The New Hampshire Executive Council approved a $13 million contract Wednesday for FairPoint Communications to provide broadband and wireline service in state facilities through 2020. The council delayed a planned vote on the contract last month after Councilor Colin Van Ostern, a Democrat, raised concerns about the telco’s service quality in the state (see 1412230053). FairPoint agreed to hold public meetings around New Hampshire on its service quality before the contract takes effect in July. Ostern asked FairPoint to hold at least one meeting in each of the state’s five executive council districts. FairPoint has been facing ongoing service quality complaints in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont due to an ongoing strike of about 1,700 of its workers in the states. FairPoint and representatives of two unions -- the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers -- have been in federally mandated negotiations since Jan. 4.

Google confirmed Tuesday that it will deploy its Google Fiber service in the Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, metropolitan areas. Google’s announcement at least partially ended speculation about its deployment plans, which it had delayed announcing in December (see 1412230051). Dennis Kish, vice president-Google Fiber, said Google is still negotiating possible deployments in five other metropolitan areas -- Phoenix; Portland, Oregon; Salt Lake City; San Antonio; and San Jose -- and plans to make decisions on those areas later this year. Google Fiber has already deployed in the Austin, Kansas City and Provo, Utah, metropolitan areas. Google said its planned deployments in Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham will reach into 14 neighboring suburbs of those cities and it will begin construction in those areas the next few months.

Motorola Solutions said it successfully deployed its Advanced 9-1-1 text-to-911 technology in Kershaw County, South Carolina. It's the state's first jurisdiction to implement text-to-911, something that less than 4 percent of U.S. public safety answering points have done, Motorola Solutions said in a Tuesday news release. The company said it’s continuing to partner with Intrado on next-generation 911 technology in the county and elsewhere.

Washington, D.C.’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA) denied claims that encryption of the city’s Fire and Emergency Medical Services department radios was responsible for radio communications failures that occurred during a fatal Jan. 12 incident in a downtown subway tunnel. The denial came in a report Friday. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) interim General Manager Jack Requa had said the agency wasn’t aware that FEMS had switched from analog radios to encrypted Motorola Project 25 (P25) standard digital radios until after the Jan. 12 incident at WMATA’s L’Enfant Plaza Metrorail station, when problems with radio connectivity were seen as possibly hampering the rescue (see 1501220067) of passengers trapped in a smoke-filled train. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., urged WMATA and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments to improve communications about interoperability of emergency radios between area agencies (see 1501230066). Available information indicates FEMS radio encryption “does not appear to have played a role in the communications difficulties” that public safety personnel encountered during the rescue, HSEMA said in its report. HSEMA also said it found the D.C. government’s Office of Unified Communications (OUC) had coordinated with WMATA throughout the two years before it transitioned FEMS to the P25 radios and did 600 tests of the radios in every D.C. Metrorail station. OUC has fixed the radio connectivity issues in the L’Enfant Plaza station and is expediting a systemwide test of the radios, HSEMA said. A WMATA spokesman declined comment but noted the agency is waiting for the findings of the National Transportation and Safety Board, which he called the “only impartial agency conducting a fact-based investigation into this matter.”

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) said its top federal advocacy priority for 2015 is improving cybersecurity. “Our nation must do more to combat the asymmetrical, sophisticated threats our government networks face on a daily basis,” said NASCIO President Stuart Davis in a Thursday news release. NASCIO will seek more federal resources for state-level cybersecurity programs and better access to cybersecurity professionals, the group said. The group’s other top priorities include reducing regulatory hurdles to state-level information technology, FirstNet planning and collaborating with the federal government on improving broadband connections to schools and libraries.

Motorola Solutions said it invested in public safety software developer SceneDoc. Motorola didn’t disclose the terms of the investment, but said Thursday it’s part of the company’s “strategy to advance mission-critical communications by connecting public safety and commercial customers with real-time data and intelligence like never before.” Law enforcement and public safety personnel use SceneDoc’s software as a “trusted digital notebook” to provide communication among officers in the field, dispatchers, command centers and agencies, Motorola said.

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority was unaware until after a Jan. 12 rescue outside its L’Enfant Plaza Metrorail station that the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services (FEMS) department’s radios were encrypted, said WMATA interim General Manager Jack Requa Thursday during a WMATA board meeting. WMATA has faced scrutiny since the Jan. 12 incident because firefighters found their radios didn’t work at the L’Enfant Plaza station or in adjacent tunnels, potentially hampering efforts to rescue passengers stuck on a train filled with smoke (see 1501200067). WMATA and FEMS determined Jan. 14 that the FEMS encryption codes blocked communication in the station, because WMATA hadn’t calibrated its equipment with the same codes, Requa said. The two agencies have now calibrated those codes, he said. FEMS has been very open about its move to encrypt its radios, a FEMS spokesman said. The National Transportation Safety Board said it’s examining the radio connectivity issue as part of its overall investigation of the Jan. 12 incident, which left one passenger dead.

Windstream said it received all necessary approvals from state utility regulators for its planned spinoff of a real estate investment trust (REIT) with its fiber and copper assets, to be called Communications Sales & Leasing (CS&L). The IRS also has sent a “favorable letter ruling” on the REIT, Windstream said Wednesday. The REIT spinoff is still set to close during the first half of this year, with Windstream saying it’s now focusing on the plan’s final steps. Windstream Director Francis Frantz will be CS&L’s chairman and will lead the search for the REIT’s president and CEO, Windstream said. The telco announced its plans for the REIT spinoff in July (see 1408070047).

The New York Public Service Commission (PSC) is again delaying consideration of Comcast's planned buy of Time Warner Cable. Comcast and TWC agreed Tuesday to a PSC request to extend the deadline for a PSC vote on the deal until Feb. 26, more than a month past the previous deadline, which had been Thursday. The PSC must now issue a final order on Comcast/TWC by March 3.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) urged the state’s legislature Tuesday to cut $470 million in state telecom and TV taxes, the first in a series of $1 billion in cuts over the next two years. This year’s portion of the tax cut would save every Florida family “around $40 a year for spending as little as $100 a month between cell phone, cable and satellite bills,” Scott said in a news release. Florida levies a 9.17 percent tax on nonresidential landlines, wireless and cable services, and a 13.17 percent tax on satellite services.