Jimm Phillips

Additional cities have “already committed” to become interveners in a lawsuit filed Monday against the FCC’s new wireless tower siting review rules, said Best Best municipal telecom and wireless lawyer Gerry Lederer in an interview Wednesday. The suit, filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by Los Angeles and additional cities in California, Texas and Washington (see 1503100034), alleges that the rules, contained in the FCC October wireless facilities deployment order, are unconstitutional and misinterpret the 2012 Spectrum Act. Montgomery County, Maryland, filed an identical suit in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Friday. Best Best lawyer Joseph Van Eaton filed both suits, while Lederer is in charge of recruiting additional cities to join as interveners.

Comcast and other telcos associated with the Comcast/Time Warner Cable deal have objected jointly to many of the 25 conditions included in the California Public Utilities Commission’s proposed decision (see 1502170059) on the deal, saying the commission’s review exceeded its jurisdictional authority and relies on a “flawed” analysis of the state’s telecom market post-deal. Comcast and associated telcos said they plan to work with the CPUC through the ex parte meeting process “toward a set of conditions that address concerns identified by the Proposed Decision -- including conditions that Comcast would agree to voluntarily.” Public interest groups that have been opposed to Comcast/TWC also registered objections to the CPUC’s proposed decision, with many saying the commission should outright reject the deal in part because it will be difficult to enforce the proposed conditions. Dish Network also urged the CPUC to reject the deal. The telcos and public interest groups made similar arguments during an all-party meeting with the CPUC Feb. 25 (see 1502260060).

Los Angeles was among four California cities that joined with municipalities in Texas and Washington Monday in the second lawsuit against the FCC's October wireless facilities deployment order. They told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that the order’s wireless tower siting rules are unconstitutional and misinterpret the 2012 Spectrum Act. The order is “arbitrary and capricious and an abuse of discretion; and otherwise contrary to law,” the cities said in their joint petition for review. The other petitioning cities are: Bellevue, Washington; Ontario, Redwood City and San Jose, California; McAllen, Texas; and the Texas Coalition of Cities for Utility Issues. Montgomery County, Maryland, made the same arguments in a petition for review it filed in Richmond Friday with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The lawsuits respectively asked the D.C. Circuit and 4th Circuit to vacate the new tower siting rules and “grant such other relief as the Court may deem appropriate.” The FCC didn’t comment. Montgomery County and the cities had jointly objected to the wireless tower siting rules in a Feb. 3 FCC filing. The localities had asked the FCC to “significantly revise” the siting rules because the current set of rules would “lead to a wide range of serious problems in local communities that it is impossible to believe Congress could have intended." The FCC voted unanimously for the rules, as part of the commission’s implementation of the 2012 Spectrum Act. They were meant to speed up wireless tower siting decisions. The rules reduced the shot clock for siting approval from 90 days to 60 days in exchange for a promise from CTIA and PCIA to work with local jurisdictions on streamlining, though many localities had urged prior to the commission vote against shortening the shot clock (see 1410170048). The two groups and local government groups jointly released a model ordinance and siting application review checklist Thursday (see 1503050056). PCIA President Jonathan Adelstein responded to the Montgomery County lawsuit, saying in a statement Monday that “we hope that this lawsuit will not detract from that goal, since PCIA supports the FCC’s rationale behind its Infrastructure Order and its guidelines for implementation.” PCIA is “working closely with cities, counties, and municipalities to make the implementation of the FCC’s new wireless facility siting regulations smooth and efficient,” Adelstein said.

The FirstNet board voted unanimously Monday to seek comment on proposed new interpretations of elements of its role under the 2012 Spectrum Act related to states that opt out of FirstNet deployment and management of a state’s radio access network (RAN) in favor of a state-run RAN. FirstNet believes that Congress intended to give states the option to customize their RANs to local needs but didn’t intend exercise of that option to “also deny substantial funding to many other states,” FirstNet Chairwoman Sue Swenson said during the meeting.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said he wants to wait until the Senate Intelligence Committee’s much-anticipated redraft of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) “winds its way” through committee markup before taking further action within Senate Homeland Security on cybersecurity information sharing legislation. Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Vice Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., have been circulating a draft of the bill that includes more privacy protections than the bill's 2014 version, but most major privacy advocates already have opposed it publicly. The 2014 CISA cleared Senate Intelligence but never got a full Senate vote. Burr and Feinstein expect to introduce the bill and hold a closed-session markup as soon as Tuesday and definitely before the end of the month, an industry lobbyist told us. Johnson said during a USTelecom event Friday that he wants to “see the reaction” to the reintroduced CISA post-markup. Once “more people evaluate it,” Senate Homeland Security “will hop into the fray” and hold additional hearings, Johnson said.

New model documents for government review of wireless tower siting applications will help municipalities and local governments develop guidelines and streamline the deployment process to satisfy the 2012 Spectrum Act, said CTIA, PCIA and local government groups Thursday. The groups, which also included the National Association of Counties (NACo), NATOA and the National League of Cities (NLC), said they collaborated on a model ordinance and siting application review checklist to give local governments information they can use to develop documents. The FCC October wireless facilities deployment order reduced the period of review before a collocation application can be deemed granted in exchange for a promise from CTIA and PCIA that they would work with local government groups to streamline the approval process (see 1410170048).

The Vermont Public Service Board investigation of FairPoint Communications’ service quality is still in the fact-gathering stage and is unlikely to be affected by the recent end of a strike of more than 1,700 of the telco’s workers in northern New England, state officials said in interviews. The more than 1,700 FairPoint workers in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont who had been on strike since October returned to work Feb. 25 after the telco reached an agreement with local chapters of the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (see 1502190035). The PSB began its investigation in December because of elevated numbers of consumer complaints, with the number of complaints spiking after the strike began. The investigation began after a Nov. 28 outage that led to multiple failures to connect 911 calls to state public safety answering points (see 1412050055).

Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s legislative proposal to substantially cut the state’s communications services taxes appeared to be well on the road to passage when the Florida Legislature convened Tuesday, with state observers telling us the proposal hasn’t encountered any opposition. The Republican governor proposed the tax cut, which would reduce revenue by $470 million, in late January (see 1501200064). Scott again pushed for the tax cut Tuesday during his state of the state address, saying the cut would save every Florida family around $43 per year if they spent a minimum of $100 per month on wireless and TV services. The tax cut is one of several communications and Internet-related bills the Florida Legislature will consider during this year’s session, which is to run through May 1.

Thursday's party-line FCC vote to grant petitions for pre-emption of restrictive municipal broadband laws in North Carolina and Tennessee is unlikely to soon spur a legislative backlash, industry observers said in interviews. A pair of Tennessee lawmakers who favored a pre-emption petition from the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga said that they believe the commission’s vote could be helpful in their bid to modify their state's municipal broadband restrictions. The other pre-emption petition the FCC granted came from Wilson, North Carolina (see 1502260030).

The Kentucky House passed HB-152 71-25 Tuesday to significantly reduce the Public Service Commission’s oversight of wireline service and completely end its jurisdiction over consumer wireless complaints and consumer broadband complaints. AT&T, Cincinnati Bell and Windstream no longer would be required to provide basic wireline phone service in most cities and major suburbs, including state capitol Frankfort and Lexington. The telcos instead could opt to provide basic service in those areas solely through wireless or VoIP, said the bill's text. Customers in rural areas can seek to retain wireline service, the bill said. HB-152, which requires state Senate approval via SB-3, would retain PSC jurisdiction over wholesale issues, carrier-to-carrier issues and anti-competitive telecom practices. State Rep. Rick Rand, a Democrat who sponsored HB-152, said in a speech prior to the vote that AT&T and other telcos are “asking us to allow them to move from old technology to new technology.” Rep. Chris Harris, a Democrat who voted against the bill, said during debate on the bill that he’s worried “that what we're doing here is leaving behind that section of the state … that our regulations were meant to protect -- poor, rural families who do not have lobbyists here to represent their interests.” Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, endorsed HB-152 in a statement as “an important piece of legislation that strikes a right balance between providing consumer protection and creating economic development opportunities that result from robust broadband accessibility in communities all across the commonwealth.”