Telephone deregulation bill amended by California senate committee, but it’s still a hot mess

11 July 2019 by Steve Blum
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Deregulation of telephone service – and with it, telecommunications infrastructure – moved ahead yesterday in the California senate’s energy, utilities and communications committee. Backed by AT&T, Frontier Communications, Comcast and other monopoly model incumbents, assembly bill 1366 was approved on a largely positive, but not quite unanimous vote. It extends a ban on regulation of voice over Internet protocol service (VoIP) by the California Public Utilities Commission and other state agencies. As the shift from old style, regulated telephone service to unregulated VoIP continues, the effect is to allow telcos and cable companies to back out from under the CPUC’s jurisdiction.… More

California senate committee considers AT&T-backed bill to end telephone service regulation

10 July 2019 by Steve Blum
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Darth leia 625

A bill that would extend California’s ban on regulation of “Internet protocol enabled” services, including voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) service, is due for a hearing in the California senate’s energy, utilities and communications committee today. Assembly bill 1366, authored by Lorena Gonzalez (D – San Diego), would allow AT&T, Frontier Communications, Comcast, Charter Communications and other big, monopoly model incumbents to do an end run around California’s laws, according to the California Public Utilities Commission.… More

California-funded fiber keeps (most) quake hit communities connected

Digital 395 19sep2013

I planned to write about Trona and Searle Valley today, but not with earthquakes in mind. Instead, I was going to look at a recent California Public Utilities Commission ruling that, in effect, disavowed a previous and pusillanimous decision to deny broadband infrastructure grants in those two towns. That’s for later. For now, it’s about the eastern California communities that got state and federal broadband grants and, as a result, maintained modern, gigabit-class broadband connectivity even as two major earthquakes – 7.1 and 6.4 magnitude – and a continuing swarm of fore and aftershocks hit.… More

5G phones must clear economic, technical hurdles before breaking into the mass market

8 July 2019 by Steve Blum
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The market for new smartphones is slowing. The global market is approaching saturation, where everyone who might use one has one, and annual sales are dropping. The pace of improvements is slowing, too. The marginal attraction of new apps and more powerful and faster hardware is diminishing.

According to a story in Digital Trends by Andy Boxall, the tide turned last year…

In 2018, smartphone sales numbers stopped growing, according to two data analysis companies, Strategy Analytics and Counterpoint Research.

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The eternal why not WiFi question has an eternal answer

5 July 2019 by Steve Blum
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The retro look.

Every so often someone asks me something like why can’t we just use WiFi to deliver broadband service? For those of us who’ve been working in the community broadband sector for a decade or more, the question was settled with the collapse of the Great Muni WiFi Bubble more than ten years ago. But for most, that’s a relic of the distant and dim pre-iPhone past, when rocking good service was measured in kilobits and the fastest way to download a movie was to drive to a store and rent a video.… More

FCC’s preemption of San Francisco broadband ordinance gets slapped by U.S. house of representatives

3 July 2019 by Steve Blum
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John wayne slap

Democrats in the U.S. house of representatives want to block plans to preempt San Francisco’s broadband access ordinance. Last week, the house voted more or less on party lines to prevent the Federal Communications Commission from implementing new rules that would overturn any local regulations that require landlords to give competitive Internet service providers access to wiring inside their buildings.

The language was inserted by California house member Katie Porter (D – Orange) into an appropriations bill.… More

Maine puts buy net neutral requirement on state, but not local agencies

2 July 2019 by Steve Blum
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Network neutrality is on the books in Maine. Governor Janet Mills signed legislative document 1364 into law last week. When it goes into effect later this year, the new law will require Internet service providers to sign net neutrality agreements when they do business with state agencies. They’ll have to pledge not to block or throttle Internet traffic on the basis of content, or engage in paid prioritisation – in other words, create fast lanes for their own content or for other customers…

E.

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FCC’s pole preemption commandeers City of Whoville, court told

1 July 2019 by Steve Blum
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Grinch

Eleven organisations and/or groups of organisations jumped in on the side of challengers to FCC decisions preempting local and state control of public right of way management and ownership of assets, such as streetlight poles, located there.

Five of the amicus curiae – friend of the court – briefs filed with the federal appeals court in San Francisco came from municipal electric utilities and associations representing them. The state of Oregon, an association representing Washington state cities and a group led by New York City offered supporting arguments, and the County of San Diego sent an endorsement letter.… More

AB 1366 will effectively end telecoms regulation in California, CPUC says

28 June 2019 by Steve Blum
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Cpuc graphic voip vs pots 24jun2019

Update: AB 1366 will be heard in the senate energy, utilities and communications the week after next (h/t to Adam Bender at Communications Daily for the heads up).

Assembly bill 1366 will block modernisation of California’s telecommunications grid and allow telephone and cable companies “to disregard California laws”, according to a position paper unanimously adopted by the California Public Utilities Commission yesterday. The commission’s opposition comes ahead of a California senate hearing on the bill scheduled for the week after next.… More

Comcast guilty of slamming, has “technological and monopolistic” power over customers, judge rules

27 June 2019 by Steve Blum
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A $3.6 billion case against Comcast was whittled down to a $9.1 million fine plus refunds to affected customers (with 12% interest) by a Seattle judge in a lawsuit brought by the Washington attorney general. Initially, the consumer action accused Comcast of deceiving customers when it sold them service plans that covered “inside wiring”, but excluded wiring that’s inside of walls. Additional allegations relating to way Comcast sells service plans were added later.

King County Superior Court Judge Timothy Bradshaw ruled that the “inside of walls” exception wasn’t deceptive or unfair, but Comcast’s sales tactics were both.… More