A bill to implement national 988 cleared the Washington state Senate. Senators voted 27-22 Monday for HB-1477 with a floor amendment to refine various groups’ roles. The House earlier passed the bill and must clear Senate changes by end of session Sunday (see 2103260034). The FCC Wireless Bureau recommends creating an advisory committee to make recommendations about including an automatic dispatchable location with national 988 calls (see 2104200002).

NARUC asked Congress to protect the Lifeline program requirement that a provider must become an eligible telecom carrier (see 2012070060). NARUC's letter released Tuesday came after 46 organizations asked lawmakers to remove that requirement. “Investigations by state regulators have uncovered instances where service providers have applied for millions of dollars in federal subsidies for services never rendered,” said NARUC President Paul Kjellander: “The value of state oversight cannot be overlooked and any attempt to undermine that process will quite likely harm members of our most vulnerable communities.” Ninety-eight commissioners from 36 states and two territories endorsed the letter. "Neither Congress nor the FCC is going to hand out billions and eschew any carrier accountability," the letter said: "By targeting the ETC designation process, the carriers hope to eliminate the current default State role."

"No one cares more about your data than you do,” said Florida Rep. Fiona McFarland (R) Tuesday, defending a private right of action in her privacy bill on the House floor. After the livestreamed debate, the House moved HB-969 to a third and final reading. Rep. Ben Diamond (D) asked McFarland to address concerns this right could lead to a deluge of lawsuits. Enforcement is “the trickiest part of this bill,” McFarland said. Senators removed a private right from their privacy bill (SB-1734). Based on a House committee hearing last week, "it would be fair to conclude … that if the private right of action is not removed or significantly dialed back, HB 969 will not pass the House,” Shook Hardy privacy attorney Alfred Saikali blogged Thursday. Legislators must resolve disagreement by April 30, the session's last day. The House temporarily postponed considering HB-7013 to make it unlawful for social media sites to de-platform political candidates, while requiring sites be transparent about policing users (see 2104190030).

Crown Castle asked a federal court for summary judgment against a New York town that the wireless infrastructure provider says delayed its distributed antenna system (DAS) applications for four years. Hempstead’s "unreasonable fees, delays, and effective denial violate" Sections 253 and 332(c)(7)(B), Crown Castle said in a supporting memo (in Pacer, case 2:17-cv-03148) filed Friday at the U.S. District Court for Eastern New York. Crown Castle said the town’s third-party consultant frustrated review of 48 applications submitted in January 2017 “with his imposition of improper demands on Crown Castle for (i) unreasonable facility design changes based upon his arbitrary and unsupported findings of significant visual impact; and (ii) additional radio frequency data that is not required by the Town’s Code or federal law, to demonstrate the need for the DAS nodes.” Hempstead opposed (in Pacer) summary judgment in another filing posted Friday. Hempstead's requests to Crown Castle were consistent with the Telecom Act, "which preserves a municipality's authority to consider and evaluate the placement, construction and appearance of a wireless facility when reviewing an applicant's proposal.” Crown Castle "failed to consider, evaluate and/or even respond to the Town's suggested less visually intrusive alternatives,” it said.

The Washington state legislature passed a bill on strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs). The Senate voted 48-0 Wednesday and concurred with House amendments to the bill (SB-5009), which responds to the Washington Supreme Court throwing out a previous anti-SLAPP law.

Arkansas reduced inmate calling service (ICS) rates. The Senate received notification Wednesday that Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) signed SB-550. The law caps the per minute rate for intrastate ICS calls at the higher of 30 cents or the FCC-set interstate rate cap as of Jan. 1, 2021. The state law bans ancillary service charges not authorized by the FCC. California also is considering ICS rate relief (see 2104050032).

Maryland got an extension until April 30 to respond to business and tech industry groups’ lawsuit against the state’s digital ad tax (see 2102180053). In a Wednesday order, U.S. District Judge Deborah Chasanow in Greenbelt, Maryland, granted (in Pacer) state Comptroller Peter Franchot’s motion seeking more time due to the General Assembly's enacting a bill (SB-787) Monday delaying the disputed tax, exempting news media and banning tech companies from passing costs from the tax to small businesses. Plaintiffs told Franchot (D) they will file an amended complaint to account for SB-787, the comptroller said (in Pacer). Chasanow directed parties to file a joint status report with a proposed schedule by April 30.

Charter failed to adequately prepare for a 2017 workers’ strike in New York, said a state audit released Thursday. The New York Public Service Commission adopted as part of its unanimous consent agenda an order to release the Jan. 12, 2020, redacted audit report and require Charter to file a plan to implement recommendations within 30 days. “It is not unreasonable to conclude a work stoppage was foreseeable, definable, measurable and, with sufficient preparation, manageable,” it said. Charter knew about an existing labor agreement when it proposed buying Time Warner Cable in 2015, which got New York PSC OK in 2016, the report said. “Charter can realize improvement in both its specific response to any future work stoppage as well as its response to any number of material threats it may encounter in the future as a consequence of technological obsolescence, geopolitical events and malicious behavior. However, to do so may require organizational and operational changes by Charter to ensure an ever-growing number of ‘enterprise-level’ threats can be efficiently and effectively addressed.” The 2017 labor dispute’s “relevance to Charter’s current emergency preparedness has decreased with the passage of time, as the Company has experienced and learned from numerous intervening events since" then, Charter said in a Dec. 22 response also released Thursday. Vandalism caused many of the company’s 2017 outages, and in following years, "there have been very few wide-scale service disruptions for Charter’s customers,” it said. “Since 2016, including throughout the labor dispute, Charter has taken steps to harden its network and establish outage protocols to improve communication and coordination during major events, such as extreme weather, to restore service as quickly as possible.” The company already implemented “numerous steps recommended by the Final Report,” it said. Charter urged the PSC not to accept everything in the report. “In many places, the Final Report not only lacks support for its claims, it reflects little more than the auditor’s subjective opinions about best practices based on its limited experience with highly regulated [ILECs] without reference to any legal authority or industry standards, and misapprehends important evidence, including discussions with knowledgeable Charter personnel, that did not match the auditor’s preconceived expectations or conclusions.” The company didn’t comment Thursday.

The main question consumers asked the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable after the COVID-19 pandemic hit was how long they would be spared from service cutoffs based on agreements between the FCC and providers, Commissioner Karen Charles Peterson said during an FCBA webinar Tuesday. Others asked how they could get better and cheaper broadband, she said. “If the pandemic taught us anything, or showed us anything, it was that broadband was necessary and folks needed to have broadband in order to work, learn and socialize from home,” she said. Most think of Massachusetts as an urban state, but the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI) targeted many areas, Peterson said. Local areas needed to decide on their own how they would get connected. “That’s the story of the MBI,” she said: “It’s 50 little stories of how we sort of put everything together and made it work.” GeoLinks advocates a “hybrid” approach to getting people online, said General Counsel Melissa Slawson. Fiber, fixed wireless and mobile all work best in different areas, she said. GeoLinks likes mountains and hills for fixed wireless “because we can use them to our benefit to beam down to whoever the end user is,” she said: “We do have trouble sometimes in high foliage areas or areas where there’s a lot of inclement weather. … You just have to engineer around it.” Permitting remains a challenge for GeoLinks, she said. The company had to reroute an entire project around a mountain because of federal concerns, which meant a two-year delay in reaching a community and its school, Slawson said. T-Mobile considers 5G “very promising” for business customers, with opportunities in public safety, education, healthcare and agriculture, said Michele Thomas, vice president-government affairs. Wireless competition is “fierce,” and policymakers need to recognize the need for rapid deployment, she said. Regulators should identify “appropriate areas for regulation” and make sure “government funding is being done both efficiently and effectively,” she said. Continue “efforts to limit unreasonable restrictions on wireless deployment -- they’re still out there,” Thomas said.

The California Senate Communications Committee cleared a broadband bill to set a goal of upgrading to at least 100 Mbps downstream as part of a California Advanced Services Fund revamp. The panel voted 11-1 Monday to forward SB-4 to the Judiciary Committee. “It is time to close the digital divide by providing the funding necessary to deploy broadband infrastructure in communities that need it the most and by empowering and enabling local governments and nonprofits to apply for these funds as well,” author Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D) said Monday. Bill sponsors joined FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel last month in backing more ambitious broadband speed standards (see 2103300070). Also at Monday’s hearing, the committee voted 14-0 to clear a bill (SB-28) to expand the California Public Utilities Commission's authority to regulate cable video franchises. It goes next to the Governmental Organization Committee. And the panel voted 14-0 to send to the Human Services Committee a measure (SB-546) to extend a California LifeLine pilot program for foster youth.