TURN for the better, but not the worse among CASF hopefuls

The Utility Reform Network (TURN) likes the idea of making California Advanced Services Fund subsidies available to more than just traditional telephone companies. But not to just anyone, saying “TURN shares the Commission’s concerns…that ratepayer money used to fund the CASF program must be protected from waste, fraud and abuse.”

The Commission’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DRA) echoed those concerns, calling for safeguards if CASF eligibility is expanded.

TURN’s answer is to apply the standards set by the CPUC three years ago when it gave CASF matching grants to successful applicants funded by the federal stimulus program (ARRA).… More

Performance, not passion, builds broadband projects

Most of the opening and reply comments about expanding eligibility for California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) subsidies, my own included, can be summed up in three words: gimme, gimme, gimme.

Grant writers want to write grants, public agencies want to back fill budgets, independent ISPs want to play like the big boys and the big boys – telephone and cable companies – want to keep it for themselves. No surprise.


The road to broadband is paved with competence.
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The weather is here

22 December 2012 by Steve Blum
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A stormy morning on Monterey Bay got me thinking about Blueseed, a plan to anchor a high-tech haven twelve nautical miles off the San Mateo County coast, in international waters.

It looks like a floating city in conceptual images, but if it actually puts to sea version 1.0 would have to be a converted cruise ship. If it takes off, then maybe enough capital will be there for custom ship building. For now, they’re working with a six-figure seed fund.… More

Not much difference between airline passengers and a bag of potatoes


This is your captain speaking.

Good news from Boeing, just in time for the holiday flying madness. With the growing popularity of on-board WiFi, engineers there needed to figure out how it propagates in an airline cabin.

There’s no mathematical model for predicting what happens to WiFi signals when you have a few hundred people packed together inside of a metal tube. So they came up with a testing protocol.

Boeing is proud of the fact that it only requires about ten hours to complete the series of tests.… More

FCC crowdsourcing mobile broadband measurements

20 December 2012 by Steve Blum
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Can y’all hear me now?

Via Jim Warner, U.C. Santa Cruz network engineer and chair of the Central Coast Broadband Consortium’s technical expert group: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will ask the public to download an app and take mobile broadband coverage measurements…

The FCC and its contractor SamKnows will soon be announcing a program to collect crowd source data on mobile broadband performance. A program will trigger tests like iperf and ping and report the results along with handset and location information to a central database.

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Verizon says chill out, only a million California homes have crap Internet


One million homes.

AT&T, Verizon and a posse of community broadband advocates joined the debate over eligibility requirements for California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) grants and loans. The advocacy folks want fewer or no restrictions on who can apply for broadband infrastructure construction subsidies. The telcos like the current rules which limit the money to, well, telcos.

Like the cable lobby, the big telcos are most offended by the idea that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) might give money to competing providers in underserved areas, where broadband service doesn’t meet the minimum standard of 6 Mbps down and 1.5 Mbps up.… More

Nothing wrong with competition – CASF update

I filed reply comments today regarding the California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC) review of eligibility requirements for construction subsidies from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF). The first round of comments were reasonably evenly split between the ayes and the nays. My comments put me in the yes camp too.


To baldly go.

In particular, I took issue with the cable television lobby, the California Cable and Telecommunications Association (CCTA). What they want is to allow existing telecoms companies to be able to get funding for any eligible area under normal rules, but put ridiculous restrictions on local governments, independent ISPs and other non-traditional broadband providers.… More

The problem with FTTH is there's no problem

It’s not about finding a mass market solution. It’s about finding a sufficiently acute mass market problem.

The struggle to develop a general fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) or premises (FTTP) business model for city-wide deployments doesn’t result from a market failure. Quite the contrary. It’s evidence that the laws of supply and demand are in full effect.


Demand, meet supply.

People generally get the broadband service someone else – a business or government agency mostly – is willing to give them for the price they’re willing to pay.… More

Gigabit Seattle's financial vehicle is still a concept car

Car of the Future as conceived by Studebaker's Director of Styling, Raymond Loewy, in the August 1950 issue of Science and Mechanics. Loewy wrote about the new styling for tomorrow's rocket age population. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Thanks for the down payment. Just need to find someone to co-sign the loan.

“Gigabit Squared is providing the capital, although details of the financing model aren’t clear,” wrote Stacey Higginbotham in a story for GigaOM following Gigabit Squared’s announcement last May that it had formed a partnership with Gig.U and was bringing $200 million to the table to fund fiber networks in as many as six cities.

The financing model was equally unclear last week when the City of Seattle and the University of Washington blessed a plan by Gigabit Squared to build a demonstration fiber-to-the-premises network in 12 Seattle neighborhoods.… More

Opportunity to leave consumers to their own devices

We’re in a world where it’s increasingly assumed that you’re carrying a screen all the time – tablet, smart phone or laptop. Maybe you’ll even have Apple’s long rumored iWatch on your wrist.

Westjet, a Canadian bargain airline, is thinking about ripping out the entertainment systems from its planes, saving 500 kg in weight and who knows how much in upkeep, and replacing it with a WiFi-based system that streams video to passengers’ BYOD of choice.… More