It was long expected. On Monday, assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D – Yolo) gutted an affordable housing bill and substituted text that would, if enacted, reaffirm that California’s broadband standard is stuck in the 1990s at 6 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds, and make it even more difficult to use the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to bring modern service to rural communities.
Assembly bill 570 is the cable and telephone industry’s response to senate bill 1130, which is carried by senator Lena Gonzalez (D – Los Angeles) and would raise California’s minimum broadband speed to a symmetrical 25 Mbps down and up. The AB 570 language tracks with talking points pushed by Comcast’s and Charter Communications’ Sacramento lobbying front, the California Cable and Telecommunications Associations (CCTA), and parroted by the California Emerging Technology Fund, a non-profit that takes its money from cable and phone companies these days.
They’ll be the big winners even if all AB 570 does is kill off SB 1130.
But it might go farther than that. AB 570 would also allow government agencies to tap into CASF and use it to backfill information technology and telecoms budgets. Up until now, CASF’s primary job has been to pay for upgrading rural broadband infrastructure, at least when it wasn’t being gamed by incumbents. The perilous condition of state and local government finances this year will make any new source of operating revenue very attractive to lawmakers.
That’s just in case the millions of dollars they’re paid by the likes of AT&T, Frontier, mobile companies and the cable industry isn’t sufficient motivation to embrace AB 570.
Aguiar-Curry rubbished SB 1130 during a California Forward-sponsored broadband policy webinar in May, even though she said she hadn’t read it yet. She was also a key backer of 2017’s AB 1665, which lowered California’s broadband standard to 6 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up, and turned CASF into a piggy bank for monopoly model incumbents.
This time, she’s taking the lead.
I’ve advocated for SB 1130, and for other useful changes to CASF. I am involved and proud of it. I am not a disinterested commentator. Take it for what it’s worth.