Local challenges to FCC streetlight preemption order move ahead

22 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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Charlottesville streetlights

A federal appeals court commissioner has, for now, set a schedule that sorts out the various challenges to last year’s Federal Communications Commission decisions that preempted local ownership of streetlights and similar infrastructure, and put tight restrictions on how local governments manage public right of ways. Last week Peter Shaw, a commissioner for the ninth circuit federal appeals court in San Francisco, met with attorneys for local agencies and associations that are challenging various aspects of the order, and with lawyers for mobile carriers that are pretending to be upset with the FCC’s decisions, but are actually jumping in on its side.… More

5G hype gets a reality check in 2020

19 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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It looks like 2020 will be the year that genuine 5G smartphones will finally be in the hands of consumers. Two developments this week cleared away significant uncertainty about who will be offering 5G phones, when it will happen and whose technology they’ll use.

The two companies settled a long running legal dispute over intellectual property rights to core 5G technology, including a deal for Apple to buy modem chips, which do the heavy processing work of wrangling radio waves into data streams at one end and reading them at the other.… More

T-Mobile, Sprint scramble to keep merger deal alive in California

18 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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The odds of T-Mobile getting permission from federal and California regulators to buy Sprint are getting longer. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the federal justice department is reluctant to approve the deal in its current form. That has a familiar ring to it – it was the same kind of antitrust concerns that led to the justice department and Federal Communications Commission killing Comcast’s bid to take over Time Warner’s cable systems and do market consolidating swaps with Charter in 2015.… More

Pai promises $20 billion for rural broadband, but offers little hope for meaningful change

17 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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It makes for good headlines for a slow Friday at the white house, but so far that’s about all that’s resulted from a $20 billion pledge to support rural broadband development. Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai joined president Donald Trump to hype 5G plans and spectrum auctions, and tossed in a new rural broadband initiative at the end.

Sorta.

Pai’s “Rural Digital Opportunity Fund” is just the next reboot of the long standing Connect America Fund (CAF) subsidy program, that similarly poured billions of dollars into rural broadband projects, according to a story by Jon Brodkin in Ars Technica…

The new program will be part of the Universal Service Fund (USF), and it will be similar to an existing USF program that began during the Obama administration.

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Utilities shouldn’t bear damage costs alone, California wildfire report recommends

16 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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California governor Gavin Newsom’s wildfire “strike force” published its findings on Friday. The report offers suggestions for preventing, or at least reducing, catastrophic wildfires, and for paying for the damage when they do happen. The short answer is spread the costs around.

One of the central concepts floated by the report is to change California’s strict liability standard, which requires electric and telecoms utilities to pay for all wildfire damages if their equipment is involved in starting a fire, whether or not they did something wrong.… More

With a $35 million side deal, CETF tells CPUC it backs T-Mobile’s takeover of Sprint

15 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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T-Mobile is getting a little help from a new Californian friend. In addition to a steady trickle of support letters sent to the California Public Utilities Commission by groups that are not well known for broadband advocacy or telecoms expertise, T-Mobile now has the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) on its side as it tries to gain approval for its takeover of Sprint.

CETF will leave its seat on the opposition side of the table and “enthusiastically and wholeheartedly support” the merger.… More

Crown Castle won’t have to wait for new PG&E pole attachment terms, CPUC says

12 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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PG&E wants a do-over on a utility pole access decision by the California Public Utilities Commission, but it’ll have to comply with it in the meantime. Wednesday, the CPUC’s executive director refused to delay execution of an arbitrated contract between PG&E and Crown Castle while commissioners decide what they’re going to do with the appeal filed by PG&E last month.

The CPUC’s decision gives PG&E 45 days to approve or deny Crown Castle’s pole attachment requests.… More

U.S. house passes net neutrality bill but leaves the devil in the details and its fate to the senate

11 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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El diablo

A network neutrality bill cleared the democrat-controlled U.S. house of representatives yesterday and is on its way to the U.S. senate, where republican leader Mitch McConnell has been widely quoted as saying it’s “dead on arrival”. The vote in the house was “mostly along party lines”, with only republican – Bill Posey (R – Florida) – joining democrats, according to The Hill.

The text of the bill hasn’t been posted yet. The first draft simply reinstated the Obama-era net neutrality rules and blocked the Federal Communications Commission from making any changes.… More

Net neutrality bill with financial consequences passes Colorado legislature

10 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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Colorado is about to have a network neutrality law that has teeth and a chance of surviving federal court challenges. Senate bill 78, which was just passed by the Colorado legislature, says that Internet service providers that don’t abide by net neutrality principles can’t get state broadband deployment subsidies, and might even have to return money previously awarded if they’re caught violating those rules in the future.

It’s a partisan issue. All republicans in both the Colorado house and senate voted against it; all democrats voted for it.… More

Comcast has to explain why it’s okay to start cherry picking rich, rural customers right now

Tesoro viejo youtube

The California Public Utilities Commission won’t jump the gun and give Comcast permission to compete directly with the Ponderosa Telephone Company. At least not yet. Comcast has to first explain why past CPUC decisions don’t apply to its request for permission to offer telephone service in Tesoro Viejo, an upscale master planned community of 5,200 homes in Madera County. Among other things, those rules protect highly subsidised rural telephone companies from competitors that want to cherry pick affluent customers in densely populated exurban developments, and ignore people in poorer and more sparsely populated communities.… More