California broadband subsidy grab tagged a tax bill, heads to assembly vote

31 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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It was too much to hide.

Slower Internet speed standards and rules designed to funnel broadband subsidy money to AT&T and Frontier Communications are queued up to be decided by the California assembly. The appropriations committee released assembly bill 1665 from the "suspense file" last week and sent it on to a full floor vote, which could happen as early as today. Only one committee member dissented – William Brough (R – Orange County) voted no.… More

Bill ending local control of cell site permits, light pole rentals advances in California senate

30 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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Open access to city-owned street light poles at below market rates and a fast track for cell site approvals has landed on the floor of the California senate. Last week, the appropriations committee gave the go ahead to senate bill 649, which, if passed, would slash city and county control of municipally owned vertical infrastructure and require automatic approval of any "small cell" proposed for installation in the public right of way or in commercial and industrial zones.… More

Mobile voice migration hits the halfway mark, but don't confuse it with broadband

29 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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Voice telephone service has finally tipped to predominantly mobile, according to statistics compiled by the federal department of health and human services. The latest survey shows that a bit more than half the homes in the U.S. no longer use landline telephones to make or receive calls…

In the second 6 months of 2016, more than one-half of all households (50.8%) did not have a landline telephone but did have at least one wireless telephone. More than 123 million adults (50.5% of all adults) lived in households with only wireless telephones; over 44 million children (60.7% of all children) lived in households with only wireless telephones.

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Texan judges and juries can't hold high tech hostage any more


Goodbye to all that.

A particularly pathological cottage industry in east Texas is coming to an end, much to the delight of high tech entrepreneurs, and they have a low tech court case to thank for it. The federal supreme court ruled that patent trolls can’t go shopping for the most easily bamboozled judges and juries, but instead have to file law suits in the home state of the companies they’re trying to shake down.

According to a story in the Hill, the decision came in a case where Kraft – decidedly not a troll – tried to sue an Indiana-based company, TC Heartland, over water flavoring technology in a Delaware-based court…

The ruling will have broad implications for patent lawsuits, which are frequently moved to certain districts that have a track record of being favorable to patent infringement claims.

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Mobile competition brings big benefits to urban consumers

27 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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Not so bright in rural California

Competition works. Even in the telecoms business. Referencing an article in the Wall Street Journal, FierceWireless is reporting that the cost of mobile data has dropped 13% in the past year, and the reason is increasingly heated competition between the four major carriers, with reintroduction and aggressive marketing of unlimited data plans at the top of the list…

In a detailed article on the topic, the Wall Street Journal reported that the cost of wireless service plans fell 7% in March and an additional 1.7% in April.

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More voices join California broadband subsidy policy debate

26 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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A potential overhaul of the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) – the state’s primary broadband infrastructure subsidy program – was mooted at a California Public Utilities Commission workshop yesterday. The alternative scenarios that were presented were, to a large extent, wish lists from incumbents and, particularly, heavily weighted toward supplementing AT&T’s and Frontier’s business models – carving out federally funded areas, extending existing copper networks or focusing just on their territories for example.

Incumbents had good words for that approach – not surprising – but for the most part participants vocally opposed dropping the CASF performance threshold to 6 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds, from its current 6 Mbps down/15 Mbps up level.… More

Google lights up muni broadband model in Huntsville

Three takeaways from Google Fiber’s announcement that it’s now an active tenant on the Huntsville, Alabama municipal fiber network:

  • The customer owns the marketing buzz. Huntsville put up the capital, Google buys access to end users and gets the headlines.
  • Google continues to pull back from the capital intensive business of owning and operating infrastructure.
  • Competition matters.

Google Fiber’s blog post belongs to the happy, happy, joy, joy school of public relations, but also makes it clear that it’s no longer interested in sinking its own capital into broadband infrastructure…

As an enterprising city, Huntsville explored new ways to connect residents and small businesses and is building a municipal fiber network through Huntsville Utilities.

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Formal opposition to California broadband subsidy grab filed

24 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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Although objections have been raised, legislative staff analyses have skated around the question of opposition to assembly bill 1665, which would effectively turn California’s broadband infrastructure subsidy program into a drawing account for AT&T and Frontier Communications.

No longer. The Central Coast Broadband Consortium (CCBC) submitted a letter, formally going on record opposing AB 1665. It highlighted the top three reasons it is bad public policy and bad for Californians…

  • Setting California’s minimum broadband standard at 6 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds is a step backwards, at a time when we must all move forward together.
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Support for PG&E as a telecoms competitor, if that's all it is

23 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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I’ll show you a pole attachment.

Seven objections, of one variety or another, were filed against PG&E’s bid to be certified as a telecommunications company by the California Public Utilities Commission. Links to all are below.

Three came from industry players, including Crown Castle, which has a growing and competitive fiber footprint in California, and two lobbying fronts, one for cable operators and the other for competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs), which are companies that largely rely on reselling access to physical facilities owned by big telcos and fiber network owners.… More

Telcos' California cash grab gets a nod at the CPUC

22 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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Three parallel efforts are underway to rewrite the rules for California broadband infrastructure subsidies and use the money to support substandard service and technology deployed by AT&T and Frontier Communications. The legislature is considering assembly bill 1665, which would, among other things, add $300 million to the California Advanced Services Fund for broadband construction and operating costs, and effectively give it to AT&T and Frontier. The lower service standards and eligibility restrictions in the bill would keep independent Internet service providers out of most of rural California.… More