Fifteen Minnesota communities will share $11 million in grants as a part of the state's Department of Employment and Economic Development's Border-to-Border Broadband Development Grant Program, said a Friday news release. The department received 44 applications for funding, totaling more than $29 million in requests, and recipients were selected based on an internal review and scoring process, it said. The grants are expected to improve access to high-speed broadband for 3,222 households, 786 businesses and nearly 90 community institutions, it said. The program’s first round of funding awarded $19.4 million to 17 communities in February, said the department.

There's no digital mapping information about the Oklahoma historical map, which the FCC recently adopted as a way to distinguish between tribal and nontribal lands in the state, said the Oklahoma Corporation Commission in an ex parte filing with the federal agency posted Wednesday in docket 09-197. The Feb. 9 deadline doesn't provide enough time to alert affected customers of a coming change in Lifeline support, said OCC. To remedy the situation, it recommends the FCC extend the effective date to 90 days from the date digital mapping information is made available to those affected parties. The boundary changes will result in a 73 percent reduction in Lifeline support -- from $34.25 per month to $9.25 per month -- for a "considerable number" of program customers, the OCC said.

Since 2013, 20 million more students have been connected to broadband at the FCC's minimum access goal of 100 kbps per student, said EducationSuperHighway in its inaugural State of the States report. That year, only 30 percent of schools met the FCC's goal, but now 77 percent of school districts do, the study said. In 2013, 300,000 teachers had the tools they needed, now 1.7 million teachers have the broadband they need to keep up in the 21st century, the paper said. The report tracks the progress of K-12 connectivity goals as established by the FCC. The information is based on application data from the FCC's Schools and Libraries Program and includes information from 6,781 public school districts, with more than 25 million students in about 49,000 schools in the 50 states, the report said. An analysis of the data found that school districts without fiber are 15 percent less likely to meet the FCC's connectivity goals and for the schools that meet the goal, the report said. EducationSuperHighway estimates it will cost about $1 billion to connect the remaining schools that don't have fiber, which it says is well within the E-rate program's budget.

Since the due date Sept. 30, FirstNet has received information from 54 states and territories -- including more than 11,600 public safety entities -- plus seven federal agencies through its formal data collection process, a blog post from the group said Thursday. The collection process, in coordination with NTIA’s State and Local Implementation Grant program, began in March and aimed to better understand how the public safety community uses mobile data communications, it said. The process was developed around coverage; users and operational areas; capacity planning; and current services and procurement vehicles.

About 96 percent of New York City residents own cellphones, and 80 percent own smartphones, said a study from the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs. The study was sponsored by Capital One and the MetLife Foundation and aimed to "analyze the needs, barriers, and opportunities to increase financial inclusion through mobile financial services use." The study also showed that 66.5 percent of city residents who had no income still have smartphones. Mobile phone usage and ownership varied a little by banking status, with about 95 percent of banked respondents reported owning a cellphone, 79 percent of whom owned a smartphone, the study said. The report said, "Someone who is 'underbanked' has a bank or credit union account but also uses alternative financial services such as a check cashing service, money order, payday loan, pawnshop loan, reloadable prepaid debit card, or payroll card from an employer." About 90 percent of unbanked respondents owned a cellphone, with 73 percent reporting having a smartphone, and 98 percent of the underbanked owning a cellphone, 80 percent of whom had a smartphone, it said. Immigrant respondents and those who were between the ages of 18 and 29 were among the highest groups to have a smartphone, at 93 percent and 94 percent respectively.

The Hawaii Public Utilities Commission approved a request by Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable to change the deadline to file rebuttals in the proceeding to approve transfer of control of TWC in docket 2015-0207, said an order from the PUC filed Monday and posted Tuesday. The deadline was originally Nov. 5, but the PUC extended it to Thursday.

The New York State Department of Public Service is investigating phone outages Thursday that affected 911 service to more than 400,000 Verizon New York and Frontier Communications customers in the lower Hudson Valley, including portions of Putnam, Ulster, Sullivan and Westchester counties, a DPS news release said. The Verizon outage in Dutchess, Putnam, Ulster and Westchester counties potentially affected more than 400,000 customers, DPS said Friday. The outage made it so customers couldn't call 911, it said. The Verizon outage began at 2:30 p.m., with services gradually being restored starting at 5:30 p.m., and full restoration at 6:45 p.m., it said. The Frontier outage affected the hamlet of Roscoe in Sullivan County and left more than 900 customers without service, the agency said. The outage started in the early afternoon with intermittent service, but became a complete outage by evening, DPS said, with full service restored by midnight. The department said it plans to evaluate why the backup systems -- which are designed to ensure continued service operations -- failed, and what improvements might be needed. The investigation is expected to take two months. Verizon said it will cooperate with the investigation. Frontier didn't immediately comment Tuesday.

For FirstNet to succeed in Michigan, it’s important to have teamwork among all public safety entities and it’s imperative that cybersecurity concerns be addressed, stakeholders said at the state’s Initial Consultation Meeting with FirstNet earlier this year, FirstNet said in a blog post. More than 100 stakeholders from local, state and tribal entities in Michigan met in East Lansing. For the purpose of outreach, Michigan maintains ongoing involvement with a number of organizations, including the APCO Broadband Committee, Michigan’s Public Safety Communications Interoperability Board, the National Association of State 911 Administrators, the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council, the Public Safety Communications Research Program and the State 911 Committee, the post said.

The Communications Workers of America asked the Maryland Public Service Commission to re-open an investigation into quality of service on Verizon's copper network. A letter, similar to one sent to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission in October (see 1510220054), included photos that the union said show deteriorating phone equipment that CWA believes threaten service quality. Before sending Monday's letter, CWA said it examined Verizon’s equipment in areas of the state where the telco hasn't built FiOS and offers service only through traditional copper wiring. The investigation found poles that are damaged, unsecured and broken, damaged and exposed cable and splice terminals, bypassed damaged cable, and equipment that shows evidence of damage caused by animals, the union said: "Verizon’s systemic underinvestment in its traditional landline network violates the terms of the alternative form of regulation that the company is currently operating under." Maryland law allows Verizon to operate under alternative regulation only if the commission finds that it protects consumers by "producing affordable and reasonably priced basic service and by ensuring the quality, availability and reliability of telecommunications services throughout Maryland," CWA said. The filing is an "agenda-driven attempt by the union to try and divert attention from our on-going contract negotiations," said a Verizon spokesman. "Union leaders have an ill-advised pattern of creating campaigns filled with mischaracterizations and inaccurate statements." If there are problems with the network, Verizon will look into them, the spokesman said. Instead of trying to force Verizon to hire more union employees, CWA should work with the company on a new contract that's good for employees and fair to customers, he said.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and Transit Wireless launched wireless, public safety and Wi-Fi services to 21 underground subway stations in the Bronx and 16 in Manhattan, said a news release from Transit Wireless. The company also started working on wiring another 37 stations, which are expected to have wireless up and running by the middle of 2016, the release said.