DISH can’t and won’t be a competitor in California’s mobile marketplace, T-Mobile/Sprint merger opponents say

24 December 2019 by Steve Blum
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Dish kangaroos ces 5jan2015

T-Mobile wants to set up DISH as a new mobile network competitor, to ease anti-trust problems with its proposed merger with Sprint. The California Public Utilities Commission has to decide whether or not that’s a credible ambition. Initial briefs in what should be the closing round of arguments in the CPUC’s merger review were filed on Friday (links below). With DISH declining to say much on its own behalf, T-Mobile (and Sprint, but it’s the junior partner in this game) had to to make the case.… More

T-Mobile hypes California benefits of Sprint merger, defends DISH in CPUC filing

23 December 2019 by Steve Blum
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Tmobile sf civic plaza 5dec2019

Arguments for and against the proposed T-Mobile/Sprint merger were filed at the California Public Utilities Commission on Friday (links are below), which was also the last day of testimony in the federal anti-trust trial launched by California’s attorney general and others opposed to the deal. Closing court arguments are scheduled for 15 January 2020. The CPUC’s review will run at least into February, and possibly longer.

T-Mobile and Sprint (but it’s T-Mobile running the show) said, as they have all along, that the deal will produce nothing but wonderfulness for California, and adding DISH to the mix just makes it super awesome.… More

Another $13 million approved by CPUC for California broadband infrastructure subsidies

20 December 2019 by Steve Blum
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Frontier Communications won’t be able to double dip on California and federal broadband subsidies, and Charter Communications won’t have to follow rules that tie price commitments to infrastructure subsidies. Yesterday, the California Public Utilities Commission made those decisions as it approved California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) grants totalling $12.7 million for five projects, two by Frontier and three by Charter.

Add in the six CASF grants approved two weeks ago and one approved in September, and you get a 2019 CASF subsidy total of $25.5 million.… More

FCC allows big ISPs to add performance enhancing juice to speed tests, WSJ says

19 December 2019 by Steve Blum
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Syringe

The fast, reliable broadband service claims endorsed by the Federal Communications Commission are based on test data that’s been doctored by California’s monopoly model Internet service providers, according to a Wall Street Journal article Shalini Ramachandran, Lillian Rizzo and Drew FitzGerald (h/t to Jim Warner for sending me the link).

Annual speed measurements taken to evaluate U.S. broadband service are “juiced” by AT&T, Comcast, Charter Communications and others, who know ahead of time where the tests are run and afterwards lobby the FCC to suppress bad results and hype good ones, the story says…

[AT&T] pushed the Federal Communications Commission to omit unflattering data on its DSL internet service…

In the end, the DSL data was left out of the report released late last year, to the chagrin of some agency officials.

… More

AT&T, Comcast “continue to frustrate” CPUC inquiries “even on safety matters”

18 December 2019 by Steve Blum
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AT&T and Comcast blew off demands for information about broadband pricing from California Public Utilities Commission staff, so now the public advocates office, which requested the data, is asking the commission to force the companies to comply and to acknowledge their legal responsibility to fully answer questions about service, safety and other issues.

The PAO sent a detailed questionnaire to Internet service providers in California, including telephone companies and cable operators, during an ongoing inquiry into the affordability of broadband and other essential utility services in California.… More

Half a gigabuck offered for federal rural broadband subsidies, but California faces challenges

17 December 2019 by Steve Blum
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Rus reconnect eligibility map yolo 12dec2019

Another round of broadband infrastructure subsidies is on the way from the federal agriculture department. A six week application window for the Rural Utilities Service’s (RUS) Reconnect program opens on 31 January 2020, with $512 million on the table.

It appears that the problems with the ReConnect program that shut California out of the first round of grants and loans earlier this year haven’t been fixed. On the face of it, the basic eligibility criteria are pretty simple…

90 percent of the proposed funded service area must not have sufficient access to broadband.

… More

California net neutrality law stuck in deep freeze as federal appeal drags on

16 December 2019 by Steve Blum
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California’s network neutrality law won’t be enforced for at least a few more months. Last year, California attorney general Xavier Becerra agreed not to enforce the 2018 law enacted by California senate bill 822 while the legality of the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of net neutrality rules was still being challenged at the federal level. On Friday, the wait got longer as four new petitions asking for rehearings of an October federal court decision were filed with the federal appeals court based in Washington, D.C.… More

Without a broadband cop, big ISPs write their own rules

13 December 2019 by Steve Blum
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Reno 911

Tomorrow is the second anniversary of the Federal Communications Commission’s vote to end network neutrality protections. At the time, lobbyists for monopoly-model incumbents, like Comcast and AT&T, fell all over themselves promising that regulated or not, they would abide by open Internet principles.

That promise wasn’t kept, according to a blog post by Public Knowledge’s Lindsay Stern (h/t to the Baller list for the pointer)…

Researchers from Northeastern University and University of Massachusetts Amherst found that almost all wireless carriers pervasively slow down internet speed for selected video streaming services.

… More

New free trade treaty between Mexico, Canada and U.S. backstops digital business safeguards

12 December 2019 by Steve Blum
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Datacenter

The text hasn’t been published yet, but statements from people involved indicate that online liability protections were included in the final version of a trade agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico (a draft version is here). Those protections are said to closely follow the language in a 1996 law passed by the U.S. congress that puts responsibility for online content on whoever posts it online, rather than the operator of the platform or server that hosts it.… More

February oral arguments set for appeal of FCC pole ownership preemption

11 December 2019 by Steve Blum
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Los angeles streetlight cell 1 23oct2019

We might know by next summer if local governments will be able to lease public property, such as street lights, at fair market rates to private wireless companies, or whether those rates will be capped at $270 per pole per year.

The challenge by cities and counties to the Federal Communications Commission’s preemption of local ownership of public assets in the public right of way, and control of the public right of way itself, will be heard in Pasadena in February.… More