The Delaware Legislature passed a bill that would...

on May 14. The bill summary said it “modernizes the rules governing such utilities and aligns them with the rapid competitive and technological changes affecting the industry.” The bill (http://bit.ly/11YyNel) also proposed the creation of the Delaware Broadband Fund, which would be “used to support and enhance broadband services in the State’s public schools and public libraries and for rural broadband initiatives in unserved areas of the State,” drawn from assessments on service providers and administered by the secretary of the Department of Technology and Information. All funds should be distributed by July 2018 when the fund would expire, it said. The bill would grant the PSC oversight over basic service but would implement deregulation measures in other instances. Specific sections of the bill text reaffirms Delaware’s lack of authority over Internet Protocol-enabled services, as Delaware has previously asserted and more than half of states have done in recent years. The PSC would have “no jurisdiction or regulatory authority” over VoIP and IP-enabled services, “including but not limited to, the imposition of regulatory fees, certification requirements, rates, terms or other conditions of service,” said the bill text. The bill also proposed ending certain obligations for traditional landline service. “A telecommunications service provider is not required to establish, construct, maintain, operate or extend its existing facilities where the potential customers to be served have service available from one or more alternative providers of wireline or wireless communications,” one provision proposed. VoIP providers would count as such an alternative.