A California Senate committee plans a hearing next week on a constitutional amendment to dissolve the California Public Utilities Commission. The Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee scheduled ACA-11 for its June 21 hearing at 9 a.m. PDT. The Assembly passed the measure on a 61-9 vote June 2, with legislators citing the CPUC handling of the troublesome transition of Verizon customers to Frontier Communications as one reason for an overhaul of state utilities regulation (see 1606020071). If the committee gives the green light, the measure will require a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate, then a ballot vote by voters in November.

Verizon buying XO Communications won’t reduce competition, and no conditions are necessary, Verizon said in a Monday New York Public Service Commission filing. It responded to comments by Windstream, which opposes the deal without significant conditions to protect competition, particularly in the business data services market. “In fact, the proposed transaction will create substantial public-interest benefits,” Verizon said. "Attempting to prevent or delay the transaction, or to hobble it through unnecessary and burdensome conditions, will put those public-interest benefits at risk, and frustrate Petitioners’ efforts to enhance their networks to the benefit of customers and competition.” The deal will expand and enhance Verizon’s fiber facilities, with benefits for the company’s wireless network, the company said. Current XO customers will gain access to Verizon products and services, it said: There will remain “ample competitive alternatives following this transaction.” The combination won’t threaten use of unbundled copper loops for Ethernet-over-copper services, nor encourage price squeezes, as Windstream has claimed, Verizon said. “Verizon will have neither the incentive nor the ability to raise rivals’ costs due to the acquisition because … numerous competitive alternatives to XO’s services will remain available in virtually all locations.” Verizon and XO are also defending their proposed deal at the FCC (see 1605310038).

The Ohio Public Utilities Commission will interview commissioner applicants at a June 16 public meeting, the state commission said in a news release Thursday. The vacancy is for an unexpired term ending April 10, 2020. At the meeting, a 12-member nominating council will select four of nine interviewees to submit to Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R). The meeting starts at 8:45 a.m. CDT at the commission’s HQ and will be webcast. The Ohio PUC swore in Asim Haque as chairman last month (see 1605260001).

New York’s proposed conditions for low-income communities on Altice’s $17.7 billion takeover of Cablevision are “woefully inadequate,” Digital Divide Partners commented to the New York Public Service Commission, posted online Thursday. Digital Divide Partners is a U.S. Treasury-designated community development entity that provides funding and financial counseling to businesses in low-income communities, said its website. Advisory staff for the Department of Public Service had recommended a condition requiring Altice to roll out a low-income plan priced at $14.95 within five years, but Digital Divide Partners said “historical data has shown this approach to have very limited impact.” The staff's 25 percent adoption target for the plan leaves 250,000 public housing residents without broadband service, it said. “Adding insult to injury, enforcement of this requirement is weak at best, requiring only that Petitioner make ‘commercially reasonable efforts’ to deploy this program.” It said the “suggested remedy of free broadband access for 40 anchor institutions will hardly make a dent in what has been a longstanding digital inequity throughout underserved communities.” Union and government officials in New York have supported the proposed conditions (see 1605310044). The PSC is to rule on the deal June 16.

With state universal service fund revenue dropping, the Utah Public Service Commission plans to discuss ongoing revenue requirements of its fund at a technical conference June 21, the Utah PSC said in a notice Monday. The open, public meeting also will address “regulatory options” to ensure telecom providers who pay into the fund collect and remit required revenue, and ways to ensure funding, including possibly adding a line or connection surcharge, it said. Also, the commission asked the Utah Division of Public Utilities to present on declining universal service revenue. The meeting starts at 9:30 a.m. at the commission’s headquarters in Salt Lake City.

Pennsylvania prepared for a future “Black Sky” crisis in which a cyberattack, severe weather or nuclear explosion could knock out power across a large region, disabling utilities including telecom. Gov. Tom Wolf (D) hosted an exercise at the Public Utility Commission Friday, the PUC said in a news release. It was attended by 130 participants from state and federal government agencies, neighboring state utility commissions, military and law enforcement agencies, utility companies, first responders and nonprofit organizations. The full-day training was closed to the public and media. “Many organizations test emergency plans, but rarely do they prepare for a multi-faceted incident quite like a Black Sky event,” Wolf said at the exercise. “Such an event would have an extraordinary impact on our society, causing power and service outages that could last days, weeks, even months.”

New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman urged the State Assembly to pass ticket bot legislation approved last month in the State Senate (see 1605250039). In an op-ed in the New York Post Thursday, the Democrat said the bill “has the chance to finally level the playing field.” The bill imposes criminal penalties for bots used to scoop up tickets from websites and resell them at a premium. Because of bots, events sell out quickly even though tickets haven't been bought by real people. Ticket bots are already illegal software under New York’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Law. S-6931 -- based on a Schneiderman proposal -- strengthens penalties.

Skype may provide information services in Indiana, the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission ruled. In an order Wednesday, the commission approved a Skype application for a certificate of territorial authority to provide communications in the state. The certificate lets Skype provide advanced conferencing and unified communications services for businesses, including retail nomadic interconnected VoIP service. No hearing was required because no one objected, the commission said.

U.S. District Court in San Francisco will hear argument Sept. 29 in a case about whether a state commission can compel disclosure of subscriber data to a third party, said a court schedule (in Pacer) released Wednesday. On May 20, the court temporarily banned the California Public Utilities Commission from enforcing a May 3 ruling compelling top ISPs to disclose subscription data to The Utilities Reform Network (TURN) as part of a state investigation of market competition (see 1605240014). The data involves carrier market share and includes Form 477 data that carriers report to the FCC. In their complaint (in Pacer), AT&T, Comcast, CTIA, Verizon and other industry plaintiffs said the data is confidential. Plaintiffs will file opening briefs June 30, followed by the CPUC and TURN July 28. The hearing starts at 10 a.m. PDT.

The California Senate passed a bill requiring notification of major rural outages of telecom services, voting 34-5 Wednesday, with one senator abstaining. S-1250 requires the California Public Utilities Commission to consult with the Office of Emergency Services to establish rules, enforceable through the Public Utilities Act. It also would require the CPUC to annually report to the legislature on outages, with recommendations on how to improve reporting and ways to avoid or minimize future outages. While existing law prohibits the CPUC from regulating VoIP and IP-enabled services, the bill authorizes the state commission to implement the notification rules for facilities-based VoIP and IP-enabled service providers of telecom services that the FCC requires to provide access to 911. The bill defines a “major rural outage” as a telecom service outage, experienced by a facilities-based telecom service provider required by the FCC to provide 911, that lasts more than 30 minutes and potentially affects 75,000 or more user minutes. User minutes are calculated by multiplying the outage’s duration in minutes by the number of users potentially affected, the bill said. S-1250 next moves to the assembly. The FCC last week approved revised rules on outage reporting and a Further NPRM that would extend reporting requirements to broadband providers (see 1605260054).