The art of estimating broadband subsidy costs by households in rural California

2 October 2013 by Steve Blum
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It’s one house, but how many homes?

Maybe 800 homes on the western side of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains will get upgraded broadband service, many via fiber to the home connections, if a pair of draft resolutions is approved by the California Public Utilities Commission.

CPUC staff is recommending giving Ponderosa Telephone Company a total of $2.7 million from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF). About $1.8 million would go to an FTTH build in two small Madera County communities, Beasore and Central Camp, and $900,000 would help pay for a DSL upgrade and limited FTTH service in the Big Creek area of Fresno County.… More

Santa Cruz County supervisors move forward with comprehensive broadband policy


Plenty of coverage, but it’s not much good without the capacity to go with it.

After being duly warned about the World Bank’s global domination conspiracy, the danger of fluoridating water and the threat to honey bees posed by mobile phones, the Santa Cruz County, California board of supervisors approved recommendations for encouraging and assisting the deployment of new and upgraded broadband infrastructure.

County staff presented the findings of a report on barriers to construction of broadband facilities in general, including fiber optic lines, rural terminal boxes and, yes, wireless facilities.… More

City of Benicia releases RFP for industrial broadband

30 September 2013 by Steve Blum
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Major California long haul fiber routes converge underneath the Benicia bridge, in the northern San Francisco Bay Area.

In July, the Benicia, California city council decided to revitalise a major industrial park and surrounding areas by upgrading broadband infrastructure. Today, the City began the project by releasing a Request for Proposal that asks prospective participants to offer solutions, in terms of both the technology and business model to be used.

As stated in the RFP…

The City of Benicia has earmarked $750,000 for investment in the Project.

… More

Pinnacles broadband upgrade recommended for CASF funding

29 September 2013 by Steve Blum
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Pinnacles’ wide and open vistas are beautiful to see, difficult to serve.

With only a couple hundred subscribers spread over an area of California larger than Alameda County, Pinnacles Telephone Company has to do a big job with tiny resources. Even so, it has consistently worked to modernise its plant in southern and eastern San Benito County over the years, replacing copper links with fiber and offering Internet service, via both DSL and fixed wireless connections.… More

A roach clip for Blackberry

28 September 2013 by Steve Blum
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The familiar scent of Blackberries.

Wall Street investors seem happy to take what Fairfax Financial Holdings is offering for Blackberry and let the dwindling mobile phone company waft away in the wind. Subtract out the cash that Blackberry is holding, and the net sale price is about $2 billion, a sad end to a psychedelic slide that began at $83 billion five years ago.

Like Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia, Fairfax’s offer seems to be based on the chemically impaired notion that Blackberry isn’t in the final stages of a terminal crash.… More

Competitive ADSL upgrade subsidies recommended for California's Mendocino County

27 September 2013 by Steve Blum
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DSL upgrades installed by a competitive local exchange carrier in two Mendocino county towns will be largely paid for by the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), if the California Public Utilities Commission approves draft resolutions released yesterday. With AT&T and Verizon quietly shutting down DSL service in rural areas of California, these types of projects might be a way to avoid forcing residents to rely on the costly wireless service preferred by the incumbents.

Both projects were proposed by WillitsOnline.… More

Priority for new funding for California broadband consortia goes to counties without one

26 September 2013 by Steve Blum
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CPUC wants to fill in the blanks.

A new round of grant applications is under way for regional broadband consortia in California. First priority will go to proposals for the nine counties that are not currently covered by a consortium. Existing consortia, which cover the other forty-nine counties in California, can also apply for additional money, although they’ll be second in line.

The California Public Utilities Commission gave notice this afternoon that it’ll be accepting proposals to spend the remaining $950,000 in the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) that’s been earmarked for consortia.… More

Surprisingly, UN broadband report advocates free speech and competitive markets

25 September 2013 by Steve Blum
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Best interests. Common good. Benign intentions. And all that.

The United Nations, in particular its education, science and cultural organisation (UNESCO), has often been criticised for kowtowing to authoritarian, repressive and socialist regimes when media, markets and speech are on the table. At best, it tends to offer up meaningless generalities that offend no one.

So it was a pleasant surprise to read The State Of Broadband 2013: Universalizing Broadband, a report prepared by two UN offshoots, the International Telecommunications Union and UNESCO.… More

Sheer tenacity primes Boron FTTH for California broadband subsidy


Boron upgrades from twenty mules to a gigabit.

On its fourth try, Race Telecommunications seems set to get public grant backing to build a fiber-to-the-home system in the small Mojave desert town of Boron. California Public Utilities Commission staff have released a draft resolution that, if approved by commissioners, would spend up to $3.4 million from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to pay 60% of the cost of building a fiber optic network to serve about 900 customers in the Boron area, plus cover the cost of any state or federal income tax on the grant.… More

CPUC approves broadband testing, mapping money

23 September 2013 by Steve Blum
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Good for another year.

The California Public Utilities Commission waved through next year’s budget for the California Advanced Services Fund, voting unanimous approval at last week’s meeting.

The plan includes a steep jump in administrative costs, without giving much detail on the reason for the increase. The CPUC’s division of ratepayer advocates asked for more transparency after the first draft of the budget resolution was released. There wasn’t much more detail about overhead costs in the approved version, though.… More