The Michigan House adopted a resolution asking the president, Congress and the FCC to rescind the net neutrality order, said a filing posted in FCC docket 14-28 Tuesday. The resolution urges Congress to continue efforts to pass legislation that would provide clear rules on Internet protection and not hinder investment in broadband, in place of the FCC's new rules.
General Communication Inc. is partnering with Ericsson to bring advanced, high-speed fixed and mobile connections to Alaska’s North Slope, GCI announced. GCI has 20 active towers so far and the only terrestrial fiber connection in Prudhoe Bay, it said. Construction and installation of the new advanced, high-speed wireless data network has begun and will include a total of nine sites stretching more than 3,738 square miles, GCI said. The new network will use LTE technology with data download speeds in excess of 30 Mbps, it said. This high-speed connectivity, it said, will support advancing oil field data requirements and improve overall oil field operations.
CenturyLink is helping the Utah Education and Telehealth Network create a network capable of carrying more than a full terabit of combined bandwidth to 1,412 schools and educational locations in Utah, CenturyLink said Monday in a news release. Of those facilities, 832 already are equipped with CenturyLink fiber-enabled broadband service, providing speeds to 100 Gbps, the telco said. In addition to connecting about 60 percent of Utah schools to UETN’s network, CenturyLink said it's the largest provider of gigabit services to residential and business customers in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area and the state of Utah.
Cox Communications said it increased download and upload speeds for its High Speed Internet Essential and Internet Starter services in its Connecticut and Rhode Island markets. The High Speed Internet Essential download speed is now 15 Mbps, up from 5 Mbps. The Internet Starter download speed is now 5 Mbps, up from 1 Mbps, Cox said Friday. The company said it also plans to increase its maximum available download speeds, currently set at 150 Mbps, at an undefined time later this year. “Cox has now increased Internet speeds for eleven consecutive years as a result of our investment in our network and commitment to offer access and choice to our customers," regional manager Jay Allbaugh said in a news release.
Backers of the NextRadio FM-in-smartphones app hailed the Indiana State Senate’s adoption Thursday of a resolution urging wireless carriers to activate the FM receiver chips in their handsets, the backers said in a Friday statement. NextRadio’s prime mover, Emmis Communications, is based in Indianapolis. The resolution “focused on the need for Indiana residents to have direct access from their smartphones to the emergency information broadcasts of local radio stations,” NextRadio’s backers said: “Activating the FM receiver in smartphones would provide immediate access to a radio in the device most residents currently carry even in the event that wireless data networks become unavailable or overwhelmed.” Except for Sprint, they said, major U.S. wireless carriers “have not taken steps to activate the FM chip in the smartphones they sell, and as they profit from the consumer data usage of streaming media, do not feel compelled to provide a free alternative.” NextRadio launched an “awareness campaign” in February with NAB support to trumpet that FM chips already are built into most new smartphones and need only to be permitted by the carrier and activated with the handset maker (see 1502200041) .
The New Mexico Public Regulation Commission (PRC) agreed 4-1 Wednesday that CenturyLink now qualifies as a mid-size carrier under New Mexico law. CenturyLink has 347,354 access lines in new Mexico, below the state’s 375,000-line ceiling that defines a mid-size carrier under state law, the PRC said. CenturyLink had 850,000 access lines in New Mexico eight years ago, the PRC said. CenturyLink will be subject as a mid-size carrier to the same level of regulation as Windstream, the PRC said. The commission said it has previously provided more stringent regulation of CenturyLink. The PRC said it expects to launch a rulemaking in the next few weeks to establish rules CenturyLink must abide by on service quality, consumer protection and caps on pricing flexibility. “I want to help reduce costs to consumers and help promote economic development here in New Mexico," said PRC Chairwoman Karen Montoya in a news release. “Relevant information and crucial numbers, such as wholesale and leased lines, were not included in the calculation of this determination,” said PRC Commissioner Valerie Espinoza, who voted against reclassifying CenturyLink. “The Commission should be protecting consumers, not enabling a utility to have the ability to design their own rate, and issue no further penalty credits. We are not only compromising the quality of service, but reliability, as well, and much needed investment in rural areas.”
DevDigital, 365 Data Centers and Peace Communications jointly opened the Nashville Internet Exchange (NashIX) Tuesday, saying they deployed the exchange to improve Internet speeds in the Nashville area and reduce the cost of service. NashIX, which 365 is housing in its Nashville collocation facility, will reroute data that was previously routed via Atlanta, Chicago or Dallas, the companies said. Routing traffic through those cities “significantly” increased costs and resulted in additional latency, they said. Latency within a metropolitan area is typically less than two milliseconds, while latency between Atlanta and Nashville is between six and eight milliseconds, the companies said. A private 10 Gbps line from Nashville to Atlanta costs $5,000-$10,000 per month, while a Nashville area 10 Gbps connection is 30 percent of that cost, the companies said. A NashIX connection is free to entities that join the exchange before Sept. 30, the companies said. “Increasingly, content is moving from the core to the edge,” said NashIX board Chairman Peter Marcum in a news release. “With the NashIX, content will move faster and with less congestion.” The NashIX launch followed Allied Fiber CEO Hunter Newby saying Monday that company is poised to launch its own distributed Internet exchange between Miami and Atlanta, with connections to Chicago, Jacksonville and New York (see 1504060039). The Detroit Internet Exchange launched last week (see 1503310053).
Washington, D.C., 911 and 311 communications were unaffected by a widespread electrical outage Tuesday in D.C. and parts of Maryland, said a spokeswoman for the District's Office of Unified Communications. The OUC handles 911 and 311 phone communications and public safety radio communications. The outage temporarily knocked out power across a major portion of the District, including at the White House and Smithsonian museums, along with areas of central and southern Maryland. The D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency said the outage was caused by a power surge that originated in an electrical facility Charles County, Maryland, while the Pepco electric utility reported the outage was caused by “an issue with a transmission line.” Maryland public safety answering points didn’t experience any service interruptions as a result of the outage, said a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services. Telcos and cable companies that service the D.C. area, including AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, said they weren’t experiencing service interruptions because of the outage.
Comcast said it will begin offering 2 Gbps upload and download Gigabit Pro residential broadband service to customers in the Atlanta metropolitan area in May. The company said it already offers up to 10 Gbps broadband service to business customers. Gigabit Pro service will be available to any homes within “close proximity” to Comcast’s fiber network in the Atlanta area, which is within reach of 1.5 million area residents, the cable company said Thursday. The service will also require installation of “professional-grade equipment,” Comcast said. “Our approach is to offer the most comprehensive rollout of multi-gigabit service to the most homes as quickly as possible, not just to certain neighborhoods,” said Comcast Senior Vice President-Big South Region Doug Guthrie in a news release. Comcast didn’t disclose potential pricing for the Gigabit Pro service.
The sponsors of HB-1303 and SB-1134 -- legislation in Tennessee that would partially ease the state’s restrictions on municipal broadband deployments -- confirmed Thursday that they're deferring further action on the bills until the Tennessee General Assembly’s 2016 legislative session. State Sen. Janice Bowling, a Republican, said support for the legislation had grown over the course of the 2015 legislative session but ultimately she and Assistant House Majority Leader Kevin Brooks decided there wasn’t enough support to move forward this year. Brooks previously had told us he believed the FCC’s Feb. 26 vote to pre-empt Tennessee’s municipal broadband law, along with North Carolina’s law, would improve the bill’s prospects (see 1502270048). The FCC’s pre-emption order now faces a legal challenge in the 6th U.S. Court of Appeals from Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery (see 1503240059).