Open access fiber drives down consumer broadband prices in New Zealand

21 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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A national project to build fiber-to-the-premise infrastructure and offer it to any Internet service provider on a wholesale basis began in New Zealand in 2011, with an initial goal of reaching 75% of Kiwi homes and businesses. According to a study done by International Data Corporation, a research firm, and sponsored by Spark, the biggest NZ reseller of FTTP service, the build out has reached about 65% of NZ premises, and the goal is now to reach 87% by 2022.… More

15 Mbps is the holy grail for 4K video

20 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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Different online video companies put it differently, but the net result is the same: if you want to watch 4K streaming video – aka ultra high definition – you need a broadband connection that reliably delivers 15 Mbps and has enough head room to support whatever other Internet traffic is passing in and out of your house.

A story by Rob Pegoraro in USA Today provides a run down of the 4K bandwidth recommendations from the two big dogs in the over-the-top video game…

  • Amazon says “you need an Internet connection of at least 15 Mbps to watch videos in UHD”.
… More

Frontier, cable lobbyists urge CPUC to cut them in on public housing, broadband adoption decisions

19 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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Big telco and cable interests accounted for two of the fourteen organisations that commented on proposed changes to the California Advanced Services Fund’s (CASF) broadband subsidy program for public housing and the new digital literacy and broadband access grants that’ll be available later this year. Frontier Communications and cable lobbyists submitted their remarks on Friday. AT&T was silent.

The California Cable and Telecommunications Association (CCTA), which is the lobbying front for Comcast, Charter Communications and other cable companies in California, wants the CPUC to better protect its members’ monopoly business model in public housing communities.… More

People who live in public housing deserve equal treatment from California broadband subsidy program

18 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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Public housing property owners can get grants from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to install broadband facilities and serve residents. Hundreds of communities have taken advantage of it, despite churlish opposition from cable companies, particularly Charter Communications. The California Public Utilities Commission is revising the program, to bring it into line with new rules laid down by assembly bill 1665 last year.

The biggest change is to retroactively enforce restrictions, imposed by an earlier measure, senate bill 745, that require properties receiving grants to be “unserved”, which means that at least one residence lacks service at 6 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds.… More

Comments on proposed changes to California's broadband subsidy program posted

17 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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Fourteen organisations offered comments on Friday regarding California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) grant requirements and application procedures for public housing broadband facilities and for broadband adoption efforts, which are generally reckoned to be digital literacy classes and “broadband access” programs – i.e. computer centers, hotspots and free computers – programs. Suggestions for how the CASF broadband infrastructure loan program should be wound down were also submitted.

The new adoption grant program, and the revisions to the public housing and infrastructure loan programs were mandated by assembly bill 1665, which was approved by the California legislature and signed into law last year.… More

Cable's broadband monopoly profile sharpens with 2017 results

16 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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Share of U.S. broadband households, as of 31 December 2017. Source: Leichtman Research Group.

Comcast and Charter own half of U.S. residential broadband subscribers, and their share of the market – if you want to call it that – is growing. That’s one of the conclusions gleaned from a tabulation of year-end 2017 financial reports by Leichtman Research Group. As with a similar count by FierceTelecom, the numbers show telcos continue to bleed subscribers profusely, while cable – and the overall broadband universe – keep on growing.… More

California senate considers expanded net neutrality rights and enforcement tools

15 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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A second, more detailed network neutrality revival bill is on the table at the California capitol. Senator Scott Wiener (D – San Francisco) introduced senate bill 822 earlier this year, but it was little more than a statement of intent to jump into the Internet regulation void left by the Federal Communications Commission when it repealed network neutrality rules and stripped broadband of its common carrier status. He amended it on Tuesday, adding in a long list of outlawed practices and ways to enforce the ban.… More

Cable wins the broadband market fight, telcos lose. Again

14 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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The U.S. cable industry’s broadband subscriber count grew by 1.7% in the last quarter of 2017, while telephone companies continued to lose customers. That’s the top line from a tally by FierceTelecom of 15 of the 16 largest Internet service providers (Wow Cable hasn’t reported yet, although check the link – FierceTelecom will be updating its numbers). It’s a trend that continued throughout 2017.

In total, cable companies added 918,000 Internet subscribers, while the telco loss was a bit more than 7,000 subs – negligible in terms of percentage, but a significantly bad result in a growing market.… More

Trump builds a virtual wall to fence high tech companies in

13 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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© Yann Forget / Wikimedia Commons, via Wikimedia Commons

Broadcom will not buy Qualcomm, and will not become the third largest chipmaker in the world, behind Intel and Samsung. Not because the eye watering price – $117 billion, the largest such high tech transaction ever – is too high. Not because the deal doesn’t make economic sense. It’s because U.S. president Donald Trump says it will harm U.S. national security.
Using his authority to define what national security needs are and squash transactions that threaten them, Trump categorically blocked Broadcom’s Singapore-based corporate parent and its Californian affiliate from buying San Diego-based Qualcomm.… More

FCC will have to defend net neutrality repeal in San Francisco

12 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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The luck of the draw means the future of network neutrality and broadband’s status as a common carrier service will be argued in San Francisco. Credit for that is split between the California Public Utilities Commission and Santa Clara County, who filed separate challenges to the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to eliminate net neutrality rules and scrap common carrier obligations for broadband service with the ninth circuit federal appeals court.

Several other organisations filed their appeals in Washington, D.C.,… More