San Jose cuts $1,500-plus light pole lease deal with AT&T

30 April 2018 by Steve Blum
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The City of San Jose and AT&T have a new agreement to put “small cells on city-owned assets in the public right of way”. A formal contract is still to be negotiated, but assuming the San Jose city council signs off on the deal points, AT&T will install “approximately” 170 small cell sites to upgrade mobile broadband coverage on city-owned light poles and other vertical infrastructure.

AT&T will pay the city an annual lease rate of $1,500 per small cell site, plus $1,850,000 to process the immediately necessary paper work and streamline future requests.… More

T-Mobile, Sprint about to turn U.S. mobile market into a threesome

29 April 2018 by Steve Blum
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Update: the deal is done.

The competitive mobile broadband market might not be as red in tooth and claw in the near future. According to several media outlets, T-Mobile and Sprint, the number three and four mobile carriers in the U.S., are on the verge of announcing a merger. It’s the second time they’ve gone down this path. According to CNBC, this time it’s because the competition is too much for the smaller Sprint…

Talks most recently broke off late last year after SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son decided he didn’t want to lose control of a combined company.

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U.S. mobile capacity still trailing demand

28 April 2018 by Steve Blum
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U.S. mobile network speeds dropped during 2017 when operators went all in with unlimited data plans, according to an analysis done by OpenSignal, a London-based mobile metrics consultancy. Carriers responded well, although speeds weren’t back up to pre-unlimited levels. But you can forget about mobile as a replacement for wireline service.

In the first half of 2017, AT&T and Verizon responded to competition from T-Mobile and Sprint and went back to offering unlimited data plans.… More

Cities get better deals from wireless companies in a free market

27 April 2018 by Steve Blum
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One of the working groups spun off by the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband deployment advisory committee (BDAC) – an industry dominated body – looked at how much it costs telecoms companies to attach wires and wireless gear to poles. The results of that study are here. It was based on information that participants voluntarily submitted – the study kindly describes it as a “convenience sample” – so there’s a limit to its reliability. Even so it paints an interesting picture.… More

Telecom industry's broadband policy advice takes shape at FCC

26 April 2018 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communication Commission’s industry-centric broadband deployment advisory committee (BDAC) met again yesterday. I didn’t watch the day-long webcast, but I did read through the transcript. It was here, but will probably be gone from the FCC’s website by the time you read this. The version I downloaded is here.

The group signed off on tweaks to a proposed one touch make ready policy. If adopted by the FCC, it would create a fast track process for new broadband infrastructure to be attached to existing utility poles.… More

California net neutrality law can survive federal challenge, lawmakers told

25 April 2018 by Steve Blum
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The California senate’s judiciary committee approved, on a party line vote, a proposed net neutrality law, after hearing that it was at least defendable against the inevitable court challenges that cable and telephone companies would file. Senate bill 822 would define blocking, throttling, paid prioritisation and paid or provider-specific zero rating as unfair competition, and enforce those rules via civil lawsuits.

The big question was whether a Californian net neutrality law would withstand the Federal Communications Commission’s declaration that it was preempting state level broadband regulations.… More

Muni broadband can defend net neutrality, but winning isn't guaranteed

24 April 2018 by Steve Blum
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Net neutrality and municipal broadband are two separate issues that overlap in a couple of ways. First, there’s an assumption that muni broadband systems will abide by net neutrality principles, even if not required (but there’s a bill in the California legislature, AB 1999, that would require it). It’s an easy pledge to make now, but it’s not a certainty that muni systems could or would swim against the financial tide if the economics of the business changes significantly.… More

California net neutrality bill bends to telco, cable wishes

23 April 2018 by Steve Blum
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It would still ban blocking, throttling, paid prioritisation and some kinds of zero rating, but a California senate committee has pulled some of the sharper enforcement teeth out of a bill to reinstate network neutrality rules. With one exception, though, definitions of banned and permitted practices remain the same.

Senate bill 822 was approved by the senate energy, utilities and communications committee last week on a party line vote, with the condition that undisclosed changes, negotiated behind closed doors, would be made.… More

Big incumbents tell CPUC to tilt California broadband subsidies in their favor

22 April 2018 by Steve Blum
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Four Internet service providers, all of whom have participated at one time or another in the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) infrastructure subsidy program, offered their ideas on how that money should be managed and allocated. So did a lobbying front representing cable companies – including Charter Communications, Comcast and Cox Communications – which have never participated. The big boys – AT&T, Frontier Communications and the cable industry – want grants on their own terms, while blocking competitors that might threaten their monopoly business models.… More

Police surveillance tech disclosure considered by California legislature

21 April 2018 by Steve Blum
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If a police department in California wants to use facial recognition software, or scrape social media platforms looking for evidence of criminal behavior, it would need to disclose the practice and, where practicable, get advance permission from its city council, if a bill working its way through the legislature makes it into law. Senate bill 1186, introduced by senator Jerry Hill (D – San Bruno), would require cities to decide on and publish policies for using “surveillance technology”, which it defines as…

Any electronic device or system with the capacity to monitor and collect audio, visual, locational, thermal, or similar information on any individual or group.

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