att – Page 4 – Steve Blum's Blog

AT&T, Comcast “continue to frustrate” CPUC inquiries “even on safety matters”

18 December 2019 by Steve Blum
att, broadband, comcast, cpuc, utility regulation

AT&T and Comcast blew off demands for information about broadband pricing from California Public Utilities Commission staff, so now the public advocates office, which requested the data, is asking the commission to force the companies to comply and to acknowledge their legal responsibility to fully answer questions about service, safety and other issues.

The PAO sent a detailed questionnaire to Internet service providers in California, including telephone companies and cable operators, during an ongoing inquiry into the affordability of broadband and other essential utility services in California.… More

USA Today says the slowest rural broadband is in California. The truth is even worse

2 December 2019 by Steve Blum
att, cpuc, frontiercommunications, rural broadband

USA Today fell for a click bait post about rural broadband speeds, but at least it was click bait that made a useful point about the growing gap between rural and urban service levels.

The top line, of the USA Today article and the post on an Internet-oriented aggregator website, is that Newcastle, along Interstate 80 in Placer County, has the slowest rural broadband service in the U.S., with an average download speed of 3.7 Mbps.… More

Telephone and cable companies stonewalled California emergency officials during massive power outages

22 November 2019 by Steve Blum
att, charter, comcast, cpuc, psps

Mobile carriers generally cooperated with California emergency officials during the week long siege of public safety power shutoffs in October, while cable and telephone companies hid behind confidentiality claims. Paul Troxel, who heads the 911 program at the California office of emergency services, testified at a California Public Utilities Commission hearing on Wednesday and told commissioners that neither the state’s emergency operations center or local officials knew where access to 911 service and disaster information, such as evacuation orders, were unavailable…

Outage data was not reported by all providers.

… More

Meaningful answers and we’ll get back to you, as CPUC drills down on phone, broadband outages in emergencies

21 November 2019 by Steve Blum
att, charter, comcast, cpuc, psps

Telecoms company representatives – telco, cable and mobile – were grilled for three hours yesterday by CPUC commissioners about their ability to maintain communications capabilities during power outages and other emergencies. And their willingness to provide actionable, real time network status information to officials and the public.

The central issue is whether the California Public Utilities Commission should establish regulations for things like backup power, network resiliency and outage reporting, for voice, text and, perhaps, broadband service.… More

Telecoms companies to explain broadband, phone failures during California power cuts

20 November 2019 by Steve Blum
att, charter, comcast, cpuc, psps

With another Pacific Gas and Electric company power shut off looming later today, the California Public Utilities Commission is calling in telecommunications companies and demanding that they be prepared to explain their “responsiveness during the latest wildfires and public safety power shut offs to keep telecommunications services on”.

A hearing is scheduled for this morning in San Francisco, with “top officials” from California’s major telecoms companies directed to “publicly appear and publicly address their response during the latest wildfire events [and] public safety power shutoffs”.… More

California legislature tweaks telecoms policy instead of killing it

16 September 2019 by Steve Blum
ab1366, att, broadband, cpuc, voip

Despite AT&T’s quest for de facto deregulation of telecommunications infrastructure and service, no major telecoms policy changes emerged from the California legislature this year. A few small ball telecoms-related bills did emerge by the end of the 2019 session early Saturday morning, though, and were sent on to governor Gavin Newsom.

Assembly bill 1366 is dead, at least for this year. There was no last minute conniving to pull it out of the committee deep freeze it landed in earlier in the week.… More

Five years and two FCCs later, FTC settles data throttling case against AT&T

13 September 2019 by Steve Blum
att, fcc, ftc, netneutrality, public policy

The slow motion network neutrality enforcement ping pong match between the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission resulted in a data throttling settlement with AT&T, according to a story by Bevin Fletcher in FierceWireless. The details haven’t been released yet, but if approved by FTC commissioners it would end a dispute over how AT&T manages – throttles – the bandwidth consumed by millions of customers with grandfathered unlimited data plans.

AT&T’s mobile data throttling isn’t limited to legacy all-you-can-eat customers, at least according to research published last year, but the FTC’s enforcement action is limited to legacy data plans that are no longer offered.… More

AT&T’s backdoor telecoms deregulation bill runs out of room in the California senate

11 September 2019 by Steve Blum
ab1366, att, broadband, cpuc, voip

“AB 1366 was pulled by the author, so it will not be considered today”, said senator Ben Hueso (D – San Diego) as he called the senate’s energy, utilities and communications committee to order yesterday. Assembly bill 1366 would extend a ban on regulation of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and other “Internet protocol enabled” services in California.

Conventional wisdom says the bill is dead for this year. It wasn’t amended before last night’s constitutional deadline, so there’ll be no more wrangling over the bill’s language.… More

California telecoms backdoor deregulation bill, AB 1366, stalls

10 September 2019 by Steve Blum
ab1366, att, broadband, cpuc, voip

Assembly bill 1366 was “pulled by the author” ahead of a committee hearing this afternoon. The California senate’s energy, utilities and communications committee was supposed to review amendments made last Friday, but that didn’t happen. No reason was given. The bill might be dead, or it might be going through a final rewrite, ahead of tonight’s hard, constitutional deadline for amending it. Or something else – anything is possible today. Tomorrow, well, that’ll be a different story.… More

AT&T snakes perks into California deregulation bill, while its author ducks for cover

9 September 2019 by Steve Blum
ab1366, att, broadband, cpuc, voip

AT&T slipped more special privileges into a bill that would, in effect, deregulate broadband and modern voice service in California. At the same time, the bill was disowned, sorta, by its godmother, assembly member Lorena Gonzalez (D – San Diego).

Assembly bill 1366, which would extend an existing ban on regulation of voice over Internet protocol service (VoIP), was amended ahead of Friday’s soft deadline for changing bill language in the California legislature (Tuesday is the hard, constitutional cutoff for amendments).… More