Mobile carriers get a three year exemption from environmental reviews and local restrictions on emergency generators in California

6 October 2020 by Steve Blum
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Generator

Emergency power generators installed near macro cell sites everywhere in California won’t have to go through a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review and must be approved by local governments within 60 days if the paperwork is in order, under a bill just signed into law by governor Gavin Newsom. This exemption begins on January 1, 2021 and expires three years later, unless the legislature extends it.

Assembly bill 2421, carried by Bill Quirk (D – Alameda), says that “an emergency standby generator that serves a macro cell site as a permitted use and requires a local agency to review a permit request to install an emergency standby generator on an administrative, nondiscretionary basis”, if it meets certain requirements, according to the bill analysis prepared by the senate’s governance and finance committee.… More

California broadband subsidy proposals go into extra innings, with new rules and more competition

5 October 2020 by Steve Blum
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Extra innings

The fate of the 54 pending proposals for broadband infrastructure grants from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) won’t be fully known until early next year, assuming the California Public Utilities Commission approves a draft rewrite of the program’s rules. The goal is to use CASF money to make Californian bids more competitive in the reverse auction for Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) subsidies that’ll be run by the Federal Communications Commission later this month.… More

CPUC fumbles bid to win billions of federal broadband dollars for California

2 October 2020 by Steve Blum
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Fumble

Californian Internet service providers that try for broadband deployment subsidies in the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) reverse auction later this month might be able to sweeten their bids by as much as 10% or 20%. Or they might not.

Yesterday, the California Public Utilities Commission published what might be described as a discussion draft of possible rules for using money from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to backfill RDOF bids.… More

Frontier is the only wired broadband choice for 69,000 low income California households, if they can get it at all

1 October 2020 by Steve Blum
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Cpuc map frontier low income territory

A “collection of facts” about Frontier Communications’ history as a broadband and telephone service provider in California will serve as a primer for members of the public that want to weigh in on the California Public Utilities Commission’s review of the company’s bankruptcy settlement.

The report analyses the thousands of complaints about Frontier’s service and billing practices over the years, and the service quality problems it continues to have. In some respects, Frontier is doing better – it’s on track to have fewer complaints this year than last – but it has continuing issues with service outages and repair times.… More

Starlink’s beta test beats DSL, but still has a long road ahead

30 September 2020 by Steve Blum
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Starlink launch

Beta testers are getting reasonable speeds from Elon Musk’s nascent Starlink satellite broadband system, according to test results posted on reddit.com. It’s faster performance than most DSL service, and in the same ballpark as older cable systems.

Reasonable, but not spectacular.

In the couple dozen results reported, download speeds were between 16 Mbps and 114 Mbps (discounting a partial measurement of 11 Mbps), with most clustered in the 40 Mbps to 60 Mbps range. Measured upload speeds varied from 5 Mbps to 42 Mbps, with 10 Mbps to 20 Mbps typical.… More

Cities, counties decide to keep fighting FCC’s pole ownership preemption

29 September 2020 by Steve Blum
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Los angeles streetlight cell 1 23oct2019

Dozens of cities, counties and their associations yesterday asked a federal appeals court to reconsider a decision that blessed the Federal Communications Commission’s preemption of local ownership and control of streetlights and other assets installed in the public right of way.

In August, the cities’ challenge to the FCC’s ruling was mostly rejected by three judges from the San Francisco-based ninth circuit federal appeals court. The next step is to ask all 29 judges on that court to review the decision as a group – en banc, as the jargon goes.… More

A new appeal of FCC’s local pole ownership preemption could come today

28 September 2020 by Steve Blum
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At least some of the cities that challenged the Federal Communications Commission’s preemption of local ownership and control of street lights and other government property installed in the public right of way are considering continuing the fight. Last month, three judges on the federal appeals court based in San Francisco – the ninth circuit, as it’s called – said the preemption is mostly within the FCC’s authority, although they trimmed back restrictions on local aesthetic requirements for wireless facilities.… More

Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile accuse each other of spectrum hoarding and market domination

25 September 2020 by Steve Blum
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Tmobile los angeles spectrum

T-Mobile is building up its inventory of mobile bandwidth, first by leasing low band, 600 MHz spectrum from a private investment firm and then, it hopes, by buying more capacity when the Federal Communications Commission auctions off C-band frequencies later this year.

That bothers AT&T and Verizon, which have formally registered their annoyance with the FCC. Although neither company publicly opposed T-Mobile acquisition of Sprint (what their lobbyists and lawyers do behind closed doors is often a different story), they’re both complaining that T-Mobile is already holding too much spectrum – exceeds the spectrum screen as the jargon goes – and shouldn’t be allowed to buy or lease any more, until AT&T and Verizon have a chance to catch up.… More

In the face of “environmental and social justice” obligations, Comcast attempts retreat from rural service

24 September 2020 by Steve Blum
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Tesoro viejo 2

Comcast wants to give up its campaign to compete with a small rural telephone company – a rural local exchange carrier (RLEC) – in a high end, new development outside of Fresno. After the California Public Utilities Commission decided to allow such wireline voice competition if the would be competitor serves the greater community and not just wealthy exurbanites, Comcast asked to withdraw its request for permission to go head to head with Ponderosa Telephone in the Tesoro Viejo development.… More

No power to regulate broadband means the FCC has no power to preempt California’s net neutrality law

23 September 2020 by Steve Blum
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California is firing back at the monopoly model telecoms companies that want to block the state’s network neutrality law. Senate bill 822 was passed by the legislature and signed by governor Jerry Brown in 2018. It’s been on hold while a court fight over the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of its own net neutrality rules played out.

Now it’s in front of a federal judge in Sacramento. The job of defending SB 822 belongs to California attorney general Xavier Becerra.… More