Sprint relying on word games to reengineer its cellular network

15 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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Click for the big, ugly picture.

Mobilitie, a mobile telecoms infrastructure company, was hired by Sprint to install 70,000 new wireless sites as it tries to revamp its network and business. Fair enough. But then Mobilitie got cute when it started filing the necessary permit applications.

First, it adopted legal aliases – California Utility Pole Authority and California Transmission Network, LLC, for example – that have a vaguely official ring to them, and seem confusingly similar to the names of legitimate joint utility pole authority groups and electricity transmission organisations.… More

Is Atherton Fiber living in the real world? Part 2

14 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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Urban living, Atherton style.

An appallingly high take rate – 70% – and a vague reliance on third party ISPs to do the heavy lifting of achieving it are two reasons to be skeptical about Atherton Fiber’s plan to build a fiber to the home system that would reach all 2,500 households (there are no commercial properties as such) within the city limits, as discussed more fully in Part 1. It would not work in a typical Californian community.… More

Is Atherton Fiber living in the real world? Part 1

13 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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A deeper dive into the Atherton Fiber business model raises questions about its sustainability, given the assumptions that appear to have gone into it. The proposed fiber-to-the-home project would pass all 2,500 residences in Atherton. It seems there are no brick and mortar business customers there – the whole town is residential. Yes, it’s that exclusive.

The first red flag is an assumed take rate of 70% within four years. In a typical Californian community that assumption would be delusional.… More

Scraping up California legislature's telecoms road kill

12 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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The big impact telecoms legislation proposed so far in Sacramento this year is dead, the victim of opposition and inattention. That’s not to belittle the handful of telecoms bills awaiting action in August, but nothing that’s on the table right now would have the sweeping impact of some of the ones that didn’t make it.

Top of list was assembly bill 2395, a measure custom written by AT&T and carried by Evan Low, an accomodating assemblyman from Silicon Valley.… More

Atherton FTTH plan has seed money and a quick timeline

11 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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Click for the big picture.

An Atherton venture capitalist put $500,000 into a fiber to the home project there. According to papers filed with the California Public Utilities Commission, Michael Farmwald made the investment in Atherton Fiber LLC, via his Skymoon Ventures Management Company, to get the ball rolling…

To finance the project, Atherton Fiber plans to raise approximately $3 million via a traditional investment mechanism and other interested Atherton residents. The remaining funds would be raised by selling interested property owners a “set” of bundled fibers to their home that they would own directly.

… More

Driverless car insurance offered with vague exclusions

10 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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A British company claims to be the first to offer driverless car insurance. In a commendably plain english document, the Adrian Flux insurance company offers to cover autonomous car owners against hacking, bad software and the operator’s failure to assume manual control, should it become necessary.

The one thing the policy doesn’t do directly is define “driverless car”. It has definitions for all kinds of things, including what “car” means (a passenger vehicle within certain weight limits that’s not designed to carry cargo or hold more than six people).… More

Google, Facebook, Microsoft follow Ford's vertical integration path

9 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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Another big, transpacific fiber cable is now lit. Less than two years after it was announced, the FASTER consortium has completed construction of a link between Bandon, Oregon and two landing sites in Japan, with a further extension to Taiwan. The group’s membership includes Google as well as several Asian telecoms companies, including China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, KDDI and Singtel. NEC built it.

Google is taking one-sixth of the capacity, 10 terabits per second out of a total of 60 Tbps.… More

California broadband policy bills await action in August

8 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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Right after summer break.

Other than the yet-to-be-defined regulatory reform package aimed at overhauling the California Public Utilities Commission, only a handful of telecoms-related bills will remain on the table when the California legislature returns from its month long summer break in August.

Assembly bill 2570 would make it harder for people receiving lifeline telephone subsidies to switch plans by setting a two month waiting period and would require the CPUC to reimburse phone companies relatively quickly or pay penalties.… More

Mobile lifeline fraud will only get worse

7 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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No carrier left behind.

An FCC commissioner wants Californian regulators, along with their counterparts in Oregon, Vermont and Texas, to answer questions about how eligibility for lifeline telephone service subsidies is managed. All four states have their own process for determining whether a subsidised lifeline customer meets income eligibility standards and verifying that any given household only receives one subsidy.

Republican commissioner Ajit Pai sent largely identical letters to the heads of the four public utilities commissions, including California Public Utilities Commission president Michael Picker, asking, among other things how they “determine whether the one-per-household rule is being enforced?”… More

Effort to shed more light on the CPUC moves into the dark

6 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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Nightfall.

The dust has settled in Sacramento and lawmakers are out of town on their regular summer break. But the details of changes proposed for telecommunications policy are still hazy.

The legislative package that will determine how telecoms companies and services, and other utilities, are regulated (or not) in California is still largely unwritten. That’s the plan agreed with the governor to change the way the California Public Utilities Commission does business. At this point, it looks like it will comprise five bills, although as the process grinds through that number could shift up or down:

  • Senate bill 215, by Mark Leno (D – San Francisco), would tighten restrictions on private conversations and other ex parte communications between CPUC commissioners and interested parties while some proceedings are under way.
… More