of virtual care, though there is no mention of remote patient monitoring, which can be beneficial for monitoring chronic diseases wherever the patient may be.” Cooperation among stakeholders produced the bill, Texas e-Health Alliance Executive Director Nora Belcher told us. “Last legislative session, there were over a dozen telemedicine bills filed in Texas that didn't pass, because it was clear that there was no consensus among the stakeholders about what approach to take,” she emailed. “My organization partnered with the Texas Medical Association and the Texas Academy of Family Physicians during the interim to convene a working group of all the major stakeholders to work through the issues, and this bill is the result.” SB-1107 “will guarantee a free, open and competitive market for all kinds of telemedicine in Texas,” she said. The bill lets Texans “access a new, state-of-the-art option for their medical care, while also protecting patient safety and ensuring the accepted standard of care is maintained,” Schwertner said in a news release. Teladoc praised introduction of the Texas bill. Arkansas last week signed a telehealth measure into law (see 1702210014).

The New York Public Service Commission plans a detailed review of Consolidated's buy of FairPoint, Telecom Office Director Karen Geduldig said in a Friday letter to the petitioners. Rather than allow the transaction be deemed granted, commissioners will review the Jan. 13 petition and issue a written order, she said. Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire are reviewing the deal, and executives testified to the Maine Public Utilities Commission last week (see 1702210052). Also last week, the New York PSC said it would also scrutinize CenturyLink/Level 3 (see 1702210009).

Don’t let FairPoint off the hook for missing Maine service quality benchmarks from Q3 2014 to Q2 2016, the state Office of Public Advocate told the Public Utilities Commission. The PUC in October proposed $500,000 in civil penalties for service quality violations, but the company protested the amount and blamed failures on reasons out of its control (see 1701030041). In testimony filed Wednesday in docket 2014-00376, OPA regulatory consultant David Brevitz said FairPoint shouldn't be excused. “FairPoint knew very well what the service quality benchmarks were that it was required to meet or expose itself to penalties,” Brevitz said. “FairPoint made various business decisions that resulted in its inability to meet the service quality benchmarks, and even get close to them for extended periods of time. The circumstances indicate that FairPoint clearly accepted potential penalties as a ‘cost of doing business’, and it would be unjust for the Commission to relieve FairPoint of paying the penalties given its complete knowledge of the service quality benchmarks, its sustained failure to meet the benchmarks -- and even improve performance, and its own decisions regarding operations in Northern New England.” FairPoint service quality issues came up earlier this week at a PUC technical conference on the company's proposed acquisition by Consolidated Communications (see 1702210052).

The California Public Utilities Commission didn’t violate the law when it revised a rural call completion order shortly before and during commissioners' Dec. 15 meeting, said a rural county and two consumer groups. In a joint response released Wednesday, Mendocino County, The Utilities Reform Network and Center for Accessible Technology urged the commission to reject a request for rehearing by a coalition of California ISPs (see 1702080065). Rules don’t specify the exact timing of proposed changes to agenda items, they said. “Prescriptive or strict rules regarding timing of proposed revisions would chill the Commission’s ability to respond to Commissioner or staff concerns or public comment raised during the meeting itself.” They rejected the ISP argument that the scope of the order was too broad, saying the docket was broad from the start and properly expanded over the course of the proceeding. ISPs should file a petition for modification or request for clarification on any drafting errors they identify, said the county and consumer groups. “The existence of drafting errors or ambiguities that require clarification does not rise to the level of legal error undermining an entire decision.”

More state legislatures are pre-empting local authorities on municipal broadband and other areas, the National League of Cities said in a Wednesday blog post. A recent NLC report said 17 states pre-empt localities from deploying muni broadband, said NLC Research Associate Trevor Langan. State pre-emption “means a loss of local control for cities,” he wrote. “This can have negative effects on local economies and the rights of marginalized groups. Moreover, these laws counter the intentions of local leaders and their communities.” States usually pre-empt municipal broadband by either banning a public entity from providing the service or by placing sufficient barriers to discourage local broadband efforts, NLC reported.

A wireless bill in the California State Assembly could pre-empt local authority on siting small cells. SB-649 by Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee Chairman Ben Hueso (D) says small cells, like collocation facilities, are “not a municipal affair” but “a matter of statewide concern.” It bans cities or counties considering applications for small cells from requiring an escrow deposit for removal of a wireless facility, limiting the duration of any wireless facility to less than 10 years or restricting facilities to sites owned by specific parties within the jurisdiction. “The bill that’s in the hopper now doesn’t actually say that small cells will not be ‘subject to a city or county discretionary permit,’ as collocation facilities are currently privileged to be,” Tellus Venture President Steve Blum said in a Tuesday blog post. “It does set the table for adding that exemption as SB 649 moves through the legislative sausage machine -- there would be little point to the bill otherwise.”

The California Public Utilities Commission may consider extending right-of-way (ROW) rules of commercial mobile radio services (CMRS) to wireless pole attachments by CLECs. A proposed decision by CPUC President Michael Picker released Wednesday would grant the Wireless Infrastructure Association’s petition to open a rulemaking on the subject. Commissioners could vote on the proposed decision at their March 23 business meeting, it said. "We agree with WIA’s assessment that extending the Revised ROW Rules to CLECs’ wireless pole attachments would advance the State’s policy objectives in Cal. Pub. Util. Code § 709,” the proposal said. “Our goal for the rulemaking proceeding is to advance the public’s interest in the development of safe and competitive telecommunications infrastructure that provides ubiquitous, competitive, and affordable telecommunications services.” But the proposed decision itself doesn't say whether the rules should be applied to CLEC wireless pole attachments, it said. In the proposed proceeding, the commission would consider rules to ensure construction, operation and maintenance of wireless pole attachments, protect worker and public safety, and preserve reliability of power lines and other collocated utility facilities, the CPUC said. The commission would seek comment on whether space is sufficient on existing utility poles to support additional telecom attachments, if the costs of replacing existing poles to support additional attachments pose a barrier to entry, and if the “urban streetscape” can support more pole attachments, more utility poles or larger poles to replace existing ones. Comments would be due 30 days after a final order is issued, the CPUC said. Earlier this month, the state commission denied a similar petition by the cable industry to extend CMRS ROW rights to cable wireless facilities (see 1702090043). "We are pleased the Commission has accepted our petition for rulemaking and look forward to providing comment on these important issues," WIA Senior Government Affairs Counsel Van Bloys emailed.

An Arkansas state senator defended her telehealth legislation​. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) signed the bill into law Friday, a Hutchinson spokesman said. Teladoc said the new law’s requirement of a video interaction for a patient’s first remote visit may be difficult for people living in remote areas with slow internet connections (see 1702170053). Sponsoring Sen. Cecile Bledsoe (R) told us she doesn’t see a problem. “That is a false argument because most everyone has a smart phone or has access to one through family or friends,” Bledsoe emailed. Patients may use a phone for all subsequent visits, but a video call for the first meeting is “good medicine,” she said. “Many things can be discerned by a visual evaluation and are important, especially when the Physician is seeing the patient for the first time.”

The New York Public Service Commission plans a detailed review of CenturyLink buying Level 3, agency Telecom Office Director Karen Geduldig said in a Monday letter to the petitioners. Rather than allow the transaction be deemed granted, commissioners will review the Jan. 6 petition and issue a written order, she said. Ohio, Utah and Nevada have cleared the transaction, while DOJ and the FCC are reviewing it (see 1702140017). The deal is expected to close by the end of Q3.