The California Public Utilities Commission would provide about $31.9 million in California High Cost Fund-A support next year to 10 small ILECs under a draft resolution (T-17806) released Tuesday. The CPUC may consider the item at its Jan. 11 meeting. The small ILECs requested about $32.6 million but CPUC staff recommended less after considering final net interstate expense adjustment data from the National Exchange Carrier Association, a corrected calculation of an intercarrier compensation reduction and applying the means test, the draft said.

The Nebraska Public Service Commission on Wednesday scheduled hearings in two 911 outage investigations. A hearing on Windstream’s outage (docket 911-076) will occur Dec. 20 at 9 a.m. CST; another on Lumen’s outage (docket 911-075) will happen Jan. 4 at 9:30 a.m. CST, the PSC said. The hearings will let Nebraska PSC commissioners “ask questions and get answers directly from the carriers involved in these outages,” said Chair Dan Watermeier (R). Decisions will be made later, he said. The commission opened the probes in September in response to the carriers’ back-to-back 911 outages (see 2309120046).

The Colorado Public Utilities Commission will seek clarity on its definition of “basic emergency service (BES) outage,” said a notice of proposed rulemaking Tuesday (docket 23R-0577T). The proceeding follows a more extensive 911 rulemaking in docket 22R-0122T, in which the PUC adopted rules for BES outages, the commission said. Since then, staff noticed that the state’s only BES provider, Lumen’s CenturyLink, construes what qualifies as a BES outage “differently than intended,” it said. “On numerous occasions, CenturyLink has argued in outage investigation responses that outages in facilities that service customers other than Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) are originating service provider (OSP) outages, not BES outages, even if those outages also impact a PSAP and prevent the PSAP from being able to receive calls. CenturyLink has also argued … that if the company reroutes 9-1-1 calls to another, alternate PSAP, then no outage has occurred, since the calls are still being answered, even if they are not being answered by the PSAP originally intended to receive the call.” The disagreement affects other rules including on outage reporting and billing credits, the PUC said. The commission hopes that the fresh rulemaking will “remove any potential ambiguity contained in the relevant rules prior to taking any enforcement action,” it said. Comments are due Jan. 10, with replies due Jan. 19. Also, the PUC plans a virtual hearing Jan. 29 at 11:30 a.m. MST.

The Wisconsin Public Service Commission ordered staff to submit volume one of its initial proposal for the broadband, equity, access and deployment (BEAD) at NTIA. It’s reasonable for the plan to say that any enhanced alternative connect America cost model location built with DSL or hybrid fiber and copper networks be eligible for BEAD funding, said the PSC order released Tuesday in docket 5-BP-2023. Also, the plan should “establish a limited and nuanced challenge framework for licensed fixed wireless locations that takes into account the age of the equipment, the band of the spectrum, and the power wattage of the signal,” the order said. Nonprofits may be challengers, it said. Some had raised concerns that all locations receiving broadband through fixed wireless would be considered underserved under the Vol. 1 draft, the PSC said.

The West Virginia Public Service Commission updated TRS escrow account procedures through a Monday order in docket GO 187.64. The PSC said procedures established in 1992 “have been modified over time and should be memorialized.”

Massachusetts awarded $20 million in digital equity grants Tuesday. The money will fund digital navigators, device refurbishment and distribution, neighborhood broadband connectivity, digital education for workforce development, telehealth resource navigation and free Wi-Fi in affordable housing and public housing developments, the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI) said. Grants were given to Metropolitan Area Planning Council ($5.6 million), Metro North Workforce Investment Board ($4.1 million), University of Massachusetts Lowell ($4 million), Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers ($3.75 million) and AgeSpan ($3 million), it added. Also Tuesday, the Vermont Community Broadband Board sought comments on the state’s digital equity plan by Dec. 31. The board especially wants input from “people from communities that have traditionally been marginalized,” Digital Equity Officer Britaney Watson said Tuesday. The board scheduled a virtual listening session Dec. 14 at 6:30 p.m.

The California Public Utilities Commission reaffirms that small local exchange carriers file general rate cases (GRC) by application, said a 5-0 decision released Tuesday in docket R.11-11-007. Filing them by advice letter isn’t permitted, it said. The CPUC proposed the decision Oct. 26, citing transparency for maintaining the existing process (see 2310260071).

“Regulations to check monopoly power that no longer exists make no sense,” the Ohio Telecom Association (OTA) told the state regulator Friday. The Ohio Public Utilities Commission received comments on a five-year review of retail telecom service rules (see 2311010060). "Regulations authorizing the review of prices and restrictions on withdrawal of services were a response to the ability of monopolies to extract excess profits or otherwise injure consumers through unfair practices,” OTA commented in docket 23-817-TP-ORD. “The monopoly provision of retail communications services, however, is a relic." In addition, some PUCO rules exceed the regulator's legal authority, the association said. One is the PUCO's asserted authority to review certain charges and fees related to special construction where a phone company must build facilities in certain circumstances to fulfill a customer's request for service, it said. “The rules that assert rate review authority over excess construction charges, late payment charges, or installation fees, and reconnection fees lack an express statutory basis.”

A federal grand jury indicted Sam Randazzo, former Ohio Public Utilities Commission chairman, for alleged crimes related to bribery and embezzlement. Randazzo surrendered Monday morning at the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati, said the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio. Unsealed Monday, the 11-count indictment "outlines an alleged scheme in which a public regulatory official ignored the Ohio consumers he was responsible for protecting, instead taking a bribe from an energy company seeking favors," said William Rivers, FBI Cincinnati special agent in charge. An appointee of Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R), Randazzo chaired the Ohio PUC from April 2019 to November 2020, when he resigned following an FBI raid of his home (see 2011200039). Randazzo allegedly received more than $4.3 million from an energy company and its affiliates to provide favorable actions. Indicting the former chair “is an important step to bring justice to Ohio utility consumers,” said Ohio Consumers’ Counsel Maureen Willis in a statement. Willis called for “near-term reform” of the selection process for appointing Ohio PUC chairs.

The Oregon Public Utility Commission should approve without modification Lumen’s “fair” pact with PUC staff on a successor price plan, the settling parties said Friday in docket UM 1908. It’s "a meaningful compromise between the positions of formerly adverse parties,” they said. Intervenors Oregon Citizens’ Utility Board (CUB) and Lumen customer Priscilla Weaver don't oppose most of the agreement, including rates from a proposed price plan that "uniquely restricts CenturyLink’s ability to raise prices based upon the Company’s performance across a number of service quality measures,” said Lumen and PUC staff: Intervenors oppose removing previous protections only for Jacksonville, Oregon, customers. But the Jacksonville orders “are no longer necessary and apply only to a very small group of approximately 100 customers,” the settling parties said. Under the agreement, most protections “will continue to apply to the rural Jacksonville customers and … to 40 times more customers who are similarly situated." Oregon CUB agreed it objects only to deleting the Jacksonville orders. Lumen relies on broadband "as a solution even though it may not be available until" Dec. 31, 2024, and it hasn't "provided a plan to address near-term service quality issues," the consumer group said. Weaver urged the PUC not to accept the plan, which she said would "nullify without cause" the Jacksonville orders. The proposed plan’s protections "are almost non-existent, and nowhere close to the same as in the Jacksonville Orders,” she wrote.