California’s primary broadband infrastructure subsidy fund will grow by about $70 million, if the California Public Utilities Commission approves a proposal to nearly double the tax that pays for it.
The California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) gets its money from a tax on phone calls made within California. That’s source of revenue is on the decline. The CPUC can collect up to $66 million a year for the fund (more, under certain circumstances), and sets the tax rate accordingly. During the first three years of the commission’s current five year authorisation, the CASF tax rate was set at about half a cent on the dollar – 0.56%. Because of the decline in intrastate telephone revenue, that rate would have led to a five year deficit of more than $100 million in money available for broadband infrastructure subsidies.
The deal on the table would raise the rate to 1.019% for the final two years the CPUC is allowed by law to assess the CASF tax on phone bills. CPUC staff estimates that would bring the annual take up to the annual $66 million limit, and hold the five year deficit at $53 million.
Most of the money in CASF goes towards building networks, but not all of it. Some of it pays for broadband promotion and other programs. The table below shows my calculations. Bottom line, there would be about $216 million available for new broadband infrastructure grants, instead of about $145 million, as I estimated in June.
That’s a help. More Californians will get the broadband service they need. But CASF will soon run dry, likely this year. More than $500 million was requested in the last round of infrastructure grant applications in May. And the CPUC has authorised – but not yet implemented – an extra round of applications to backfill bids for federal broadband subsidies in October. With the California legislature’s failure to address the state’s broadband and broadband funding deficits in its recently concluded session, what we see (or not) is all we’re going to get.
CASF Infrastructure Account, assuming surcharge increase to 1.019%
| Authorised – total | $575,000,000 | |
| Infrastructure shortfall (est.) | ($47,248,062) | |
| Infrastructure Account net of shortfall | $527,751,938 | |
| Infrastructure awards as of 31 Dec 2019 | $271,333,358 | |
| Infrastructure grants awarded in 2020 | $10,825,350 | |
| Cumulative admin overhead as of 30 Jun 2019 | $16,732,595 | |
| Estimated admin overhead FY 2019-25 | $13,142,082 | |
| Total Infrastructure Account spent/encumbered | $312,033,385 | |
| Funds remaining for new CASF infrastructure grants | $215,718,553 |