Spreading high tech wealth and restricting self-employment on California governor’s to do list

14 February 2019 by Steve Blum
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California governor Gavin Newsom took aim at technology companies during his state of the state address on Tuesday. Although bullish on California’s high tech economy, he dangled the possibility of a tax on data…

California is proud to be home to technology companies determined to change the world. But companies that make billions of dollars collecting, curating and monetizing our personal data have a duty to protect it. Consumers have a right to know and control how their data is being used.

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T-Mobile’s merger with Sprint could get even closer scrutiny in California

13 February 2019 by Steve Blum
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Californian opponents of T-Mobile’s proposed takeover of Sprint want more hearings and another round of written evidence and rebuttals, before the California Public Utilities Commission moves ahead with approving or rejecting it. Prior to last week’s hearings, the CPUC in-house consumer advocacy unit – the public advocates office (PAO) – asked the administrative law judge hearing the case to, in effect, slow the proceeding down to give them time to review four thousand pages of testimony and evidence that T-Mobile and Sprint dropped on them.… More

Pai talks up rural 5G, but puts his money on 4G subsidies

12 February 2019 by Steve Blum
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Salinas windmill cell site

5G technology has a role to fill in rural broadband service, but it won’t be the kind of 5G that mobile carriers are hyping. That’s according to Federal Communications Commission chair (and Charlton Heston Courage Under Fire Award winner) Ajit Pai. He was speaking at rural broadband trade show in New Orleans last week.

There’s no makable business case on the horizon for densified 5G mobile networks in rural communities. AT&T dismisses rural 5G as an “infill” technology, and it and other carriers are not leaning on rural cities and counties for pole access, as they are in richer and more populated parts of California.… More

Crown Castle, PG&E punt fiber attachment dispute back to CPUC

11 February 2019 by Steve Blum
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Crown Castle and PG&E failed to reach agreement on pole attachment terms, as directed by the California Public Utilities Commission administrative law judge (ALJ) arbitrating their ongoing dispute. Instead, PG&E submitted its standard pole space leasing agreement, and Crown Castle submitted the same, with several modifications that make it more to its liking.

The heart of their dispute is that Crown Castle wants to buy attachment space on poles, and PG&E just wants to lease it to them.… More

Microtrenching fail drives Google Fiber out of Louisville

8 February 2019 by Steve Blum
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Jack rabbit 625

Google Fiber is bailing of Louisville, Kentucky because it screwed up its fiber build there. In an attempt to move quickly and save money, Google forgot the iron law of engineering:

Good, fast, cheap. Pick any two.

Google went with fast and cheap, and it turned out not so good. The problem was microtrenching, and its little brother, nanotrenching. Which particular techniques were the problem isn’t clear, but the result is. According to Google’s blog post yesterday…

We’re not living up to the high standards we set for ourselves, or the standards we’ve demonstrated in other Fiber cities.

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PG&E plans faster, wider power cuts during high fire threats in 2019

7 February 2019 by Steve Blum
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Pacific Gas and Electric will cut off electricity more automatically, more thoroughly and over a wider area when “extreme fire risk conditions” are present. That’s one of the wildfire risk mitigation measures it promises to implement this year.

Along with five other privately owned Californian electric utilities, PG&E submitted its wildfire prevention plan to the California Public Utilities Commission yesterday. It says it will inspect more lines, cut down more trees and harden more equipment in the coming months and years, as well as aggressively turning off power when the threat of wildfires is high.… More

T-Mobile tries to make California merger case with soft engineering and hard hype

6 February 2019 by Steve Blum
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Ebbc mobile broadband availability 2012

T-Mobile and Sprint claim that if they are allowed to merge, then California will see “enormous public-interest benefits”. That’s what the companies told the California Public Utilities Commission in testimony submitted as part of the regulatory review of their proposed deal. That claim is founded in large part on T-Mobile’s description of a glorious 5G future that includes download speeds of up to half a gigabit and coverage that reaches deep into the most rural areas of California.… More

T-Mobile-Sprint merger gets a hard look in California this week

5 February 2019 by Steve Blum
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California’s review of the proposed merger of T-Mobile and Sprint goes into high gear on Wednesday. The California Public Utilities Commission will hold a hearing to allow lawyers for the two companies and the organisations that oppose the deal to cross examine experts, and others, who submitted written testimony about it. Three days have been blocked out, although it might not go that long.

The best supported and most coherent opposition to the merger comes from the CPUC’s in-house watchdog unit, the public advocates office (formerly known as the office of ratepayer advocates).… More

Federal appellate judges skeptical of FCC’s net neutrality reasoning

4 February 2019 by Steve Blum
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Network neutrality advocates faced off against the Federal Communications Commission and its telecoms industry partners in a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. on Friday. For more than four hours, a panel of three federal judges grilled both sides as they considered whether the FCC acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” when it rolled back net neutrality rules in 2017.

The central question is whether broadband service is a simple telecommunications service – like phone service – or a value-added information service.… More

CPUC judge wants complex pole attachment issues to be even more complicated

1 February 2019 by Steve Blum
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Messy fiber attachments

Utility pole associations, which manage joint use of poles by electric utilities – privately and municipally owned – and telecoms companies of all sorts, should be regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission, according to a ruling by an administrative law judge (ALJ). The ruling focuses on a narrow dispute between two companies: big picture, it’s little more than advice to CPUC commissioners. But it’s bad advice.

The ruling concerns a dispute between Pacific Gas and Electric, which owns poles throughout northern California, and Crown Castle, which is an independent, competitive telecoms company that owns and leases fiber routes, and builds and operates cell sites.… More