Resources and analysis for community broadband
On Friday, California governor Jerry Brown signed assembly bill 57 into law, which puts a limit on the delays local agencies can throw up in front of wireless broadband facilities. A city or a county now has 150 days to either find a reason to say no to an application for new wireless infrastructure, such as a cell tower, or grant the permit. For collocation of new gear on existing towers, the deadline is 90 days.… More
California now has “the nation’s best digital privacy law“, or at least that’s how the Electronic Communications Privacy Act is being described in the press. Governor Brown signed the bill on Thursday. It requires a police officer or any other government employee or agency to get a search warrant before seizing electronic data or trying to access it without permission.
According to the analysis prepared for the state senate…
… MoreThe warrant shall describe with particularity the information to be seized, including by specifying the time periods covered, and as appropriate and reasonable, the target individuals or accounts, the applications or services covered, and the types of information sought;
The warrant shall require that any obtained information unrelated to the objective of the warrant shall be sealed and not subject to further review, use, or disclosure unless a court issues an order that there is probable cause to believe that the information is relevant to an active investigation, or is otherwise required by state or federal law.
Self-driving cars might be less than five years away. Toyota is planning to put one on the road in time for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 and Elon Musk has said that Tesla might have one even earlier than that. In fact, Musk has said that some existing Teslas could soon get a software update that will let them go driverless – or at least do the driving while a human watches – on highways and parallel park themselves.… More
Assembly bill 57 will become law. Governor Brown announced today that he signed the measure, which would give local governments five months to make a decision on permit applications for new wireless facilities, and three months to decide on additions to existing facilities. If the application is still pending when the clock runs out, it’ll be deemed approved.
Brown vetoed four bills that would have made various changes to the way the California Public Utilities Commission conducts its business, including senate bill 660, which would have put tighter limits on closed door conversations between commissioners (and key staffers) and people with business that’s in front of the commission.
If you want faster and cheaper broadband service, the surest way to get it is to threaten incumbents with competition. We saw it in Santa Cruz where, after years of charging high speed prices for low speed bandwidth, Comcast suddenly upgraded its network to support Silicon Valley-levels of service. The spur was a combination of legislative pressure, in the form of new eligibility for infrastructure construction subsidies, a county plan to create a fiber backbone connecting key economic areas and, critically, the announcement of a city-backed fiber to the home project.… More
Most of the issues between Frontier Communications and competitive local exchange carriers in California regarding Frontier’s proposed purchase of Verizon’s wireline telephone systems have been worked out. A settlement agreement was filed with the California Public Utilities Commission that addresses most of the objections that CLECs raised regarding the deal.
Boiled down, most of the settlement consists of Frontier saying it’ll honor Verizon’s current contracts with CLECs and keep current terms and interconnection agreements in effect for at least three years.… More
Sunday is the last day for California governor Jerry Brown to either veto bills passed by the legislature this summer, or allow them to become law. Amongst the measures in the big stack on his desk right now are several that will affect broadband service and infrastructure, particularly in regards to how it’s regulated.
The bill with the most potential impact is assembly bill 57, which would put teeth in the Federal Communications Commission shot clock for wireless permits.… More
As in California, Charter Communications is asking New York state regulators for permission to buy Time Warner cable systems. New York Public Service Commission staff have identified markets where both companies operate, but have not fully built out digital systems, and are recommending, among other things, that Charter be required to upgrade all of its customers – old and new – if the deal is allowed to go through…
… MoreNew Charter should be required to develop a strategic implementation plan to build-out its all-digital network to the remaining unserved or under-served Charter and Time Warner franchise areas in New York.
Follow the law, do your job and be polite. That’s the boiled down substance of most of a six page code of conduct that was approved last week by the California Public Utilities Commission. It applies to the commissioners themselves and they voted unanimously in favor of it, after developing it in committee meetings over the past few months. The document repeatedly admonishes commissioners to be respectful, to be civil and professional, and to “refrain from belligerent comments, shouting, or actions that could be construed as threatening or intimidating”.… More
A study by four researchers – Ramakrishnan Durairajan, Paul Barford, Joel Sommers and Walter Willinger – comes to the conclusion that the more conduit is shared by different fiber optic network operators, the greater the risk of disruption, essentially due to the fact that one careless backhoe operator can take out several key routes all at once. It’s a counter-argument, they say, to those (such as myself) who push for policies that encourage installing as much and as many fiber strands as possible any time a street is cut open…
… MoreA striking characteristic of the constructed US long-haul fiber-optic network is a significant amount of observed infrastructure sharing.