Please before you fire off a hate mail telling us that Uber is based in San Francisco (The Valley) we know this already. Since Uber expanded outside of the Valley to “everywhere else” we’ve written about Uber on occasion. They are really great people, and each city office is a corporately owned office, they are actually run more like franchises. Their Washgton DC and New York office are really good to us (disclosure Uber likes what we’re doing on our road trip and supplies us with uber cards when we are in their cities. They care about the rest of “everywhere else” like we do)

Uber has been served with a cease and desist from the Division of Standards of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Division of Standards is using the National Institute of Standards and Technology as a vehicle to try and push their anti Uber agenda. Massachusetts contends that, because the National Institute of Standards and Technology doesn’t have guidelines in place for GPS location technology, Uber can’t legally operate in Boston.

Uber’s says in this blog post, that they’ve had their legal team go over this with a fine tooth comb and they feel that they are not in any kind of violation. As such they plan on continuing to operate in Boston, despite the Cease & Desist, as they have since October 2011.

The sedan hailing app service was recently under fire in Washington DC. On July 11th we reported that Washington DC area cabbies had solicited the help of Washington DC City Councilwoman Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3). Cheh has proposed legislation that would make the minimum fare for an Über ride $15 which is a five times higher than the minimum fare for a normal sanctioned district cab.

By the end of the day that had been squashed as locally based celebrities and even members of congress took to Twitter to defend Uber.

NBC’s Luke Russert took to Twitter to express his dismay:
“I’m willing to bet #DC cabbies after 12am will say, ‘cash only, no credit’ or claim that their credit machine ‘is broken.’” Russert tweeted earlier in the day.

He wasn’t alone, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) tweeted about the issue from his official Twitter handle @Jasoninthehouse, “Uber fans unite! D.C. Council wants to keep fares high. This is wrong! #UberDClove political website rollcall.com reported.

After that public outcry on Twitter Cheh removed the Uber portion of that Taxi bill.

For now Bostonians, fear not as Uber is still in service until the Division of Standards comes with a better argument.

Linkage:

Here’s Uber’s website

Here’s their blog post

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more stories from “everywhere else”

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