Of the 13 new projects proposed for construction subsidies from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) in May, only four are unchallenged: three proposed by Charter Communications in Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties, and one proposed by a wireless Internet service provider in Sonoma County. The rest face objections from incumbent Internet services providers that want to protect their turf.
Ten challenges, plus a snarky letter from AT&T, were filed against broadband projects being reviewed for CASF grant eligibility by yesterday’s deadline. Under the rebooted CASF rules, an incumbent provider has, effectively, five weeks to submit evidence that it offers broadband service at the California legislature’s pathetic minimum of 6 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds in census blocks where a CASF infrastructure grant is requested.
None of the publicly distributed challenge notifications contain any details about incumbents’ broadband coverage or availability. That data is submitted separately to CPUC staff. But if you want to read the notices, you can find them here.
Charter Communications and Frontier Communications are challenging each other’s projects. Frontier is fighting Charter’s request for $277,000 to build 12 miles of new lines in Perris in Riverside County; Charter objects to Frontier’s $1.7 million project in the Taft area of western Kern County.
Charter also joined with Comcast and, sorta, AT&T to try to block a $5.3 million proposal from Cruzio to offer fiber-to-the-home service to 13 mobile home parks in Santa Cruz County. Comcast and Charter filed standard challenge notices and presumably provided valid broadband availability data to CPUC staff; AT&T sent a letter helpfully reminding CPUC staff to read the rules.
The most prolific challenger, though, is Digital Path, a Butte County-based wireless ISP that apparently wants to kill six proposals to build out broadband service to nearly a thousand homes in Lassen, Modoc and Plumas counties. It’s challenging Frontier’s $11.8 million DSL upgrade plan for the northeastern corner of California, and four FTTH and one FTTH/wireless hybrid projects, also totalling $11.8 million, proposed by Plumas-Sierra Electric Cooperative.
I’m collecting the 2019 CASF infrastructure grant proposals here. Information about the program is here. All the CASF-related documents I’ve collected in 2019, including the challenge notifications, are here.
The Central Coast Broadband Consortium assisted Cruzio with its Equal Access Santa Cruz grant application, and I was a part of that effort. I’m not a disinterested commentator. Take it for what it’s worth.