Nobody says it like Linda.
Just before the clock hit midnight last night, California governor Jerry Brown signed assembly bill 1665 into law, but vetoed senate bill 649.
AB 1665 takes effect immediately. It lowers California minimum broadband service standard to 6 Mbps download/1 Mbps upload speeds and adds $300 million to the California Advanced Services Fund for broadband infrastructure, to be spent under rules will give it to AT&T and Frontier in exchange for token upgrades. That they would, in most cases, be making anyway.
Unless the legislature overturns Brown’s veto – an unlikely scenario – SB 649 is dead. It would have forced cities and counties to lease streetlights and other vertical infrastructure to wireless companies at a price far below market value, and would have given them open access to most other publicly-owned property.
In his veto message, Brown said making it easier to deploy wireless technology was a worthy goal, but SB 649 was tipped too far in favor of wireless companies…
There is something of real value in having a process that results in extending this innovative technology rapidly and efficiently. Nevertheless, I believe that the interest which localities have in managing rights of way requires a more balanced solution than the one achieved in this bill.
Brown is setting the stage for another attempt next year. It’s a safe bet that it’ll happen. Getting access to street light poles and traffic signals, among other things, and rolling back the ability of local governments to manage permits for wireless infrastructure is a top priority of telecoms lobbyists. Particularly mobile carriers, but also wireline telcos and cable companies that see wireless technology as a way of supplementing their existing service.
Or in the case of Frontier and AT&T, using it as an excuse to downgrade infrastructure by ripping out rural copper networks and replacing them with fixed wireless systems that, at best, will arguably meet the new, lower service standards approved by Brown.