Rumored FCC upload standard not designed for transparency


Might be substandard, but impossible to tell for sure. Click for bigger version.

The FCC’s definition of adequate broadband service as 4 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up has long been outdated. The California Public Utilities Commission has been working with a minimum of 6 Mbps down and 1.5 Mbps up since 2012, when it adopted it as the threshold for determining which areas would and would not be eligible for broadband construction money from the California Advanced Services Fund.… More

Nimby laws will keep Google Fiber out of its own backyard

3 June 2014 by Steve Blum
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All Google has accomplished so far by including 5 Silicon Valley cities on its list of 34 candidates for fiber build-outs is to prove that California is a land of opportunity for obstructionists and not for broadband. To build on its home turf, Google Fiber has to accept that state and local laws allow anyone with an objection – no matter how trivial – to snarl and delay construction for months or even years.

The clearest warning comes in Palo Alto’s response to the Google Fiber City Checklist.… More

Mono County homes line up for gigabit service

Not well served. Yet.

Four small communities in southern Mono County could be getting gigabit class fiber to the home service by the end of 2015. The California Public Utilities Commission is scheduled to consider a resolution to spend $4.7 million on an FTTH project for the Aspen Springs, Chalfant, Crowley Lake and Sunny Slopes areas at its 26 June 2014 meeting.
The project was proposed last year by Race Telecommunications, one of five the company submitted in the current round of applications to the California Advanced Services Fund.… More

Broadband as vital as water to Santa Cruz County economy

1 June 2014 by Steve Blum
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Upgraded broadband infrastructure is at the center of Santa Cruz County’s proposed economic development plan, and the public is being asked to comment on it. Santa Cruz County supervisors voted unanimously to start a formal 45-day review process for the draft Economic Vitality Plan that sets out 7 steps for improving the local economy.

Broadband facilities would be as important as any other type of public infrastructure, such as roads and water. The document is laced with references to broadband development goals.… More

Microsoft Office market grip loosens as the cost of free drops

31 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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How much more popular do the descendants of OpenOffice need to be before they reache a tipping point? That is, the point at which open source productivity apps tip Microsoft Office into a terminal downhill market share slide.

The answer is not much. The Apache Software Foundation says that its child – Apache OpenOffice – has been downloaded more than 100 million times. That doesn’t represent the size of the user base by a long shot – the figure would include downloads of updates and browsing by the curious – but it’s not unreasonable to think it’s somewhere in the tens of millions range, albeit at the lower end.… More

Build economic demand to grow broadband supply

30 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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There’s no credible argument that telecoms companies are dedicated to anything like universal high speed, low cost Internet service. AT&T, for example, wants to send you a bill no matter where you live, but picks and chooses where to build fiber – “high potential” growth areas like central business districts and pricey new subdivisions – and where to rely on hit and miss mobile infrastructure, like inner cities and rural communities.

You can call that cherry picking, as I do, or redlining, as Harold Feld blogs in a couple of 5 minute videos (h/t again to Connie Stewart).… More

Long shot for federal broadband grants in California

29 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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Federal broadband infrastructure grants are pretty thin. Earlier this year, congress approved $10 million a year for five years for rural gigabit pilot projects. The FCC is looking at putting money into rural broadband experiments, but isn’t saying how much. And the US department of agriculture’s rural utilities service – which usually just makes loans – has $13 million available now for “advanced communications technology in rural areas”, via its Community Connect grant program.… More

The name of the gigabit game is fractal hopscotch

28 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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Look familiar?

Cox is the latest major Internet service provider to announce that it’s getting into the gigabit business, saying that upgrades…

…will start with new residential construction projects and new and existing neighborhoods in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Omaha. In all Cox locations, the company will begin market-wide deployment of gigabit speeds by the end of 2016.

If those three cities sound familiar, it’s because CenturyLink has already targeted Omaha and Las Vegas, and Phoenix is one of the blessed 34 cities on Google’s maybe list for fiber-to-the-home (but not CenturyLink’s).… More

CPUC to incumbents: upgrade broadband by April or else

27 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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New draft rules for governing the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) were released today by the California Public Utilities Commission. If approved, incumbent telephone and cable companies would be given a hard and short deadline to upgrade existing service areas, or face the prospect of competition from CASF-funded independents.

The CPUC is implementing a law passed last year by the California legislature that added $90 million to CASF and allowed independent Internet service providers and local governments to apply for grants and loans to build new broadband infrastructure, albeit under tight restrictions.… More

Bill hiking broadband construction costs approved by California assembly

27 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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The initial roll call, subject to revision.

Taking little more than a minute, the California assembly approved assembly bill 2272 this afternoon. The measure would add broadband infrastructure subsidised by the California Advanced Services Fund to the list of publicly funded projects that are subject to what are called “prevailing wage” requirements. That would mean that all work done – including work paid for by private matching funds – would be done according to union pay rates and rules.… More