Jon Brodkin

California is on the verge of accepting $1.86 billion in federal broadband grant funds, despite the Trump administration telling states they cannot enforce net neutrality rules on any Internet service provider that gets a piece of the grant money.

LinkedIn beat two lawsuits over its practice of scanning users’ browser extensions, with a judge granting the Microsoft subsidiary’s motion to dismiss the cases. The users who sued LinkedIn failed to adequately allege that they have standing to sue because neither asserted that they “had browser extensions installed that conveyed private information to LinkedIn,” ruled Judge Vince Chhabria in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

Texas cannot enforce a law’s requirement that websites block minors from seeing harmful speech, the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled. Big Tech lobby groups challenged the Texas “law’s requirement that certain social media-based ‘digital service providers’ monitor and filter content accessible to known minors to prevent exposure to several categories of potentially harmful speech,” judges wrote.

California can keep enforcing rules that require AT&T to offer basic phone service to new customers in its wireline territory, following a federal judge’s ruling. AT&T sued California in May in a bid to end the state’s Carrier of Last Resort rules that require it to offer telephone service to any potential customer in its territory.

California state regulators say AT&T lied to the Federal Communications Commission in an attempt to shut off its old copper phone network without providing an adequate replacement. “AT&T asserts that California seeks to prohibit or hinder wireline carriers from discontinuing copper facilities and investing in fiber,” said a June 15 filing by the state of California and the California Public Utilities Commission. “Indeed, AT&T has been making this argument for years.

Starlink has started charging a $10 monthly rental fee for hardware in a shift away from its longtime practice of selling hardware to customers for a one-time charge. Starlink residential ordering pages now show an upfront hardware cost of $0 and a monthly kit fee of $10, similar to the hardware rental fees long charged by cable and telecommunications companies.

Musi, a free music streaming app that had tens of millions of iPhone downloads and garnered plenty of controversy over its method of acquiring music, has lost an attempt to get back on Apple’s App Store. US District Judge Eumi Lee in the Northern District of California dismissed Musi’s lawsuit against Apple with prejudice and sanctioned Musi’s lawyers for “mak[ing] up facts to fill the perceived gaps in Musi’s case.” Judge Lee found that Apple can remove apps “with or without cause,” as stipulated in the developer agreement.

Verizon has started enforcing a 365-day lock period on phones purchased through its TracFone division after the Federal Communications Commission waived a requirement that Verizon unlock handsets 60 days after they are activated on its network. Verizon was previously required to unlock phones automatically after 60 days due to restrictions imposed on its spectrum licenses and merger conditions that helped Verizon obtain approval of its purchase of TracFone.

Before he became Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr seemed to be a big believer in the agency’s role as an independent branch of the federal government.

Rejecting opposition from the cable and real estate industries, California Gov Gavin Newsom (D-CA) signed a bill that aims to increase broadband competition in apartment buildings.