The Lifeline order OK'd by FCC members 3-2 won praise from New York's Bill de Blasio and 37 other mayors. The FCC released all 224 pages of the Lifeline order last week (see 1604270028). De Blasio and mayors from Baltimore, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and elsewhere sent a glowing letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Thursday. “We write to applaud your leadership in modernizing and reforming the Lifeline program to include affordable broadband Internet service to benefit millions of low-income households,” the mayors wrote. “As leaders in local government, representing communities large and small, the modernized Lifeline program has tremendous potential to improve the lives of our low-income residents and enhance the long-term prospects for our cities as a whole. We are committed to working with you in support of this important action, and in partnership through the implementation process.” The mayors urged the FCC to design “a structure that will allow and encourage aggregation of subsidies to support deployment at public housing developments,” which they said “would complement local efforts by creating a robust and dependable funding stream for service costs.” While the local leaders praised the Lifeline order, states have railed against it, saying it flies in the face of federal statute and could be unlawful (see 1604010042).
A person who hacks into a vehicle could be sentenced to life in prison, under a bill introduced in the Michigan legislature Thursday. The bill, introduced by State Sen. Mike Kowall (R), could have implications for connected vehicles and self-driving cars. In one section, SB-927 says, “A person shall not intentionally access or cause access to be made to an electronic system of a motor vehicle to willfully destroy, damage, impair, alter, or gain unauthorized control of the motor vehicle.” A person who violates that section “is guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment for life or any term of years.” The bill also includes varying punishments for other hacking crimes. The legislation was referred to the Judiciary Committee in the state Senate.
NTIA released a guide to planning a community broadband strategy. An effective broadband road map “contains a community’s strategic vision and goals, analyzes existing community resources and needs, and guides the tactical plans to realize this vision,” NTIA said in a blog post Thursday. “An effective roadmap will also identify potential collaborations that can lead to additional businesses, programs and economic growth.” The guide includes nine case studies from states, counties, tribes, municipalities and nongovernment organizations. It was released through NTIA’s BroadbandUSA program, which provides technical assistance, guidance and resources to communities seeking to expand broadband. The agency said it next plans to release guides on forming broadband partnerships, implementing infrastructure projects and sustaining broadband networks.
The Iowa Utilities Board issued a request for proposal to select a service provider for the state’s telecom relay service, Relay Iowa, and captioned telephone relay service, CapTel Relay. The board plans to award a three-year contract -- Jan. 1, 2017, to Dec. 31, 2019 -- with one possible three-year extension, according to the RFP. The board will use a formal competitive process to choose the provider, and plans to announce the contract on or about Sept. 20, it said. Proposals are due June 30. Relay Iowa provides phone accessibility in English and Spanish, to people who are deaf, hard-of-hearing, deaf-blind or have difficulty speaking. CapTel Relay service enables users to view word-for-word captions of phone conversations and requires the use of a specialized captioned telephone.
Five states will participate in a policy academy on cybersecurity, the National Governors Association said in a news release Thursday. Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Nevada and Oregon will participate in the academy, which will cover developing and implementing comprehensive cybersecurity strategies, NGA said. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R), co-chairs of NGA’s Resource Center for State Cybersecurity, will serve as faculty for the policy academy. “Threats to our cybersecurity remain one of the most significant homeland security challenges facing the nation,” McAuliffe said. “This opportunity will allow states to learn effective cybersecurity practices to better safeguard citizens.” Snyder said, “Cyber threats affect everyone from law enforcement, public works and energy agencies, to financial and communications sectors and ultimately, citizens of every state. This policy academy will help states develop strategic plans to enhance their cybersecurity capabilities and improve incident response planning.” Earlier this month, NGA announced a separate policy academy on emergency communications interoperability (see 1604070058).
General Communications (GCI) proposed revised LTE performance commitments to go along with the Alaska Plan that it and others are urging the FCC to adopt for wireless and rate-of-return wireline carrier broadband USF support in the state. While some aspects remain preliminary and subject to refinement, the proposals reflect "a commitment to move all fiber-backhaul areas, and the substantial majority of microwave-backhaul population, to LTE within ten years," GCI said in a filing Wednesday in docket 10-90. "Moreover, GCI will be implementing LTE-over-satellite to approximately half of the population served by satellite backhaul, and will be moving at least 3,000 POPs from satellite backhaul to microwave." GCI is targeting 2 Mbps downlink speeds and 800 kbps uplink speeds for the vast majority of LTE-served POPs. It urged the FCC to adopt the Alaska Plan rules and approve carrier performance plans in the same order "if at all possible." The filing also answered FCC staff questions about GCI's methodology for determining which Alaska census blocks are "served" by AT&T or Verizon LTE systems and which wouldn't be eligible for future support. Alaska Communications, the state's price-cap telco, recently objected to the Alaska Telephone Association's wireless USF proposal, saying it would provide $1 billion over 10 years to competitors, much of it a "windfall" underwriting "GCI's unregulated middle-mile monopoly" (see 1604190012).
States should develop advanced cyber analytics capabilities, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers urged as it released a report Thursday. States also should develop and maintain response systems to keep pace with cyberthreats, NASCIO said. Multi-vector attacks by cybercriminals require states to be able to correlate disparate data sources from different security tools, it said. “Advanced persistent threats will become more and more sophisticated,” said NASCIO Executive Director Doug Robinson. “States must move away from merely waiting for the next attack and respond to a more predictive stance in anticipating attacks so they can put necessary defense in place in advance.” NASCIO released a states’ guide to cyberdisruption response planning earlier this month (see 1604070062).
The Louisiana House unanimously passed a telehealth bill to remove the requirement that physicians be located within the state. The House voted 91-0 Wednesday to pass HB-570, two days after the state Senate passed a similar bill, SB-328. The legislature has until June 6 adjournment to agree on which bill to move forward. Teladoc supported both versions of the bill for removing the residency restriction and for being technology neutral (see 1604190011). The Alaska Legislature removed its own in-state restriction for telehealth last week (see 1604180054). State legislation on telehealth has ramped up year after year, said a Center for Connected Health Policy (CCHP) annual report released Thursday. “In the 2016 legislative session, forty-four states have introduced over 150 telehealth-related pieces of legislation,” it said. “Many bills address different aspects of reimbursement in regards to both private payers and Medicaid, with some bills making changes to existing reimbursement laws. Many states have also proposed legislation that would adopt the Federation of State Medical Board’s model language for an Interstate Medical Licensure Compact.” Some states continue to restrict and limit telehealth services, CCHP said. “No two states are alike in how telehealth is defined and regulated.” CCHP said 47 states have some form of reimbursement for telehealth, but Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Utah don't. The most commonly reimbursed form of telehealth is live video, it said. “However, what and how it is reimbursed varies widely. The spectrum ranges from a Medicaid program in a state like Connecticut, which will only reimburse for case management behavioral health services for clients under the age of eighteen, to states like California, which reimburses for live video across a wide variety of medical specialties.” Only nine states reimburse for store-and-forward services, in which clinical information like X-rays are stored and then forwarded to another site, because many states define telehealth as real-time, it said. Only 16 states reimburse for remote patient monitoring, the same number as in 2015, it said. On location, some states continue to restrict reimbursable telehealth to rural or underserved areas, but this is decreasing, CCHP said. Also, 23 states specify what sites can serve as an originating site for telehealth, it said.
States tend to fund broadband deployment more than they do adoption, said a state broadband report released Wednesday. The Rural Telecommunications Congress, a nonprofit headed by Drew Clark, commissioned broadband economists at the Strategic Networks Group to write the report. About 52 percent of states have an office dedicated to broadband, and 28 percent have a budget to fund broadband initiatives, the report said. (The study included only 48 states because Rhode Island and New Jersey declined to participate.) While California has $330 million and New York has $500 million for broadband, the average funding for the 11 other funded states was $597,000 annually, the report found. States with broadband funding said they most often support “planning and support” activities (82 percent) and infrastructure (45 percent), the report said. SNG President Michael Curri said “investment activities seem to be heavily weighted towards the ‘supply’ of broadband and include mapping, infrastructure planning, and grants, surpassing economic development activities that impact economic advancement including raising awareness, training, and driving end-user utilization.” The report ranked New Mexico the highest on its broadband efforts, followed by Maine, Ohio, New York and Vermont. The worst-ranked five states were Indiana (44), Louisiana (45), Montana (46), Missouri (47) and Texas (48), it said. The ranking was based on five dimensions, SNG said. On availability, SNG said the top three states were New Mexico, Maine and Hawaii, with Montana in last place. On adoption, the top three states were New Hampshire, Hawaii and Oregon, with Alabama in last place. On how well states drove “meaningful use” of broadband by businesses and households, SNG found Ohio performed the best, Vermont and West Virginia were tied for second, and Tennessee did the worst. On growth investment, New York came in first, with Nevada and North Carolina tied for second, SNG said. SNG also considered regulatory environment, but didn’t rank the states within this specific metric.
The Louisiana Senate unanimously passed a telehealth bill to remove the requirement that physicians be located within the state. The state Senate voted 34-0 Monday to pass SB-328 and send it to the House, one day after the Alaska Legislature passed Medicaid legislation that similarly removed in-state restrictions for telehealth (see 1604180054). Alaska and Louisiana were the last two states to have an in-state requirement. The Louisiana bill “ensures technology-neutral modalities for telemedicine, and it removes the onerous residency restriction,” Teladoc Vice President-Government Affairs Claudia Tucker said in an interview. The bill defines telehealth broadly to not exclude any current or future technologies to deliver telemedicine, she said. SB-328 now moves to the House, which is expected to consider a similar bill, HB-570, Wednesday. The Louisiana Legislature adjourns June 6, but the telehealth legislation could be passed before then, Tucker said. “They are moving at warp speed,” she said. “I’ve never seen a bill move out of committee as quickly as I saw [SB-328] get out of the Senate committee.” One obstacle to passage could be the State Board of Medical Examiners, which objected to removing the in-state requirement. Teladoc is pushing for telehealth legislation to enhance access in other states, Tucker said. The Missouri Legislature has a final floor vote this week on telehealth legislation, and the Michigan Senate has a floor vote this week, she said. Economic concerns are driving movement on state telehealth bills this year, Tucker said. “Healthcare costs are spiraling out of control ... and will continue to do so at an unsustainable rate.” And people want the greater access to care that is provided by telemedicine, she said.