Prison calls will be free in Minnesota. Gov. Tim Walz (D) made his state the fourth to do so when he signed a budget bill (SF-2909) Friday. Connecticut, California and Colorado previously made calls free. The budget included $3.1 million annually to provide voice services for incarcerated people. “Eliminating these fees is the right thing to do,” said sponsor Sen. Clare Oumou Verbeten (D) in a Worth Rises news release. “Phone calls keep families connected.” Worth Rises expects more states to follow, said Executive Director Bianca Tylek.

Montana banned TikTok for everyone in the state. Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte said Wednesday he signed a bill to ban the social media platform from operating in the state and ban mobile app stores from allowing TikTok downloads. Also, Gianforte directed the Montana chief information officer and agency directors to prohibit any social media app tied to a foreign adversary on state equipment. Some Republican U.S. senators supported the state ban last month after it passed the legislature, despite questions about how it would be enforced (see 2304210024). “Montana takes the most decisive action of any state to protect … private data and sensitive personal information from being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party,” said Gianforte. A TikTok spokesperson said the law violates users’ First Amendment rights. “We want to reassure Montanans that they can continue using TikTok to express themselves, earn a living, and find community as we continue working to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana. ... The Chinese Communist Party has neither direct nor indirect control of ByteDance or TikTok.” NetChoice General Counsel Carl Szabo said, “Montana ignores the U.S. Constitution, due process and free speech by denying access to a website and apps their citizens want to use.” The American Civil Liberties Union also condemned the ban. Gianforte and the legislature "trampled on the free speech of hundreds of thousands of Montanans ... in the name of anti-Chinese sentiment,” said Keegan Medrano, ACLU-Montana policy director. “We will never trade our First Amendment rights for cheap political points.”

The Louisiana Senate voted 37-0 for a social media bill to require companies to verify the age of users, and collect parental approval for minors, before allowing users to get accounts. SB-162 would also restrict minors from accessing social media between 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. The bill will go to the House. Also, the state House’s Governmental Affairs Committee voted 9-0 for HB-653 to update Granting Unserved Municipalities Broadband Opportunities (GUMBO) grant rules. It next needs approval by the full House.

The Connecticut House passed a bill meant to prevent services from automatically renewing without notification. The House voted 148-3 Wednesday for HB-5314, which would require consumer notices and various ways to opt out of automatic renewal. CTIA in a February letter opposed applying the bill to wireless companies.

California appropriators advanced several telecom and internet bills at livestreamed meetings Thursday. The Assembly Appropriations Committee voted unanimously for AB-1065, which would explicitly authorize wireless broadband providers to get support from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) broadband infrastructure grant and federal funding accounts. But it held back AB-1461, which would have permanently required the California Public Utilities Commission to allocate $1 billion each to urban and rural counties from the CASF federal funding account. Current law requires that split only until June 30. With Republicans voting no, the committee passed AB-41, which aims to tighten digital equity requirements in the state’s video franchise law (see 2304200044). Republicans didn’t vote at all on two other approved bills: AB-296 on 911 public education and AB-414 to establish a digital equity bill of rights for Californians. The committee decided not to advance AB-276, which would have prohibited anyone under 21 from using a mobile device while driving, even hands free. It also held back AB-1276, which would have required a University of California at Davis Health study on 911 call and dispatch data. Meanwhile, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted 7-0 for SB-60 to require social media platforms to remove posts on illegal drug sales and SB-74 to prohibit high-risk social media apps that are at least partly owned by an entity or "country of concern." The panel also unanimously supported SB-318 to require the California Department of Social Services to develop and run a grant program for 211 support services, which some counties still lack. The committee voted 5-2 for SB-362, which would transfer a data broker registry to the California Privacy Protection Agency from the state justice department and create a global deletion system. The Senate panel held back SB-754, which would have banned the California Public Utilities Commission from incorporating broadband revenue in calculations for rate regulating small telcos. SB-860, which sought to increase broadband adoption by requiring more state outreach on available subsidies, also failed to advance. All the approved bills may go to the floor.

West Virginia’s wireless E-911 surcharge will increase to $3.64 from $3.51 monthly per subscriber, the Public Service Commission said Tuesday. The increase takes effect July 1, the PSC ordered.

District of Columbia Council members voted 12-0 to confirm Heather McGaffin as the new director of the Office of Unified Communications. Tuesday’s vote means resolution 25-0115 will be deemed approved June 1 unless another resolution is introduced. The D.C. Council Judiciary and Public Safety Committee supported confirming the current OUC deputy director, at a meeting last week, while saying they want improvements at the 911 center, where recent audits found problems with incorrect addresses, miscommunication and dispatching delays (see 2305090073).

A California bill aimed at streamlining broadband permitting at the local level advanced to the Assembly floor Wednesday. The Assembly Appropriations Committee voted unanimously at a livestreamed meeting for AB-965, which would allow simultaneous processing of multiple broadband permit applications for similar project sites under a single permit, and require local governments to decide applications within a “presumptively reasonable time." Assemblymember Juan Carillo (D), the bill’s sponsor, said localities “will still maintain full control.” The bill would force localities to make a decision, said Dan Schweizer, Crown Castle director-external affairs. "Many local jurisdictions continue to process broadband permits one at a time, limit permit batching or have the permits go through several different departments at various times, which unnecessarily delays an already bureaucratic process." The bill means Californians will get coverage in “months instead of years,” he said. Other supporters include CTIA, USTelecom, Frontier Communications, Consolidated Communications and the California Broadband and Video Association. California city and county groups oppose the bill, which they say will make it more profitable to build in dense markets but won’t spur deployment in unserved areas, noted a committee analysis released Monday.

AT&T isn’t seeking total relief from California carrier of last resort (COLR) obligations “at this time,” the carrier said in an amended application Wednesday at the California Public Utilities Commission. “For the few customers who currently lack an alternative to AT&T California’s basic voice service," it "would continue offering voice service on the same terms as before until an alternative becomes available.” COLR requirements are outdated, AT&T said in docket A.23-03-003. “Like Blockbuster rentals and Kodak film, [plain old telephone service] has fallen from technological primacy to effective obsolescence in the course of a generation.” A CPUC administrative law judge required AT&T to amend its April application due to “substantial incompleteness,” including failing to specify where it wanted relief (see 2305030051).

Washington state awarded $121 million for high-speed internet, the broadband office said Tuesday. It said 19 projects got cash through the federal Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund. Demand exceeded available funding, said the office: It received 50 applications seeking more than $316 million. “These grants will provide initial service availability to 14,794 end users located across the state, in communities as diverse as the San Juan Islands, Kittitas County and the Spokane reservation,” said Broadband Office Director Mark Vasconi.