The first application for construction (and maybe operations) subsidies from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) since the program was gutted by the California legislature landed in the hopper at the California Public Utilities Commission.
Frontier Communications is asking for a $1.8 million grant, without specifying how much, if anything, it’s willing to pay out of its own pocket. It wants the money to pay for a fiber to the home system in and around the remote San Bernardino County town of Lytle Creek…
Frontier’s proposed project will cover about 4.4 square miles and is a combination of middle-mile and last-mile infrastructure using Frontier’s existing poles and rights of way to deploy fiber-to-the-home (“FTTH”) facilities capable of providing High Speed Internet, Ethernet, and VoIP service with speeds of up to 1 Gbps download and 1 Gbps upload.
“Capable of” and “up to” are weasel words that incumbent telcos, like Frontier, put in ads and other marketing material with the intent of pulling the rug out from under consumers when they have the gall to ask for it. In its project summary, Frontier makes no promises about the service it will actually offer, or the price it will charge.
Frontier says it plans to serve 339 homes with the subsidy, which comes out to $5,300 each. But what Frontier doesn’t mention is that Lytle Creek is one of the blank spaces on its federally subsidised checkerboard. It’s sandwiched between areas where the Federal Communications Commission is paying for service at 10 Mbps down/1 Mbps up, which is below the otherwise federal standard of 25 Mbps down/3 Mbps up. The middle mile infrastructure that Frontier wants all Californians to pay for will support the promise, if not necessarily the reality, of modern service for some while condemning the rest to speeds consistent with 1990s DSL infrastructure.
The purpose of CASF is to extend the benefits of 21st century broadband service to all Californians. Frontier’s Lytle Creek proposal might do that for some. Before writing the check, the CPUC needs to make sure it will deliver it to all.