A state court rejected a Texas Public Utility Commission appeal of a trial court’s temporary injunction against the PUC for not fully funding Texas USF (TUSF). The 3rd Texas District Court of Appeals in Austin ruled Wednesday in favor of appellee AMA TechTel, a CLEC, for similar reasons that the court gave in a June 30 decision supporting Texas Telephone Association (TTA) and other RLECs in a similar case (see 2207010045). Earlier in the AMA case, the state appeals court required the PUC to pay the CLEC the full amount of state USF support it was owed since Dec. 1. "While the present case appears before us in a different procedural posture from that in TTA, the application of legal principles to the pleaded and undisputed facts is substantively the same and our analysis and holdings are largely dictated by that opinion,” Justice Thomas Baker wrote Wednesday. As in the June 30 opinion, state law and PUC regulations preclude the state commission from underfunding TUSF, said Baker: The PUC must pay monthly support amounts. Like the RLEC group, AMA sufficiently pleaded a Texas Administrative Procedure Act claim, he said. The court overruled the PUC's contention that AMA failed to exhaust administrative remedies before bringing the APA challenge. AMA sufficiently pleaded a viable regulatory takings claim and the trial court didn't abuse its discretion when it granted temporary injunctive relief to AMA, he said. "It was the PUC Parties’ decision to amend the Solix contract and refuse to fund the TUSF that altered the parties’ relationship,” so “the status quo is the relationship of the parties prior to the PUC Parties’ challenged actions,” wrote Baker. “We reject the premise implicit in the PUC Parties’ contention that a party may act unlawfully and then claim that the impacts of that unlawful behavior cannot be remedied or mitigated pending a trial on the merits.” Justices Melissa Goodwin and Gisela Triana, the judge who wrote the TTA decision, joined Baker in Wednesday’s opinion. Following the earlier court actions, Texas commissioners Aug. 1 raised the revenue-based TUSF surcharge to 24% from 3.3% (see 2207140060). The Texas PUC and AMA didn’t comment.
"It should not take over 10 months to process an uncontested withdrawal that has no customer impact,” T-Mobile's Sprint told the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. The carrier, which filed an application Oct. 6 to discontinue CLEC and interexchange services (docket A-2021-3028993), said Tuesday it could go to court if the PUC doesn’t act by its Aug. 25 meeting. It noted 45 other state commissions already granted withdrawal. The commission didn’t comment Wednesday.
Minnesota’s broadband office opened a challenge process after receiving 135 applications for this year’s border-to-border broadband development grant program. Challenges to the applications are due Sept. 8, the office said Wednesday.
Google Fiber could soon expand fiber-to-the-home to more states, CEO Dinni Jain blogged Wednesday. The company is in talks with city leaders in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nebraska and Nevada, said Jain. Google Fiber said in July it would expand to Mesa, Arizona. “These states will be the main focus for our growth for the next several years, along with continued expansion in our current metro areas,” said the CEO: But the company would “also love to talk to communities that want to build their own fiber networks.”
Brightspeed plans to expand fiber to 40,000 Arkansas customers in 10 counties by the end of 2023, the company said Wednesday. Brightspeed’s network includes ILEC assets that Apollo bought from Lumen. The deal recently got all state regulatory approvals but still needs an FCC greenlight (see 2206290041). Brightspeed earlier detailed fiber plans in Tennessee and several other states (see 2207270011).
West Virginia gave preliminary approval to $6 million in grants for two Altice broadband infrastructure projects through the state’s Line Extension Advancement and Development (LEAD) program, Gov. Jim Justice (R) said Tuesday. Through this third round of LEAD grants, West Virginia expects to build about 768 miles of fiber meant to connect 9,337 homes and businesses, the governor’s office said. The $6 million investment will be matched with about $8.4 million from other funding sources, it said.
The Ohio Office of Workforce Transformation said Tuesday Ashland University, the Tri-County Career Center, the Washington County Joint Vocational School District and Youngstown State University were collectively awarded $592,215 to support broadband or 5G-related credentials through the Individual Microcredential Assistance Program.
Wireline ISPs urged California Senate appropriators to support a bill to revise the California Public Utilities Commission’s review process for California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) grant applications, at a hearing Monday. AB-2749 would streamline the CASF program with federal funding coming, said USTelecom lobbyist Yolanda Benson at the livestreamed Senate Appropriations hearing. The Electronic Frontier Foundation opposes AB-2749 (see 2205240048). The committee agreed to move the bill to its “suspense file," a category reserved for bills deemed to be costly and that will be taken up before a Friday fiscal-committee deadline. The committee also sent to suspense AB-32 to keep temporary telehealth changes made on an emergency basis during the COVID-19 pandemic (see 2105170030); AB-1262, which seeks to restrict use of recordings or transcriptions of what users say to or in the presence of smart speakers; and AB-2750 to require the CPUC to develop a state digital equity plan by Jan. 1, 2024. California appropriators sent many other communications bills to suspense last week (see 2208030056 and 2208010060).
LightBox will develop a Texas broadband map by January, Comptroller Glenn Hegar (R) said Monday. When completed, the comptroller’s Broadband Development Office, community leaders and the public “will be able to extract information from the map to better understand the needs of their regions and to make better decisions establishing programs related to broadband development,” said Hegar. Alabama, Georgia and Montana earlier chose LightBox for state mapping.
The District of Columbia is “exploring all options, including appeal,” of a D.C. Superior Court decision affirming its dismissal of an Amazon antitrust case, a spokesperson for Attorney General Karl Racine (D) said Friday. The court last week rejected D.C.’s motion to reconsider Judge Hiram Puig-Lugo’s verbal dismissal last March of Racine’s complaint (case 2021 CA 001775 B). DOJ supported a second look (see 2204280052). Rejecting reconsideration, Puig-Lugo disagreed that the court failed to accept as true detailed factual allegations of anti-competitive effects. “The District simply repeated vague conclusion after vague conclusion devoid of facts to support the vague conclusions it repeatedly stated.” D.C. may not file an amended complaint, he said. The judge “got this wrong,” said the Racine spokesperson. Amazon didn't comment.