AT&T said Monday it plans to bring its U-verse with GigaPower gigabit broadband service to Nashville. The telco said it will specify the service’s pricing and specific location availability later. Nashville Mayor Karl Dean praised AT&T’s announcement, saying that “this kind of technology is important to keep our city vibrant and attractive, and it is further proof of how Nashville is positioned as a city of the future” (http://soc.att.com/1qHbOax). AT&T announced last week that it would be making U-verse with GigaPower available in the Dallas-Fort Worth area later this summer. Cities there that will have access to the service include Arlington, Allen, Euless, Fairview, Fort Worth, Granbury, Highland, Irving, McKinney, North Richland Hills, University Park, Weatherford and Willow Park (http://soc.att.com/1ujy2kn).

Telebeam Telecommunications executives urged the FCC Thursday not to adopt any rules that would allow New York City to avoid applying wireless siting rules to wireless facilities located in city payphone structures on public sidewalks, Telebeam said in an ex parte filing posted Monday. Telebeam said the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) had told the commission in a meeting that it was seeking proposals for a franchise that would replace expiring payphone franchises with ones for new structures that would include Wi-Fi and potentially wireless services. DoITT is arguing that its regulation of communications providers is exempt from Communications Act rules because it is operating in its role as a landowner rather than as a regulator -- something it has previously argued, Telebeam said. The telco, which has applied for the franchise, said it has operated payphones in New York since 1985, and owns and operates about 23 percent of the city’s payphone locations on public sidewalks. New York plans to issue one franchise under its new plan, which means Telebeam “faces the loss of its investment and its business,” the telco said. The city claims the franchise is “non-exclusive” because it could issue additional franchises in the future, but it would be a “de facto monopoly,” Telebeam said (http://bit.ly/1kjF7NO).

Chattanooga’s Electric Power Board (EPB) utility and the city of Wilson, North Carolina, separately petitioned the FCC Thursday to use its authority under Communications Act Section 706 to pre-empt portions of state laws limiting the expansion of municipal broadband services. EPB’s petition seeks FCC pre-emption of a portion of Tennessee law that prohibits existing municipal broadband networks from serving adjacent areas not currently in its 600-square-mile electric service territory (http://bit.ly/1kZ4lM6). EPB has received “regular requests” in recent years to offer its gigabit broadband service in communities adjacent to its electric service territory that are in a “digital desert,” EPB said. The utility said in its petition that it would extend service only to cities and counties that request EPB’s presence. Any extensions of the broadband service would need to be financially feasible and EPB “never will” use revenue from its electric service to “cross-subsidize Internet and video services,” the utility said. EPB had been considering filing the petition last week, just before the House passed the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act (HR-5016), which included an amendment that would stop the FCC from pre-empting state municipal broadband laws (CD July 17 p3 ). There isn’t currently a Senate equivalent of the Blackburn amendment. Wilson’s petition seeks FCC pre-emption of a North Carolina law that imposes multiple legal and procedural requirements on cities seeking to provide communications services. Wilson offers its Greenlight gigabit broadband service only in Wilson County, North Carolina, but said it has received “numerous” requests to expand the service into the other five counties in which it currently provides electric service. State law “has the purpose and effect of prohibiting it from doing so,” Wilson said (http://bit.ly/1kZ54gc). The FCC is reviewing the petitions and looks forward to “a full opportunity for comment by all interested parties, and will carefully review the specific legal, factual, and policy issues before us,” Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a statement.

New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer urged the New York Public Service Commission (PSC) Monday to “take steps” to ensure the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable (TWC) merger will expand access to Internet connectivity in New York City’s five boroughs, calling Internet connectivity the “fourth utility of the modern age.” If regulators approve the merger, Comcast would be required to abide by TWC’s franchise agreement with New York City -- but it should have a more detailed plan to address connectivity issues in the city, Stringer said. The PSC should also “engage in appropriate oversight” ensuring Comcast meets its commitments to low-income New York residents, he said. The New York PSC should also “carefully examine” Comcast’s net neutrality commitment as part of its review, Stringer said. New York state law has effectively declared ISPs as common carriers, requiring ISPs to “provide publicly offered conduit services on demand to any similarly situated user on substantially similar terms, subject to the availability of facilities and capacity,” he said. Stringer criticized Comcast for being “willing to sacrifice net neutrality in order to squeeze additional payment out of content providers, such as Netflix” and other content providers. The PSC should examine whether Comcast’s agreement with Netflix is “a sign that the company is eroding this principle in a manner that conflicts with the public interest,” Stringer said (http://bit.ly/1pbXX5p).

NARUC Telecom Committee Chairman Chris Nelson repeated NARUC’s previously stated positions on the FCC’s open docket (12-375) on inmate calling services during a meeting last week with FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and Clyburn aide Rebekah Goodheart while all three were at the NARUC meeting in Dallas, NARUC said in a filing posted Tuesday. NARUC generally opposes “arguments that would expand the FCC’s jurisdiction to intrastate toll rates or unnecessarily supplant existing State Public Service Commission decisions over this service,” NARUC said. The group said the FCC’s original NPRM acknowledges that intrastate ISC rates are “set by the States” (http://bit.ly/1nyuK9o).

Time Warner Cable told the Los Angeles city government Friday that it’s in the best position to help build the city’s potential municipal broadband network. The city had issued a request for information (RFI) on a municipal network that’s gigabit-capable and can serve a mix of residential, business and government customers. Time Warner Cable told Los Angeles that its current network and planned improvements are capable of delivering the requirements included in the RFI. The operator has invested more than $1.5 billion on its network infrastructure in the Los Angeles area over the past four years, which in conjunction with its new Gigasphere technology “positions us to be able to introduce gigabit-per-second speeds in 2016,” said Peter Stern, chief strategy, people and corporate development officer, in a news release. “Leveraging our existing network allows us to deliver these speeds faster and with less disruption than any other provider” (http://bit.ly/1kDKIcd).

Frontier Communications continues to believe there are “numerous public interest benefits” to its proposed buy of AT&T’s wireline assets in Connecticut, Executive Vice President-External Affairs Kathleen Abernathy and Frontier lawyers told Daniel Alvarez, wireline aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, in a phone call Monday, Frontier said in an ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 14-22. The deal, announced in December, will allow Frontier to “expand 10 Mbps broadband services to an additional 100,000 Connecticut homes that lack 10 Mbps service today,” Frontier said. The telco said it committed to making “middle-mile” improvements in the network that include construction of a reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer ultra-high specification fiber network. The improved network will increase network capacity in the state tenfold, which Frontier said means it can provide 10 gigabit service to customers in the state (http://bit.ly/1ruE2Ck).

Two “progressive” state-level policy groups -- the Progressive States Network (PSN) and American Legislative and Issue Campaign Exchange (ALICE) -- said they're combining to more effectively push state-level legislation. “For nearly a generation, conservatives have outpaced us at the business of movement-building in states,” ALICE and PSN said in a joint statement Wednesday. “They have focused hard on it, poured resources into it, and have been ruthlessly efficient at it. Starting now, we will do the same” (http://bit.ly/WkGj8Y). The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council is considered the main group advocating for conservative policies at the state level, though ALICE and PSN didn’t mention the group. ALICE Executive Director Nick Rathod will lead the combined group once they're joined in the fall, ALICE and PSN said.

AT&T said it’s officially adding Carrboro, North Carolina, as a target city for its GigaPower 1 Gbps fiber to the home network services. Carrboro’s town government reached an agreement to allow AT&T deployment of the services within town limits as part of the North Carolina Next Generation Network’s (NCNGN) initiative. NCNGN’s five other participant cities have also reached agreements with AT&T -- Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, Raleigh and Winston-Salem, AT&T said (http://soc.att.com/1jCM3Ff).

Expectations remained unclear Monday for the outcome of the NARUC Telecom Committee’s expected vote on a net neutrality resolution. The resolution, introduced by committee member and Vermont Public Service Board member John Burke, would encourage the FCC to use the Telecom Act’s Title II and Section 706 as the jurisdictional basis as it creates new net neutrality rules (CD July 14 p6). Burke told us Monday the staff subcommittee on telecom had given a positive reception to the resolution over the weekend, but he was unsure how the full Telecom Committee would act. NARUC General Counsel Brad Ramsay said industry representatives could comment Tuesday, before the committee votes. Burke told us he expects opposition from many of those representatives. Several Telecom Committee members told us Monday they were undecided on their position. Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner James Cawley said he was “genuinely not sure” how he would vote. District of Columbia Public Service Commission Chairwoman Betty Ann Kane said she needed to review revisions to the original resolution before she decided. Telecom Committee Vice Chairwoman Catherine Sandoval, a member of the California Public Utilities Commission, declined to comment on her position.