The Estes Park Town Board approved the Estes Park Economic Development Corporation’s (EDC) request for a Feb. 3 special election on a ballot measure to let Estes Park exempt itself from Colorado’s municipal broadband law. Exemption from the law would allow Estes Park to more effectively use the fiber network it operates in conjunction with the Platte River Power Authority, the EDC said Thursday. Eight Colorado communities approved ballot measures during last week’s election to exempt themselves from the state’s municipal broadband law (see 1411060030).

Texas Rep. Tom Craddick, a Republican, said he refiled a bill for the Legislature to consider in the 2015 session that would institute a statewide ban on texting while driving. The legislature previously passed the bill, the Alex Brown Memorial Act (HB-80), during the 2011 and 2013 sessions but retiring Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, vetoed it both times. Craddick said he named the bill for Alex Brown, a 17-year-old who died in a car crash in 2009 that occurred when she was texting. Texas bans texting while driving for drivers under the age of 18, cellphone use for school bus drivers while driving a bus occupied by children and all drivers’ use of mobile devices while they're in a school zone. Forty-four other states, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands have laws banning or otherwise limiting texting for all drivers. Thirty-eight Texas municipalities have banned texting while driving, but the lack of a statewide law creates a “patchwork of local ordinances that confuses drivers,” Craddick said in a statement Monday.

NARUC will consider a resolution at its annual meeting next week objecting to a September FCC order that said supervisory control and data acquisition and smart grid systems aren’t dedicated to protecting public safety and the prevention of human injury and property damage. The resolution would urge the FCC to allow utilities “expeditious access to spectrum licenses in order to best serve the public interest by supporting SCADA and smart grid systems,” because those systems are necessary for utilities’ safe operation and because public safety agencies depend on them. NARUC’s board will vote on the resolution Nov. 18, and all NARUC members will vote on it Nov. 19.

C Spire activated gigabit fiber service Monday in Quitman, Mississippi, which the company said it believes will restore the economic fortunes of the town. Quitman's economy has struggled amid job losses and plant closings, C Spire said. “We see a bright future for our town with widespread availability of high speed Internet,” Quitman Mayor Eddie Fulton said in a C Spire news release. Quitman was one of the Mississippi cities C Spire selected last year to as sites for gigabit deployment (see 1311050028).

Worcester, Massachusetts, said Thursday that it reached a deal with Comcast for the cable company to become its cable provider if the firm's proposed buy of Time Warner Cable clears regulatory hurdles. The Worcester City Council voted last month against the transfer of Charter Communications’ license to Comcast because of concerns about Comcast’s customer service record and questions about whether the company would keep open Charter’s data center in the city. Charter and Comcast are transferring multiple licenses in a deal meant to allow its TWC deal to proceed. Charter is getting some divested properties. Comcast agreed to keep the Charter data center, which employs more than 150 people, open for three years and will continue local news and sports programming. Comcast “heard the community’s concerns and is taking its role in Worcester seriously,” said City Manager Edward Augustus, who was empowered to sign off on the city council’s vote on the license transfer. A Comcast spokesman said the company is “delighted to have reached an agreement with the City of Worcester that will benefit local residents and businesses alike.”

Voters in five municipalities and three counties in Colorado voted to exempt their communities from the state law restricting municipal broadband deployments. Colorado law lets communities opt out of the law via local ballot initiatives, which three other municipalities -- Centennial, Longmont and Montrose -- did in previous elections. Rio Blanco, San Miguel and Yuma counties and Boulder, Cherry Hills Village, Red Cliff, Wray and Yuma approved the ballot measures Tuesday with between 72 and 83.8 percent of the vote. The results were a “vindication” for advocates who’ve said local control over broadband deployment had bipartisan support, said Next Century Cities Policy Director Christopher Mitchell in an interview. Heavily Democratic Boulder and heavily Republican Yuma County voted overwhelmingly in favor of exemption, said Mitchell, who is also director of the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. It’s unclear whether a potential Republican takeover of the Colorado House and Senate would jeopardize any push to have the legislature repeal its municipal broadband law, Mitchell said. Partisan control of both chambers remained in doubt Thursday pending recounts for seats in Adams and Jefferson counties. The elections yielded few other results of interest to municipal broadband advocates, though Mitchell said he was pleased that Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy, a Democrat, won re-election. Malloy’s administration was “very supportive” of an effort by New Haven, Stamford and West Hartford to develop gigabit broadband networks (see 1409160049), Mitchell said. Malloy’s re-election “bodes well” for that project and a possible expansion into other cities, Mitchell said.

The California Public Utilities Commission approved the 2015-2016 fiscal year expense budgets Thursday for six state telecom programs. The California Advanced Services Fund will have a budget of $97.83 million for the fiscal year. The state’s Deaf and Disabled Telecommunications Program will have a $65 million budget. The state’s High Cost Fund-A’s Administrative Committee Fund will have a $43.33 million budget, while High Cost Fund-B will have a $20 million program budget. The state’s LifeLine program will have a $345.65 million budget, while its Teleconnect Fund will have a $148.09 million budget.

Alaska Communications got a five-year contract from Alaska’s state government to provide wide area network services to more than 22,000 state employees. The company will provide secure connectivity and high-capacity Internet service between core state government facilities in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau. The contract lets Alaska Communications “enable better service to all Alaskans by providing secure and reliable high bandwidth networks to the State of Alaska,” said CEO Anand Vadapalli in a Wednesday news release.

The Vermont Public Service Board (PSB) unanimously approved the sale of Burlington Telecom to Blue Water Holdings and an accompanying lease of the telco back to the city of Burlington. The city government agreed in March to sell Burlington Telecom to Blue Water Holdings for $6 million to help pay for its $9 million portion of a settlement with Citibank in the bank’s lawsuit over past issues involving Burlington Telecom. Burlington will also lease back the telco for about $558,500 a year for the next five years, at which point Blue Water Holdings will be the utility’s sole owner. The PSB’s decision is “great news for the people of Burlington,” said Mayor Miro Weinberger, a Democrat, in a statement Monday.

Roanoke, Virginia, plans to move ahead as a participant in a 42-mile broadband network after its City Council voted 6-0 Monday night to appropriate $100,000 toward final engineering costs for the project. The Roanoke Valley Broadband Authority-proposed (RVBA) network also will serve nearby Salem. There are also proposals to extend the network into adjacent Roanoke and Botetourt counties. Salem’s City Council is set to vote this month on whether to appropriate $100,000 for engineering costs. RVBA estimates the network's Roanoke and Salem portions will cost about $4 million.