Seattle passes the fiber (50 mega) buck

The unveiling of Gigabit Seattle yesterday is just the first step on a long road to building a fiber to the premises (FTTP) service for residents. The City of Seattle and the University of Washington have endorsed a plan by a consulting firm – Gigabit Squared – to “begin raising the capital needed” for a demonstration project.

Gigabit Seattle coverage

It’s not small change. The 200 miles of fiber needed to reach 50,000 homes and businesses in 12 neighborhoods will cost something like $50 million to install and light up.… More

Cellular sites have no impact on property values

Noise level does not equate to economic impact. Cellular tower opponents talk a lot (including on their mobile phones – go figure) and can be extremely disruptive at public meetings. Not to mention the damage they do to broadband improvement efforts. But their bark has no bite in the Silicon Valley real estate market.

Joint Venture Silicon Valley has completed a study of the impact of cellular sites on property values in Palo Alto, Redwood City, Saratoga and San Jose.… More

Eastern California lights up in July

“We have started and we will finish,” said Michael Ort, CEO of Praxis Associates, the company behind the Digital 395 project. “There have been people who have bet against us and that’s a great motivator. It’s going to happen.”

The ambitious, ARRA-funded network will connect Reno to Barstow, in the California desert east of Los Angeles, installing nearly 600 miles of fiber optic cable. Most of the path runs along U.S. 395, down the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada through towns like Carson City, Mammoth Lakes, Bishop and Ridgecrest.… More

Oh, you mean a Maxwell Smart home

“Chaos is an opportunity for people like me,” said Tom Kadlec, one of the founders of The Homeworks Group. They do the hard work of integrating and managing home automation systems for about a thousand subscribers. Both he and his partner have electrical engineering degrees, which is great for them but not so good for the home handyman who majored in, say, political science.

Come quick, 99. I’m surrounded by ARMed phones.

Protocol agnostic and easy to use: home automation needs heavy helpings of both if it’s to ever find its secret sauce.… More

Comments from 29 groups regarding CASF changes go into the official record

The dust has settled from the first round of comments regarding the California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC) consideration of new rules for California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) eligibility. Not everyone who filed made it through the screening process.

Last week, a total of 17 filings involving 35 organizations were submitted. Five [updated] were rejected by the CPUC’s legal department because of various mistakes. The CPUC has strict rules regarding who, when and how comments on proceeding are to be made.… More

Economic development top priority for Central Coast Broadband Consortium

“Broadband connectivity is the new deepwater seaport,” said Mary Ann Leffel, chair of the Central Coast Broadband Consortium’s (CCBC) economic development expert group and president of the Monterey County Business Council (MCBC). But it’s more than just a visit by a cruise ship. It’s about attracting and keeping businesses and creating jobs.

Economic development is the primary goal of the CCBC, explained Nancy Martin, CCBC executive team member and executive director of MCBC as she opened the discussion at the CCBC’s Get Connected conference she organized in Seaside on 6 December 2012.… More

Congresswoman Eschoo pushes for more broadband spectrum

Silicon Valley congresswoman Ann Eschoo wants to shake up the way that Washington manages and assigns spectrum. The goal is to free up a total of 500 MHz for wireless communications purposes. Much of that would come from turning over frequencies held by government agencies to public use. But some of it would come, willingly or not, from the private sector.

 

“We have to make freeing up spectrum a top priority,” she said at Joint Venture Silicon Valley's second annual wireless symposium, held on 2 November 2012 at Marvell Semiconductor Inc.… More

Mobile carriers' broadband coverage claims challenged by ISPs

Availability maps submitted by mobile telephone carriers are a problem for local Internet companies trying to expand and improve broadband service in California’s central coast region.

Representatives from six Internet service providers – Central Coast Internet, Charter, Cruzio, Razzolink, Redshift and Surfnet – participated in a workshop yesterday organized by the Central Coast Broadband Consortium (CCBC). A number of concerns were discussed, including construction permits, funding, and coordination with other utility and local government projects.… More

Consensus on broadband priorities, solutions emerges from CCBC conference

A series of workshops organized by the Central Coast Broadband Consortium drew about three dozen representatives from Internet service providers, local governments, economic development agencies and other companies and organizations interested in improving broadband access and infrastructure.

The first workshop brought together public works, planning and information technology managers from Salinas, Gonzales, Santa Cruz, Seaside, Watsonville, and Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito Counties. They reviewed the CCBC’s policy development and infrastructure inventory projects, and discussed how to make it easier to anticipate and meet future broadband needs.… More

More mobile phones in use worldwide than toothbrushes

If what Paul Jacobs said is true, it’s probably a good thing people are communicating by phone and not face to face. The CEO of Qualcomm made the claim at a conference organized by the Telecom Council of Silicon Valley.

His point was that mobile phones are ubiquitous and, because of that, can do more for healthcare than the humble toothbrush. Qualcomm has an interest in promoting new uses for mobile phones that make good use of the increasingly powerful and sophisticated chipsets, devices and services on the market.… More