Two California lawmakers want to declare cell sites not a municipal affair

22 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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The new legislative year is bringing with it a new effort to further preempt local government authority regarding where and how cell sites can be built. Senate bill 649 was introduced last week by senator Ben Hueso (D – San Diego County), the chair of the senate energy, utilities and communications committee, and co-authored by assemblyman Bill Quirk (D – Hayward), who has been a good friend to mobile carriers in general, and AT&T in particular.… More

Make California broadband subsidy decisions on basis of impact, says CPUC draft

21 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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Click for the full analysis.

Given that there’s limited state subsidy money available for broadband infrastructure upgrades in California, it makes sense to spend it in a way that’ll have the greatest impact on the greatest number of people. That was a major concern at the last California Public Utilities Commission meeting, when some commissioners pushed back on proposed infrastructure construction grants from the California Advanced Services Fund, at least partly because it wasn’t clear how the projects that were on the table fit within overall, statewide priorities.… More

California broadband subsidies back on the table in Sacramento

20 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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The California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), which is California’s primary tool for subsidising new broadband infrastructure in under and unserved areas is once again in play in Sacramento. Friday was the deadline for lawmakers to introduce new legislation for the 2017 session, and four CASF-related bills are now in the hopper.

However, none of the bills are substantive at this point. All four are simply placeholders, awaiting agreement, action or obstruction from the players involved. Friday was the deadline for new bills, but once a bill has been introduced, it can be amended without limit, including replacing the text completely and substituting what amounts to a completely new bill – also known as gut and amend – almost right up to the end of the legislature’s session in August.… More

4K TV sales growing, with 20% U.S. market share in sight

19 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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About three-quarters of all large screen televisions – those more than 50 inches – that were sold last year in the U.S. (and worldwide) were 4K, ultra-high definition (UHD) sets, according to Paul Gagnon, the director of tv sets research for IHS Markit. By 2018, all but 100% of big screens sold will be 4K-capable. In raw numbers, the Consumer Technology Association – the trade association for the U.S. consumer electronics industry – estimates that more than 80 million 4K sets will be sold worldwide this year, and next year the total will be in the 100 million unit range.… More

Artificial intelligence naturally ignores bicycles

18 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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As someone who regularly spends several hours a week on a bicycle, wondering if the diesel rumble of a truck coming up behind me is the last sound I’ll ever hear, I was sorely disappointed to read that help, in the form of robotic vehicles, might be a long time coming.

A story by Peter Fairley on the IEEE Spectrum blog looks at the successes that self-driving car companies have had in developing software and sensors that can recognise other cars and predict their movements, and contrasts it with the failure to do the same with bicycles…

Nuno Vasconcelos, a visual computing expert at the University of California, San Diego, says bikes pose a complex detection problem because they are relatively small, fast and heterogenous.

… More

Verizon could close a big competitive gap with Charter's fiber

17 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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Verizon needs to build more than 100,000 new cell sites and add more fiber connectivity to close a capacity gap with its U.S. competitors, according to a report from New Street Research. And, the report concludes, buying Charter Communications – as rumors say it might – could help solve some of Verizon’s problems. It wouldn’t be much benefit to Charter, though.

The report estimates that when the number of cell sites and the amount of spectrum used is taken into consideration, Verizon has a bit more than half of the capacity per subscriber that AT&T and T-Mobile have.… More

The worse your broadband, the harder price hikes hit, FCC data says

16 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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Broadband service is getting more expensive, particularly if you’re on the slow side of the digital divide. The Federal Communications Commission just published its 2017 urban benchmark rate survey, which it uses to set prices and data caps for subsidised rural service – via the Connect America Fund, for example – as well as standards for lifeline service.

In 2016 (which is the benchmark year for 2017 rates), urban customers subscribing to packages with download speeds of 10 Mbps, upload speeds of 1 Mbps per second and a data cap of 100 gigabytes per month – in other words, the slowest and lowest service – paid $76.49 per month.… More

Competition, and something more, drives Comcast upgrade in Huntsville

15 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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Demand.

Chalk up another win for broadband competition. Comcast announced that it was expanding its next generation – DOCSIS 3.1 – cable modem footprint to Huntsville, Alabama, and would be offering gigabit-level service to at least some customers. Details on service locations, roll out schedule and prices were lacking, though.

What clearly isn’t lacking is a competitive threat. Huntsville’s publicly owned electric utility is in the process of building a fiber to the home network that will be operated by Google Fiber and offer gigabit service at about half the price that Comcast charges in the four cities where it’s already offering it.… More

No common carrier rules, but draft bill leaves room for net neutrality

14 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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Say goodbye.

A republican-backed bill introduced in congress in 2015 might be the best clue we have regarding where broadband regulation is headed at the federal level. Shortly before the Federal Communications Commission redefined broadband as a common carrier service, and then used that authority to establish a code of conduct for Internet service providers – the network neutrality rules – senator John Thune (R – South Dakota) and representative Fred Upton (R – Michigan) circulated draft legislation aimed at short circuiting that action.… More

Mobile carriers buy 70MHz UHF slice for $20 billion

13 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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The auction is over and mobile broadband carriers gained 70 MHz of spectrum in the 600 MHz band, at a cost just under $20 billion. After four cycles of downward bidding by television companies willing to sell their channel assignments followed by upward bidding by wireless companies wanting to buy them, the Federal Communications Commission’s incentive auction ended on Friday.

The downward, selling price auction ended last month, with TV stations willing to accept $10 billion in return for giving up 84 MHz of UHF spectrum.… More