Google publishes broadband manifesto for cities

9 March 2014 by Steve Blum
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In Kansas City, my crews don’t wait for inspectors, the inspectors wait for them. We work with communities that make it easy for us. If you make it hard on us, enjoy your cable connection.
Milo Medin, head of Google Fiber, 24 October 2013.

If you want Google to run fiber through your city, be prepared to clear the path. That’s the message Google delivered to the 34 cities that it’s considering for the next round of fiber to the home build-outs last month.… More

Eastern Sierra consortium presents plans for building broadband out from Digital 395


Click for the full presentation

With the Digital 395 fiber optic backbone complete – running more than 500 miles from from Reno down the eastern side of California to Barstow – the focus in the region is on hooking up last mile broadband projects and extending middle connectivity to areas it doesn’t reach.

Julie Langou, the project manager for the Eastern Sierra Connect Regional Broadband Consortium, presented a plan for building out from the Digital 395 fiber route at the annual meeting of regional broadband consortia in Sacramento earlier this week.… More

Rural broadband appeals flood into the FCC


Round up twice the usual number of suspects.

There’s no lack of interest in the FCC’s rural broadband experiment. By 5:00 p.m. California time, more than 500 expressions of interest had been filed electronically with the FCC and posted on its website (h/t to The Baller Herbst List for pointing me to the link). The total appeared to be climbing, and I’m guessing that the FCC will be accepting letters at least until midnight Midway Island time, if not well into the weekend.… More

California broadband priorities by the numbers

6 March 2014 by Steve Blum
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It’s hard enough just with apples.

Measuring where broadband needs are and setting priorities for meeting them is an objective, quantitative process for many regional broadband planners in California, while others focus on qualitative assessments. Representatives from fourteen regional broadband consortia met for two days in Sacramento earlier this week, largely to talk about how the California Public Utilities Commission should set priorities for spending subsidy money on broadband infrastructure projects in the state.

There was no single approach presented that works everywhere.… More

Golden Bear fiber plan not sturdy enough to survive incumbent challenges

5 March 2014 by Steve Blum
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The two thousand mile, $120+ million Golden Bear middle mile fiber network is officially dead. Snaking through the canyons and river valleys of far northern California, the project was touted as a way of bringing fast, inexpensive backbone connectivity to areas far removed from bandwidth-rich regions to the south.

Effectively, backers were asking for 100% grant funding from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF). Nominally, the limit is somewhere between 60% and 70%, depending on the level of broadband service, if any, that is available.… More

Open and early application window considered for California broadband grants

4 March 2014 by Steve Blum
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At the ready.

The next round of applications for broadband infrastructure construction subsidies from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) might be accepted on a rolling first come, first served basis, as soon as this summer. That was one of the options discussed this morning by California Public Utilities Commission staff at a statewide meeting of regional broadband consortia in Sacramento.

The CPUC is working on new rules for CASF grants and loans, to allow independent ISPs and local governments to participate in the program, as approved by the state legislature last year.… More

Testing students tests broadband in California

3 March 2014 by Steve Blum
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More complicated than sending a note home to mother.

The first step in identifying broadband availability gaps in California is defining how much and where bandwidth is needed. Education is a major driver of bandwidth demand, particularly as new methods for measuring how well California’s children are being taught come into effect. That initiative – the so-called Smarter Balance Assessment – replaces pencil and paper tests with online computers. But the initial guidelines drawn up by education officials for estimating the broadband speeds necessary are too simplistic, according to California Public Utilities Commissioner Catherine Sandoval.… More

$130 million available for broadband infrastructure grants in California

2 March 2014 by Steve Blum
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We found the money.

The California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) will be topped up to the $315 million limit set by law by mid–2016, thanks to a hike in a surcharge added to phone bills that was approved last week by the California Public Utilities Commission. But much of it is already spent or earmarked, so the amount available for broadband infrastructure construction grants is likely to be $130 million, plus or minus a few million, the next time the CPUC accepts applications.… More

Bitcoin exists to make it possible for people to make their own bad decisions

1 March 2014 by Steve Blum
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Where’s the fashion police when you need them?

Knee jerk calls to regulate virtual currencies, in order to protect us from a repeat of the total collapse of the Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange this week, prove two things: 1. there are people in Washington (and, I wager, Sacramento) who must do nothing all day except see what’s trending on Twitter and paste top tweets into boilerplate bills, and 2. there’s a dangerous misconception that personal online behavior can be regulated.… More

When communications go down, communications companies fail to communicate

28 February 2014 by Steve Blum
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No one picked up the phone until a bullet hit a PG&E transformer.

More than ten months on, the motive and people behind fiber cuts and gun shots south of San Jose last year are still a mystery, according to a briefing given to the California Public Utilities Commission yesterday. The incident happened on 16 April 2013, knocking out Internet service to thousands of AT&T customers. A PG&E substation was also damaged, although no power outages resulted.… More