broadband

California broadband subsidy grab tagged a tax bill, heads to assembly vote

31 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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It was too much to hide.

Slower Internet speed standards and rules designed to funnel broadband subsidy money to AT&T and Frontier Communications are queued up to be decided by the California assembly. The appropriations committee released assembly bill 1665 from the "suspense file" last week and sent it on to a full floor vote, which could happen as early as today. Only one committee member dissented – William Brough (R – Orange County) voted no.… More

More voices join California broadband subsidy policy debate

26 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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A potential overhaul of the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) – the state’s primary broadband infrastructure subsidy program – was mooted at a California Public Utilities Commission workshop yesterday. The alternative scenarios that were presented were, to a large extent, wish lists from incumbents and, particularly, heavily weighted toward supplementing AT&T’s and Frontier’s business models – carving out federally funded areas, extending existing copper networks or focusing just on their territories for example.

Incumbents had good words for that approach – not surprising – but for the most part participants vocally opposed dropping the CASF performance threshold to 6 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds, from its current 6 Mbps down/15 Mbps up level.… More

Formal opposition to California broadband subsidy grab filed

24 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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Although objections have been raised, legislative staff analyses have skated around the question of opposition to assembly bill 1665, which would effectively turn California’s broadband infrastructure subsidy program into a drawing account for AT&T and Frontier Communications.

No longer. The Central Coast Broadband Consortium (CCBC) submitted a letter, formally going on record opposing AB 1665. It highlighted the top three reasons it is bad public policy and bad for Californians…

  • Setting California’s minimum broadband standard at 6 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds is a step backwards, at a time when we must all move forward together.
… More

Support for PG&E as a telecoms competitor, if that's all it is

23 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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I’ll show you a pole attachment.

Seven objections, of one variety or another, were filed against PG&E’s bid to be certified as a telecommunications company by the California Public Utilities Commission. Links to all are below.

Three came from industry players, including Crown Castle, which has a growing and competitive fiber footprint in California, and two lobbying fronts, one for cable operators and the other for competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs), which are companies that largely rely on reselling access to physical facilities owned by big telcos and fiber network owners.… More

Telcos' California cash grab gets a nod at the CPUC

22 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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Three parallel efforts are underway to rewrite the rules for California broadband infrastructure subsidies and use the money to support substandard service and technology deployed by AT&T and Frontier Communications. The legislature is considering assembly bill 1665, which would, among other things, add $300 million to the California Advanced Services Fund for broadband construction and operating costs, and effectively give it to AT&T and Frontier. The lower service standards and eligibility restrictions in the bill would keep independent Internet service providers out of most of rural California.… More

FCC votes to kill net neutrality, after a fair trial of course

19 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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Common carrier rules for broadband service are on the way out. As expected, the Federal Communications Commission voted along party lines to begin a rulemaking process that, in theory, is a neutral, technocratic assessment of current regulations that might lead to any outcome. But there’s never been any pretence that the result will be anything but a repeal of the FCC’s 2015 decision to bring broadband – wired and wireless – under the common carrier umbrella.… More

Broadband subsidy grab by telcos, cable faces budget scrutiny in Sacramento

17 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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The attempt to turn the California Advanced Services Fund – the state’s primary broadband infrastructure subsidy program – into a piggy bank for AT&T, Frontier and cable companies gets another hearing at the capitol today. Assembly bill 1665 will go before the assembly appropriations committee, which has responsibility for seeing that bills that raise money – in this case, reinstate a tax – and spend it are based on sound fiscal policy, both in isolation and in the context of California’s overall budget.… More

Did John Oliver take down the FCC, again?

13 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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After another classic net neutrality rant, John Oliver is getting credit in some quarters for inspiring a flood of online comments that brought the Federal Communications Commission’s website to a grinding halt. 150,000 comments were filed in the first 36 hours after the broadcast, three times the number over the same period three years ago when Oliver issued his first net neutrality call-to-arms.
It didn’t long for the FCC’s comment system to crash, or for the agency to claim it was someone else’s fault…

Beginning on Sunday night at midnight, our analysis reveals that the FCC was subject to multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDos).

… More

California broadband subsidy bill fertile ground for monopoly mushrooms

10 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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The attempt to redirect California’s broadband infrastructure subsidy program toward incumbent telephone and cable companies and away from independent, gigabit class projects and public housing communities is descending into Alice-in-Wonderland territory. The amended text of assembly bill 1665 is posted, and it begins with a stirring call to action for the greater good of California…

The availability of high-speed Internet access, referred to generically as “broadband” and including both wired and wireless technologies, is essential 21st century infrastructure for economic competitiveness and quality of life.

… More

FCC denies challenge to San Francisco open ISP access law

9 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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San Francisco’s open access rule for Internet services providers in apartment and condo buildings is legal according to the Federal Communications Commission. Or at least, a federal law originally written for satellite television viewers doesn’t make it illegal.

The FCC summarily denied a challenge to the San Francisco law from a lobbying front organisation that represents companies, mostly small ones, that make a living signing exclusive broadband service deals with landlords and homeowners associations, who then force their tenants and members to use it and, usually, get a cut of the action.… More