The Vermont Department of Public Service (DPS) asked the FCC Wednesday to waive the Aug. 10, 2013, deadline that the Wireline Bureau had imposed for the department to file a written description of the process the state’s Department for Children and Families (DCF) would use to provide eligible telecommunications carriers electronic notice that a potential Lifeline subscriber was accepted or rejected due to duplicative support within five days of an application’s receipt (http://bit.ly/1sCV9Si). The Wireline Bureau had imposed the deadline in a February 2013 order conditionally granting the Department of Public Service’s certification to drop out of the National Lifeline Accountability Database (http://bit.ly/1ka7fNL). DCF electronically notifies ETCs if a subscriber has been accepted or rejected within five days of receiving the application, meeting the requirement by Aug. 1, 2013, DPS said.

National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) President Colette Honorable nominated Idaho Public Service Commission President Paul Kjellander and West Virginia Public Service Commissioner Ryan Palmer Tuesday to the Federal-State Joint Conference on Advanced Telecommunications Services. NARUC nominates seven of the FCC conference’s members (http://bit.ly/U4zbvM).

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s E-rate draft order to use $2 billion in unused funds for Wi-Fi internal connections is “greatly needed,” but the commission’s “first priority should be focused on making sure each and every school building and public library is connected to the Internet with fiber or the fastest broadband connection available,” said the Nebraska Public Service Commission in a letter filed Tuesday as an ex parte communication (http://bit.ly/1oyJLnT) in docket 13-184. The PSC is concerned about Wheeler’s proposal to allocate funds to schools on a per-student basis instead of based on the cost of a project. Assumptions made in what Wheeler circulated in an order to shift funds from voice and other services towards Wi-Fi “significantly overestimates the savings,” commented the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association (http://bit.ly/1oyLwkZ). The phase-out “would equal only about $675 million; nowhere near the additional $3 billion needed to implement the Commission’s $5 billion plan,” the association said. The FCC considers an E-rate order Friday, and it may be a party-line vote (CD July 9 p1) (See separate report above.)

The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) criticized two bills under consideration in the New Jersey legislature that seek to promote domestic business, saying Tuesday that the bill would “cause more harm than good for U.S. businesses” (http://bit.ly/TTsaNP). Both bills, Senate Bill 1811 (http://bit.ly/1r9aAl2) and Assembly Bill 3059 (http://bit.ly/1mK2b8t), would require goods used in public contracts to be manufactured in the U.S. and businesses that receive public contracts or development assistance to disclose outsourcing information. The bills “could unintentionally isolate New Jersey from U.S.-based businesses that are also competing in the global marketplace, resulting in increased costs for taxpayers in the state,” ITI said in a blog post. The New Jersey legislature is on recess for the summer, but ITI said it will continue to monitor both bills during the fall legislative session.

Alaska-based General Communication Inc. believes “the need to procure transport from a remote community to Anchorage was the highest priority for E-rate support,” GCI executives told wireline aides to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioners Mike O'Rielly, Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel July 2. Priority One telecom services should “take precedence” if there’s a funding dilemma between Priority One and new support for Wi-Fi-based internal connections, said the cable operator in an ex parte filing posted Tuesday to docket 13-184. “Otherwise, schools and libraries could be left with high-capacity internal connections, but without the resources to reach from the community back to an Internet aggregation point.” There might not be a budget shortfall for Priority One, but uncertainty particularly in three to five years “could have an immediate impact, as schools and libraries generally enter into three-year term contracts in order to obtain the most advantageous pricing,” GCI said. It said continuing to give Priority One precedence “preserves contracting certainty for the recurring telecommunications services support” (http://bit.ly/1vXO2UC). Splits are emerging at the commission on E-rate, with a Friday vote on an order nearing. (See separate reports above in this issue.)

The Overland Park, Kansas, City Council voted Monday to approve two agreements to allow Google to install fiber huts and Wi-Fi infrastructure in the city for its Google Fiber network (http://bit.ly/1n4Vvfm). Members of the council had been concerned about the deal, prompting Google to temporarily halt its plans to include Overland Park in its network (CD May 1 p5). Google said in a statement it will “spend the next few months making sure it’s possible to build our network here, but this vote was a great step forward.” Google separately said residents in four cities in Johnson County, Kansas, can begin signing up for the Google Fiber service. Residents in those cities -- Mission Woods, Roeland Park, Westwood and Westwood Hills -- have until Sept. 12 to sign up for the service. Residents in some Kansas City “fiberhoods” have an additional chance to sign up for Google Fiber. Those neighborhoods must sign up by Aug. 7, Google said. Overland Park is the corporate home of wireless carrier Sprint.

The Nebraska Public Service Commission said it opened up numbers from the 531 area code for carriers to assign to their customers, in response to a notification from the North America Numbering Plan Administrator that the 402 area code had only 10 exchange codes remaining available. The 531 area code will serve the same geographic area as 402, which covers eastern and some northern portions of Nebraska, including Omaha and Lincoln, said the PSC in a news release Thursday night. The commission said it had ordered in 2009 that the 531 area code would not be open as an overlay for use until only 10 exchange codes remained available in 402. Anyone making local calls in the 402 and 531 area codes will continue to use 10-digit dialing, the commission said (http://1.usa.gov/VTotd2).

Eight libraries, including those in Hartford, Memphis, New York and Seattle, protested FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposed E-rate changes, which FCC officials said would fund libraries based on their square footage, in filings posted in docket 13-184 Wednesday and Thursday. CenturyLink protested another element of the plan to eliminate E-rate funding for voice services, arguing funding of the services is required by the Telecom Act. Under Wheeler’s draft, libraries would receive $1-per-square foot, said Reed Hundt, who represents the Urban Libraries Council, though FCC Managing Director Jon Wilkins said during a media call Tuesday (CD July 2 p2) the figure is still being negotiated. Seattle public libraries total 633,000 square feet, and the cost of delivering Wi-Fi over five years is $4 to $5 per square foot, said Seattle Public Library Director-Information Technology Jim Loter in a letter (http://bit.ly/1vBUh09). Using square footage “is unfair to urban libraries, and to our patrons who are disproportionately low-income, unemployed or underemployed. ... Wi-Fi is essential to our urban patrons,” the filing said. “If square footage is used as the basis to allocate E-rate funding for Wi-Fi, we fear urban libraries will not be adequately funded,” the New York Public Library said in a letter (http://bit.ly/1zaJdMc). While supportive of E-rate modernization, “it would be a mistake to discontinue support for voice services -- which actually are required by statute,” CenturyLink officials told aides to commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly on June 30, said an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1xmZEmG). Any reduction in voice support should be phased in over time and must apply equally to all types of voice services, including all technologies and bundled services, the telco said. Universal service support extends to the services of “telecommunications carriers” that “are supported by Federal universal service support mechanisms, the company said. “Standalone voice is among them, and in the USF/[Intercarrier Compensation] ICC Transformation Order, the Commission explained that voice, not broadband, is the USF-supported service, and it expressly required eligible telecommunications carriers to offer standalone voice service.” Wheeler’s plan calls for funding Wi-Fi connections within schools partly through eliminating funding for some services including voice, FCC officials said during the media call on the plan.

The California Public Utilities Commission supports the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission’s request (http://bit.ly/1lA4BQX) for clarification on whether it may adjudicate intercarrier compensation disputes when they arise between CLECs outside of Telecom Act sections 251 and 252, the CPUC said in a filing (http://bit.ly/Veam14) posted in docket 14-70 on Tuesday. The PUCs are seeking clarification in cases that involve the exchange of local dial-up ISP-bound traffic, the filing said. The Pennsylvania PUC petition is an “improper attempt to re-litigate issues that were already decided by a federal district court and currently are pending on appeal before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals,” AT&T said in a reply (http://bit.ly/1rZ0zqF). The Pennsylvania PUC petition challenges a recent decision by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which enjoined the enforcement of two Pennsylvania PUC orders on Dec. 5, 2012, and Aug. 15, 2013. The orders had required two AT&T CLEC affiliates to pay another CLEC, Core Communications, for terminating phone calls originated when an AT&T customer dialed the local number of one of Core’s ISP customers, AT&T said.

Public safety answering points (PSAPs) and Washington state officials were not notified by CenturyLink or its contractor, Intrado, about the April 10 outage of 911 calls, said the Washington State E9-1-l Coordinator’s Office in a comment (http://bit.ly/1sYbuoN) posted in FCC docket 14-72 on Tuesday. About 770 911 calls were delivered to the PSAPs, while about 4,500 911 calls failed during the outage, the filing said. “Due to the sudden increase in the volume of trouble calls, the nation-wide CenturyLink 9-1-1 Repair Center quickly became overloaded. Consequently, most of the calls to the Repair Center went unanswered, or were put on hold for extended periods -- some of those hold-times measured in hours.” Neither CenturyLink nor Intrado provided any instructions to PSAPs on how to mitigate the impact. “The PSAPs were left on their own to try to figure out how to provide some level of service to the public,” the filing said. The comments were similar to those filed by the King County’s E-911 Program Office in (http://bit.ly/1nPAgBZ) in June. The FCC Public Safety Bureau began an investigation into the outage May 19 (CD May 20 p18). The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission has also opened a state investigation. “Intrado is also fully committed to the Commission’s goal of reliable and resilient emergency communications networks,” the company said in a filing Tuesday (http://bit.ly/TDEhys). “The root cause of the technical failure has been corrected; enhanced alarming with routine manual checks have been implemented; training and procedures have been enhanced to achieve more effective monitoring and problem detection.” A feature of the Intrado architecture’s legacy redundancy and compatibility, involving the PSAP trunk manager (PTM) functionality, was the root cause of the outage, said that company. “When developing any new technology, every single possible contingency cannot be identified or tested in advance of deployment. And, to try to do so before deploying new technology would frustrate the Commission’s goals and the purpose of 911 innovation.” Intrado said “issues will occur and not all contingencies can be known or addressed in advance.” CenturyLink and Intrado were not immediately available for further comment.