Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced $190.5 million in Department of Agriculture (USDA) funding Wednesday for broadband deployments and other advanced communications infrastructure improvements in 19 states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The 25 projects being funded through the USDA grants and loans include a $24 million loan to Arkansas’ Arkwest Communications to provide voice, broadband and Internet TV service to almost 4,000 customers and make other system improvements. Other projects include a $2.5 million grant to Nexus Systems to provide broadband in Powhatan, Louisiana, and a $750,000 grant to public TV broadcasters in the U.S. Virgin Islands to replace analog production and satellite equipment with high-definition equipment, USDA said (http://1.usa.gov/ZOODPu).

FairPoint Communications said Tuesday it's “concerned” that employees affiliated with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), who are currently on strike, are disrupting services and intimidating employees and customers (http://bit.ly/1ouXtgZ). More than 1,700 CWA- and IBEW-affiliated workers went on strike Friday in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont (see 1410170025). Some of the striking employees “have followed and intimidated contractors and employees, blocked our trucks, surrounded our workers on job sites, trespassed on customer property and engaged in conduct that impedes the work FairPoint is doing to meet customer needs,” FairPoint said in a news release. The unions said in a statement that they will “continue to work hard to ensure that our labor action is safe and respectful to our neighbors and friends throughout northern New England, but we will not let the company use these spurious and unfounded allegations to take the spotlight off of the company's unfair practices.”

Comcast and Time Warner Cable officials urged the New York Public Service Commission to exempt information on call center operations at Comcast and TWC from public disclosure laws in connection with PSC review of the first company's plan to buy the second. The PSC remanded the companies’ appeal of a July decision by Administrative Law Judge David Prestemon that the call center operations information shouldn’t be exempted. Prestemon said he would issue a ruling on the remand after parties submitted responses, which were due Monday. Officials for both companies said they view information on their call center operations as a trade secret and its release would “unfairly advantage” competitors. Information about Comcast’s call center operations “identifies the number of employees at each Comcast call center in the Northeast, describes Comcast's call interflow parameters that direct calls to sister call centers, and sets forth also detailed facility-by-facility hours, staffing and operational information,” said Don Laub, Comcast senior director-Northeast Division regulatory affairs (http://bit.ly/1DxiUky). Information about TWC’s call center operations “identifies the number of employees at each Time Warner Cable call center in New York and sets forth also detailed facility-by-facility hours, staffing and operational information, including call interflow parameters,” said Terence Rafferty, TWC Northeast regional vice president-operations. Other information the PSC sought involved TWC’s broadband deployments. TWC said it opposes publication of an un-redacted version of that information, which shows “detailed build-out and deployment plans for individual projects in each affected Time Warner Cable franchise area,” Rafferty said. “The information is particularly granular, showing the plant mileage to be built out, the number of premises to be passed by the buildout, and the expected completion date” (http://bit.ly/1FxVayA). The Public Utility Law Project of New York said the Comcast and TWC interpretation of what constitutes a trade secret is overly expansive, and the PSC should release the information under the narrower definition used under the federal Freedom of Information Act (http://bit.ly/1sLK0Q8).

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is considering a draft resolution that would raise the state’s LifeLine program surcharge to 2.4 percent beginning Jan. 1. The current LifeLine surcharge in the state is 1.15 percent, which the CPUC set in 2007. The raised surcharge would be applied to revenue collected from all California end users of intrastate telecom services, including VoIP, the CPUC said in the draft resolution, filed Monday. The commission’s staff have estimated that if the surcharge rate remains unchanged, the California LifeLine Fund won’t be able to meet its budgeted expenses for this fiscal year due to an increase in carriers’ claims. A 2.4 percent surcharge would leave the California LifeLine Fund with an estimated $97 million balance at the end of the current fiscal year and an estimated balance of $89 million at the end of the next fiscal year, the CPUC said. The commission is to vote on the resolution at its Nov. 20 meeting (http://bit.ly/1CQH4Ey).

The South Georgia Regional Information Technology Authority (SGRITA) is proposing a partnership with Albany (Georgia) Water, Gas & Light (WG&L), to operate wireless broadband services in Baker, Calhoun, Early, Miller, Mitchell, Seminole and Terrell counties. If the Albany City Commission approves the plan, Albany WG&L would provide wireless service to more than 21,000 residential customers, almost 2,300 business customers and almost 250 institutional customers in the region. SGRITA said it’s financing the project through $13.3 million in Rural Utilities Service loans and grants.

California Public Utilities Commissioner Catherine Sandoval urged the FCC in an ex parte filing posted Friday to rely on both Title II and Section 706 of the Communications Act as it creates new net neutrality rules. Title II and Section 706 are “complementary” but “only Title II, applied with appropriate forbearance and a light regulatory touch, can protect common carriers, broadcasters and other FCC licensees, and Internet speakers from ISP discrimination and high Internet entry barriers,” Sandoval said. She noted she was speaking on her own behalf and not on the behalf of the full CPUC (http://bit.ly/1riVCGA). The CPUC withdrew from consideration possible comments on the FCC’s NPRM ahead of what had been a planned Thursday vote on the issue, prompting criticism from public interest groups in the state (see 1410160054). Sandoval recommended the FCC refer any new proposed net neutrality rules to the Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience Conference, the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service and the Federal-State Joint Conference on Advanced Telecommunications Services, for which Sandoval serves as policy chairwoman. Those bodies can evaluate the proposed rules for federal and state implications related to universal service, Internet access, public safety, security and critical infrastructure issues, Sandoval said. She also noted her concerns about the net neutrality NPRM’s paid prioritization language, which she said would be harmful to consumers, public safety agencies, “content creators” and critical infrastructure sectors. Sandoval said she noted similar concerns during an Oct. 7 meeting with Priscilla Delgado, legal adviser to FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, and during a Sept. 24 forum with Rosenworcel and Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif.

More than 1,700 FairPoint Communications workers in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont went on strike at 12:01 a.m. Friday after local chapters of the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers weren’t able to settle a dispute with the telco over contract negotiations. FairPoint has been demanding what the unions say is $700 million in cuts as part of new contracts with the workers, including increased healthcare costs, cuts in healthcare funding for retirees and a new salary system that would put all new hires on a lower pay scale (http://bit.ly/104cSdc). FairPoint’s contract with the 1,700 workers expired Aug. 2, at which point the telco said the unions had “dug in on almost all of their current benefits under contracts from a bygone era." After months of negotiations, “the two sides remain far apart on the issues we think are key to the future of the company,” a FairPoint spokeswoman said in a news release. The telco said it has “comprehensive plans in place to ensure continuity of service to its customers” (http://bit.ly/1ugUoxc).

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and Transit Wireless said wireless and Wi-Fi service are now available in 11 additional subway stations in Manhattan and will go live in 29 stations in Queens in the coming weeks. The Manhattan and Queens deployments will mean that 76 underground MTA subway stations have wireless and Wi-Fi service, the MTA said Thursday. Transit Wireless said it hopes to provide wireless and Wi-Fi service in all 277 underground MTA stations by 2017. PCTel said separately that it was a supplier of multiband MIMO antennas for the service expansion (http://bit.ly/1sY4oQG).

Netflix and Zayo Group colocation subsidiary zColo will be the primary infrastructure sponsors of the Florida Internet Exchange (FL-IX), zColo said. Akamai, CloudFlare and Host.net are FL-IX’s other initial member participants. FL-IX will be a member-managed peering platform serving the southeastern U.S. and several Latin American markets, and will be based out of zColo’s Miami data center. Netflix’s participation in FL-IX “reflects our commitment to the Open IX model and providing greater optionality for exchanging traffic,” said Dave Temkin, Netflix director-network architecture and strategy, in a Zayo news release Tuesday. “The Miami market needs more connectivity alternatives to NAP of the Americas and we anticipate FL-IX will be well received by many major content and network providers.” Netflix will provide switching equipment and related technology to run FL-IX, while zColo will house FL-IX and will provide power and underlying network connectivity (http://bit.ly/1vwror3).

Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) gave final approval Wednesday to Frontier Communications’ $2 billion purchase of AT&T’s broadband, video and wireline assets in the state (http://bit.ly/1sJgNXg). PURA’s final decision on Frontier/AT&T Connecticut almost completely tracked with a draft decision released Sept. 30 1410010024, which had prompted limited concerns from other parties in the proceeding 1410090003. PURA said it wouldn’t revise its decision to reflect concerns that Connecticut Light and Power raised, but did formally adopt a separate settlement between Frontier and the Connecticut divisions of Cablevision, Charter Communications, Cox Communications and MetroCast Communications as part of PURA’s decision. PURA's review was the only remaining regulatory barrier for the deal, which Frontier said Wednesday is now set to close on Oct. 24. About 2,600 AT&T employees in Connecticut will become Frontier employees at the deal’s completion, Frontier said. Communications Workers of America Local 1298, which supported Frontier/AT&T Connecticut, shares “Frontier's goal of putting the customer first,” said CWA Local 1298 President Bill Henderson in a Frontier news release. “We look forward to introducing residential and business customers to Frontier's local engagement plan and great customer service” (http://bit.ly/1qw6ilR).