Steve Blum's Blog

Nevada County FTTH project gets new lease on life

10 January 2019 by Steve Blum
casf, cpuc, ftth, spiral

Update: the CPUC unanimously approved the transfer of Bright Fiber Networks, and the $16 million CASF subsidy, to Race Telecommunications this morning.

The California Public Utilities Commission is scheduled to vote today on whether or not Race Telecommunications should be allowed to take over ownership of Bright Fiber Network, which received a $16 million subsidy from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) in 2015 to build an FTTH network to serve 1,900 homes near Nevada City in Nevada County.… More

Eight essential characteristics of 5G networks defined by Verizon CEO

9 January 2019 by Steve Blum
5G, CES2019, mobile broadband, verizon

Hans Vestberg, Verizon’s CEO, did a rockstar, black t-shirt keynote at CES in Las Vegas yesterday. Vestberg took over the top spot at Verizon last year. As he often did in his former job as head of Ericsson, Vestberg offered a clear and credible explanation of what 5G networks and technology – particularly, Verizon’s – will deliver.

According to Vestberg, the eight “currencies”, or defining characteristics, of 5G are…

Peak data rate of 10 gigabits per second.

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Huawei to Intel: so long, and thanks for all the fish

8 January 2019 by Steve Blum
ARM, CES2019, huawei, Intel, zte

The two big Chinese players – Huawei and ZTE – have a low profile in Las Vegas. The troubles that the two companies have had this past year took a toll. ZTE was shutdown for a time by the U.S. government and a very senior Huawei executive was jailed in Canada, pending extradition to the U.S. Both companies have been accused of being too cosy with the Chinese government. Neither company held their usual media extravaganzas at CES this year.… More

5G is about video and gaming, says Qualcomm exec at LG press event

7 January 2019 by Steve Blum
4k, 5G, CES2019, lg, qualcomm

The big benefits of 5G technology and networks will be old benefits, just more of them. 5G will be sold to consumers as a way to watch high bandwidth video and play fast twitch games. Judging from LG’s opening press conference at CES in Las Vegas this morning, 5G service is all about 8K video streaming, instant 4K video downloads and low latency multiplayer gaming.

This limited focus might be industry-wide. The 5G announcements were made by a Qualcomm executive, Jim Tran, vice president of product management.… More

Five consumer technology challenges will decide who owns the future

6 January 2019 by Steve Blum
automobiles, CES2019, innovation, iot, mobile broadband

The innovation capital of Earth is Las Vegas for the coming week, as hundreds of thousands of technology makers and breakers, and buyers and sellers converge on the event formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show. Most of what’s on display is as boringly mainstream as clock radios and console televisions were at the first CES in 1967.

But there will be a handful of technologies and prototypes amidst the chaos that will offer clues to what our world will be in 2067, and that’s what I’ll be looking for…

New smartphone form factors – It’s an accident of history that networked, pocket-sized super computers are called phones.

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Zorro in, Yoda out as a new political era begins in California

5 January 2019 by Steve Blum
broadband, california, cpuc, gavin newsom, public policy

California has had three democratic governors in the past 75 years: Pat Brown, Jerry Brown and Jerry Brown’s chief of staff. And the chief of staff – Gray Davis – didn’t end well. That changes on Monday, when Gavin Newsom is sworn in.

Jerry Brown earned his reputation as the wise old man at the California capitol. But he’s also a skilled operator, with the finest political mind in California. He would jump into a fight when it was both necessary and winnable, and he rarely, if ever lost.… More

Fabricated sales forecasts are a bad basis for handing out broadband “adoption” grants

4 January 2019 by Steve Blum
broadband adoption, casf, cpuc

The California Public Utilities Commission launched a new, $20 million taxpayer-funded broadband “adoption” program last year. It was included in the $330 million gift to Frontier and AT&T (and Comcast and Charter and…) that the California legislature approved in 2017. The CPUC isn’t setting a quantitative adoption target, and is simply acknowledging that “the number of subscriptions to broadband service has been growing annually in California and adoption will inevitably increase”. Instead, the program is built around digital literacy training, and free Internet access points and equipment.… More

AT&T’s theory of Evolution assumes its customers aren’t highly Evolved

3 January 2019 by Steve Blum
4G, 5G, att, mobile broadband

AT&T subscribers will get 5G on their smartphones soon. No, not 5G service. Just a “5” and a “G” and a little bitty “_^E” at the top of their screens, where it now says “4G”. It’s a branding move, and not a particularly honest one. About a year ago, AT&T announced it was relabelling its 4G upgrades as 5G _^Evolution (that’s what the little _^E stands for).

According to a story in Fierce Wireless by Mike Dano…

AT&T…introduced the “5G Evolution” marketing label to cover markets where it offers advanced LTE network technologies…AT&T has argued that such technologies pave the way for eventual 5G services, though critics have argued that AT&T’s “5G Evolution” marketing moves only serve to sow confusion among consumers.

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U.S. broadband is expensive, even more so where bundles aren’t available

2 January 2019 by Steve Blum
cable, fcc, monopoly, rural broadband, wireless broadband

The U.S. is in the bottom half of the broadband price league table, according to a report by the Federal Communications Commission. It was published last February, but I just unearthed it and had a chance to take a hard look at the numbers. When you take both standalone and bundled Internet service packages into account, and weight it by the FCC’s market share figures of 25% standalone and 75% bundled subscriptions, the average monthly price ranges from $38 per month to $74 per month, depending on speed.… More

New year but old questions for technology and telecoms policymakers

1 January 2019 by Steve Blum
monopoly, muni broadband, netneutrality, privacy, public policy

Five major broadband issues will top the public policy charts in California and at the federal level in 2019. In no particular order…

Net neutrality – The ball is in a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., where arguments will be heard in February over whether the Federal Communications Commission acted properly in 2017 when it declared broadband is not a telecommunications service. California’s net neutrality law is on hold until that case plays out, which could take years.

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