Alaska Communications said it's selling its remaining 33 percent interest in The Alaska Wireless Network and its wireless subscriber base in Alaska to General Communications Inc. (GCI) for $300 million. The sale will reduce Alaska Communications’ debt by $250 million and will allow the telco to focus on “the underlying inherent value of our broadband and managed IT solutions business,” said Alaska Communications CEO Anand Vadapalli in a Thursday news release. The transaction is to close in Q1 2015 and would affect 150-200 Alaska Communications employees, the telco said.

New York City’s Franchise and Concession Review Committee plans a hearing Monday on the CityBridge consortium’s plan to install a Wi-Fi hot spot system in place of up to 10,000 obsolete payphone booths across the city. The agreement, announced last month, would end June 24, 2026, and would initially give New York City 50 percent of gross revenue. The city would later receive 55 percent of gross revenue, with a minimum annual guarantee of $20 million per contract year, the review committee said. The hearing begins at 2:30 p.m.

National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates members passed a resolution at NASUCA's annual meeting last month in San Francisco that urges federal and state regulators to ensure the continuation of carrier of last resort obligations “regardless of the facilities or transmission used to provide service” and to require network owners to “implement an open Internet,” the group said. The NASUCA resolution also urges regulators to require network owners to prohibit discrimination and blocking, support fiber unbundling and reasonable rates for mobile data roaming.

Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission staff urged the UTC Tuesday to fine CenturyLink up to $2.93 million for its role in the April 10 multistate 911 outage. The outage resulted in more than 6,600 911 calls across seven states failing to reach public safety answering points, with Washington hardest hit. The FCC later found the outage occurred because of a failure at an Intrado-managed call routing center in Englewood, Colorado (see 1410170057). CenturyLink holds the contract for managing Washington’s 911 services, but contracts some 911 management functions out to Intrado. The outage was “unprecedented in both its scope and duration,” the Washington UTC staff said in a report. “Every person in Washington was affected because the ability for anyone to access 911 was almost nonexistent.” The UTC staff report estimates that CenturyLink amassed more than 11,700 violations of UTC rules during the 911 outage, most of which stem from CenturyLink’s failure to automatically re-route 911 calls and its failure to maintain and manage the technical 911 system. The staff report also faulted CenturyLink for not notifying PSAPs “promptly” about the outage. The Washington UTC staff recommended the commission require CenturyLink to make improvements to the 911 system and report to the agency annually about the results of its maintenance of the system. A CenturyLink spokeswoman blamed Intrado for the 911 outage, saying Intrado has acknowledged faults in the call routing system at its Englewood facility. CenturyLink hadn’t encountered the issue before and worked with officials to resolve the problem once it became aware of the outage, the spokeswoman said. The telco “is troubled by the punitive nature of the fine recommended by the WUTC staff,” the spokeswoman said. Intrado didn't immediately comment.

Sprint wholesale partner nTelos Wireless said it will sell its 1900 MHz PCS spectrum licenses in eastern Virginia to T-Mobile for around $56 million. The deal, which includes licenses in the Hampton Roads/Norfolk and Richmond markets, is part of a “strategic” refocus on nTelos’ markets in western Virginia and West Virginia, the carrier said Tuesday. “We are right-sizing our business and redirecting our resources on our Western Markets, which provide us the greatest opportunity for sustained, profitable growth,” nTelos Chairman Michael Huber said in a news release. “At the same time, we are exiting markets that have become increasingly competitive and where we have been unable to achieve acceptable financial returns.” NTelos said it expects the sale to close by April following expected FCC and Virginia State Corporation Commission reviews of the deal. NTelos said it plans to transition its eastern Virginia subscribers to another carrier as it winds down operations in the region, though it initially will lease back a portion of the spectrum it’s selling to T-Mobile so it can continue operations in the region until Nov. 15, 2015.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., urged the Vermont Public Service Board (PSB) Monday to move forward with the state Department of Public Service’s (DPS) request for an investigation into FairPoint Communications’ service interruptions. Vermont DPS petitioned the PSB Monday to do an investigation in the wake of an outage Friday that resulted in 911 calls failing to reach public safety answering points (PSAPs) in Middlesex, Montpelier, St. Albans and Williston (see 1412010037). The Vermont E911 Board upped its estimate Tuesday of the number of 911 calls that failed to reach PSAPs to 97 from its original estimate of 45, after 911-infrastructure company Intrado provided additional numbers to the board Monday. Intrado operated the state’s E911 system until operations switched to FairPoint at the end of November, but Intrado is still transitioning out of its role. Vermont DPS said it has received about 388 complaints regarding FairPoint’s service since early September. FairPoint’s record of service complaints, along with last week’s 911 outage, “is simply unacceptable,” Sanders said in a news release. “FairPoint’s history of bankruptcy and poor service should be cause for real concern in terms of the company’s ability to deliver the emergency services Vermonters need, deserve and are paying for.” Sanders also faulted FairPoint for its ongoing dispute with workers in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, where more than 1,700 have been on strike since late October (see 1410170025). “FairPoint is clearly putting the interests of the multi-billion-dollar hedge funds, which own the company, ahead of its workers and ahead of its Vermont customers,” Sanders said. A FairPoint spokeswoman said the telco is aware of the DPS petition and plans to cooperate if the PSB begins an investigation, but noted that FairPoint believes the 911 outage is unrelated to the ongoing strike.

The Vermont Department of Public Service (DPS) said Monday it petitioned the Public Service Board to investigate FairPoint Communications’ service in the state, with a central focus on determining causes of the telco's service interruptions and possible solutions. The DPS petition followed an almost six-hour FairPoint network outage late Friday that the Vermont E911 Board said resulted in at least 45 911 calls not reaching state public safety answering points. FairPoint attributed the outage to equipment failures and a fallen fiber line in neighboring New Hampshire. DPS said it had warned FairPoint twice in recent months that it would seek an investigation if the telco’s service quality didn’t improve by the end of November. Those service issues have increased “precipitously” in recent months, DPS said. FairPoint didn’t immediately comment.

Carolina West Wireless and CWW's Clear Stream Communications sought a waiver Wednesday of a rule in the FCC 2013 rural call completion order that requires a telco to count subscriber lines of affiliates toward the determination of whether a telco serves fewer than 100,000 subscriber lines. The order exempted long-distance service providers that make the initial long-distance call path choice for fewer than 100,000 subscriber lines. CWW said it doesn’t believe the subscriber lines of its affiliates “have any influence over CWW’s call routing decisions” and has unsuccessfully sought FCC reconsideration of the rule. The commission invited CWW and other carriers to file waiver requests, CWW said. If the agency grants CWW’s waiver request, the telco “would fall below the de minimis threshold, and would be exempt from the rural call completion data collection and reporting requirements,” CWW said.

NARUC General Counsel Brad Ramsay emphasized the group’s continued position on 911 oversight -- that 911 service “is unquestionably an intrastate” telecom service that states must play a role in managing. His comments came during a meeting Monday with Daniel Alvarez, aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. The FCC “lacks the staff and financial resources” to protect consumers from 911 outages alone and “there is no reason to undermine State authority in this area,” Ramsay said Tuesday in an ex parte filing. “If the FCC’s intent is to coordinate with State authorities and assure maximum pressure and oversight on carriers to provide working and reliable E9-1-1 and other services, one option is to make crystal clear (in the text of the order) to all carriers that if a State asserts jurisdiction over or imposes rules to ensure reliability/service quality of E9-1-1 and related services, the FCC will strongly support the State action.”

FirstNet confirmed Tuesday that the Department of Commerce Office of Inspector General launched a separate audit of FirstNet’s technical development of the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN). The audit would “evaluate and assess FirstNet’s efforts and progress to develop the technical design aspects for the NPSBN against key technical requirements and standards, the requirements of [the 2012 Spectrum Act], stakeholder requirements, and established performance metrics and milestones,” Commerce OIG said in a letter. FirstNet “will fully comply with this audit and the IG office,” a spokesman said.