The Nebraska Public Service Commission could face a lawsuit if it revamps state USF contribution methodology before the FCC overhauls federal USF contribution formula, CTIA warned in comments Wednesday in PSC docket NUSF-100. The state commission is mulling a move to a connections-based mechanism from the current system based on intrastate revenue. Echoing a call from last month (see 1607190033), CTIA urged the state commission to wait for the FCC: "In addition to avoiding needless legal and practical problems, this approach also will allow the [PSC] to better guard against exacerbating the already high tax, fee, and surcharge burden on Nebraska wireless consumers." Carriers shouldn’t have to make major changes to their billing and accounting systems twice, once for Nebraska contribution overhaul and again after the FCC makes its own changes, CTIA said. “Such a costly and wasteful move could result in litigation.” AT&T is litigating with the Kansas Corporation Commission on these grounds, CTIA said. Federal law says state USF mechanisms mustn't be inconsistent with federal USF's, it said. Wireless contributors allocate intrastate revenue from connections that carry both interstate and intrastate traffic based on the inverse of the factor used for federal USF contributions, based either on a traffic study or the wireless safe harbor, it said. "If Nebraska uses a different approach to assessing interstate-intrastate connections, there is a significant risk that the Nebraska approach could impose NUSF contributions on revenue that is treated as interstate by the FCC.” CenturyLink disagreed. Its comments said "there are no unsurmountable intrastate versus interstate jurisdictional issues raised by moving to a connections-based mechanism for assessing an NUSF surcharge.” Workshops are needed to work out details, but "a connections-based methodology is fundamentally legally sound," the telco said. "An NUSF contribution which is connections-based does not burden the interstate uses any more than a surcharge which is revenues based, since both are determined without regard to jurisdictional separations" and "both recover the same total amount for the fund." Rural independent telcos said the PSC can’t afford to wait for the FCC. The FCC will revamp contribution "at some future point in time, but waiting for the FCC to act at a time when the current NUSF contribution methodology may not be sustainable is not a viable alternative,” rural independents commented. Nebraska is one of several states with decreased revenue to the state USF from contributions (see 1607010010).

The Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority is seeking comment on a petition to clarify infrastructure access rules to promote municipality use of utility poles and underground conduits for fiber, PURA said in a notice Tuesday. By statute, Connecticut reserves a “municipal gain” space on each pole allowing municipal use for any purpose. The Connecticut Consumer Counsel filed a petition June 21 at PURA asking the agency to clarify rules and remove barriers to pole access, attachments, maintenance and make-ready costs so localities can use the municipal gain space for fiber. Clearer rules will spur private investment in high-speed broadband, the counsel said. Comments are due Aug. 31, PURA said.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) unveiled $54.2 million in state broadband grants and issued a request for proposals for the second round of the New NY Broadband Program, his office said in a Wednesday news release. The second round will target the most remote areas of the state, and includes a portion of the areas where Verizon declined Connect America Fund money from the FCC, the governor’s office said. Also, Cuomo announced round-one awards, expected to connect 34,000 new homes with high-speed broadband. Together with a Charter Communications/Time Warner Cable transaction commitment to connect 145,000 unserved households in upstate New York over four years (see 1606150056), the actions are expected to connect 97 percent of New Yorkers, Cuomo’s office said. Also, Charter plans to make 100 Mbps speeds available to more than 2 million upstate New York homes and businesses by early 2017, two years earlier than required by the New York Public Service Commission, it said. The New York state grants in round one are expected to drive $75.8 million in total investment in broadband deployment projects, including $54.2 million to be funded by the state and $21.6 million to come from the private sector, the governor’s office said. More than 80 percent of the funding went to projects in unserved areas upstate, it said. The grants will fund nearly 18,000 miles of broadband infrastructure, with 24 awarded projects providing fiber to the home and cable DOCSIS technologies, it said. The biggest awards went to TDS Telecom ($9.4 million), State Telephone ($8.7 million) and Middleburgh Telephone ($5.6 million). The state said it plans a third phase of its broadband program commencing early 2017. “These actions are a major step forward in creating the most robust broadband infrastructure network in the nation, and ensuring that reliable, high-speed internet is available to all New Yorkers,” said Cuomo.

The California Senate Appropriations Committee delayed a decision on a dig-once broadband conduit bill. At a Monday hearing, the committee moved AB-1549 into its “suspense file,” a category reserved for bills deemed to be costly, for a vote expected later in the month. The bill, which already passed the Assembly, would require the state’s Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to notify broadband companies about highway construction projects so they can install broadband conduit as part of each project. If no broadband company wants to help, the department would be required to install fiber broadband conduit itself. Sponsor Assemblymember Jim Wood (D) said Caltrans failed to follow a 2006 executive order by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R). Caltrans notifies large providers but not smaller broadband consortiums, Wood said. “It’s been 10 years since that executive order and nothing has really happened and most of my district does not have access to high speed Internet.” A state finance department official opposed the bill at the hearing.

Cutting carriers out of the eligibility process helps the California Public Utilities Commission avoid waste, fraud and abuse in the California LifeLine program, CPUC President Michael Picker said in a letter July 27 to FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai. The CPUC responded to Pai’s July 5 letter asking for four states' help fighting such problems in the Lifeline USF low-income telecom support program (see 1607060047). Pai wrote to state telecom regulators in in California, Oregon, Texas and Vermont, each of which runs its own Lifeline accountability databases. Unlike other states, California has empowered an independent, third-party administrator to determine eligibility, Picker said. “One of the fundamental differences between how the CPUC administers the California LifeLine Program and how states in which service providers determine eligibility for the federal Lifeline program [administer theirs] is that that carriers cannot override the safeguards California has put in place.” The California administrator “reviews each piece of underlying document to determine eligibility,” and the state program “neither acquires nor relies on certifications by service providers as a part of the enrollment process,” he said. At the 2016 NARUC summer meeting last week, CPUC Commissioner Catherine Sandoval said California may want to opt out of national verification, as established in the FCC recent Lifeline order, because the state already has a strong third-party verifier (see 1607270020).

The California Public Utilities Commission announced hearings on phone number exhaustion and the safety of communications and interconnected infrastructure. The CPUC plans a series of public meetings to provide information and get feedback on the introduction of new area codes in regions using the 916, 805 and 619 area codes, said a Friday news release. Three meetings on 916 will be Aug. 15-16; three meetings on 805 will be Aug. 22-23; and three hearings on 619 will be Oct. 4-5. In a separate release, the CPUC said its annual Safety En Banc hearing will be Oct. 19 at CPUC headquarters and will focus on interconnected infrastructures. The hearing will hear from executives from energy, water and communications industries discussing “the manner in which critical infrastructures are interconnected, such that a disruption in one infrastructure may have cascading adverse effects in others,” it said.

State outreach to local public safety agencies is critical to FirstNet, said company Director of Consultation David Buchanan in a webinar last week with state and territory single points of contact (SPOCs). “David emphasized that FirstNet is focused on substantive engagement at the local public safety agency level to share information on network planning, schedule, timeline, and deployment,” FirstNet Senior Outreach Adviser Kenzie Capece wrote in a FirstNet blog post Friday. “FirstNet seeks to schedule a formal Metro Leadership Engagement to dialogue with these eventual customers, address questions and concerns, and supplement the consultation that FirstNet has done to date in a meaningful manner. … SPOCs are critical to the success of these meetings.”

The District of Columbia Public Service Commission cleared two CLEC acquisitions in orders Thursday. In one order, the D.C. PSC granted an application to transfer Primus customers to Birch Communications and to allow Primus, which filed for bankruptcy, to abandon service. The FCC OK’d the deal in April (see 1604120032). In another order, the PSC cleared U.S. TelePacific’s buy of DSCI, which is pending at the FCC (see 1604060033).

Verizon got the green light in New Jersey for its buy of XO Communications and its wireline assets. The state's Board of Public Utilities OK’d the $1.8 billion sale, the BPU said in a news release Friday. “The Board found that the merger will strengthen the company’s product offerings, while improving its business customers’ quality of service under the same current rates, terms and conditions,” BPU President Richard Mroz said in a statement. The BPU required Verizon to report over the next four years and to explain any net loss of XO customer-facing jobs exceeding 15 percent, the Board said. Verizon is pleased with the decision, a company spokesman said. The Verizon/XO deal still needs approval from regulators in New York, Pennsylvania and Hawaii, plus the FCC and DOJ (see 1606270062). The FCC Wireline Bureau recently paused its nonbinding 180-day review clock on Day 86 as it awaits further documents from the companies (see 1607200079). Last week, the FCC approved Verizon's de facto spectrum leasing arrangement with Nextlink, a subsidiary of XO Holdings (see 1607250045).

New Jersey plans to begin its probe of Verizon service quality at public hearings Aug. 4. In a notice this week, the state’s Board of Public Utilities announced two hearings for 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. at the Estell Manor Elementary School in Estell Manor. Municipalities in Atlantic, Burlington, Salem, Gloucester and Cumberland counties requested the investigation. Verizon also faces state questions about its copper and fiber-upgrade strategy in New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania (see 1607140027 and 1606010052).