broadband

Incumbents' coalition of the unwilling fights fiber disclosure rule

9 November 2016 by Steve Blum
, , , ,


But if you really don’t know, click here and we’ll tell you.

Broadband is outside the jurisdiction of the California Public Utilities Commission, and it has no business investigating competition – or the lack thereof – among Internet service providers. That’s the basic reaction from a “Respondent Coalition” of incumbent telephone and cable companies to a proposed CPUC decision that slams the lack of broadband competition in California and would take a few, small steps toward opening the market.… More

Upload speed matters and it's too slow, say consumers

6 November 2016 by Steve Blum
, ,

Minimum acceptable upload speed.
Consumer upload speed expectations exceed the ability of Internet service providers to deliver, at least in Morgan Hill, a town on the southern edge of Silicon Valley. Tellus Venture Associates just completed an analysis of Morgan Hill’s telecommunications infrastructure, which was presented to the city council last Wednesday.
In the course of doing that study, we conducted an online consumer survey that attracted more than 500 responses. One of the questions we asked was “what do you consider to be the minimum acceptable upload speed for Internet service?”… More

Frontier pays a price for its California meltdown

5 November 2016 by Steve Blum
,

Frontier Communications’ cutover problems when it took control of Verizon’s wireline systems in California, Texas and Florida were costly, in terms of broadband subscribers and overall revenue. On Frontier’s third quarter earnings call earlier this week, company executives said that they saw a net loss of 100,000 broadband customers in the three states between April and June, and lost another 75,000 from July through September.

In revenue terms, though, the biggest hit in California and the other two states came from phone and video customers: total revenue was down $55 million in the third quarter, compared to the second, with video services accounting for $24 million and phone service for another $20 million.… More

Morgan Hill considers broadband roadmap to catch Silicon Valley

3 November 2016 by Steve Blum
, , ,

The City of Morgan Hill, on the edge of Silicon Valley just south of San Jose, does not share its usually good and occasionally excellent broadband infrastructure. Unlike most of the San Francisco Bay Area, which is largely served by AT&T and Comcast, Morgan Hill’s telecom infrastructure is owned by Frontier Communications and Charter Communications, and performs significantly below the Californian average.

Tellus Venture Associates recently completed a telecoms infrastructure element for Morgan Hill’s general plan update.… More

California supervisors hear AT&T pitch, not told of plans to scrap copper service

31 October 2016 by Steve Blum
, , ,

AT&T’s rural California road show is continuing, as the company pitches county supervisors on the wonders of wireless service and the need for speedy approval of towers and other infrastructure, without making it clear that the plan is to use it to replace copper wire networks.

A story by Will Houston in the Eureka Times-Standard describes one such presentation to the Humboldt County board of supervisors…

AT&T is now looking to bring high-speed internet service to underserved areas in Humboldt County, which will require the company to construct new cell towers.

… More

California's broadband competition outlook dims as telcos head for the exit

20 October 2016 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

The market for high speed, residential broadband service is not competitive in California, and the problem might be getting worse rather than better. That’s one of the conclusions of a draft decision prepared by an administrative law judge for consideration by the California Public Utilities Commission.

Although a typical household might have access to more than one kind of service, most have no choice – or no availability – when it comes to getting Internet access at 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds.… More

CPUC considers manifesto for broadband regulation

19 October 2016 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

Not this Karl.

California doesn’t have a competitive market for broadband service, and the distinction between it and phone service is essentially irrelevant. With all due regard for the danger of trying to boil down 168 pages into 20 words, that’s the bottom line of a proposed decision by a California Public Utilities Commission administrative law judge.

ALJ Karl Bemesderfer was given the job of sifting through mounds of data, testimony and arguments submitted in the course of a CPUC investigation into whether there’s sufficient competition among telecommunications companies in California.… More

Broadband projects queued up for Monterey startups


Click for the presentation.

Independent projects are driving broadband infrastructure upgrades on California’s central coast. Maybe not as universally or as quickly as local entrepreneurs would like, but it’s happening. That was my message on Tuesday evening to the the Startup Monterey Bay Tech Meetup in Seaside.

I was asked to give an update on broadband development in the region. Those efforts center on the Central Coast Broadband Consortium (CCBC), an ad hoc group of local companies, agencies and other organisations in Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz counties that essentially have one thing in common: an interest in getting better, cheaper and more reliable broadband service in the region.… More

The copper GigaWeasel lurks under AT&T's fiber umbrella

6 October 2016 by Steve Blum
, ,

You can see the fiber from here.

AT&T is casting a new shadow on its faster-than-average tiers of service. Instead of calling 300 Mbps copper service Gigapower, it’ll now lounge under the AT&T Fiber umbrella. At least that’s how an AT&T press release reads, when you connect all the dots.

The release says…

Under the AT&T Fiber umbrella brand we will use a variety of network technologies to connect more homes, apartments and business customer locations to ultra-fast and low-latency internet speeds.

… More

A path forward for new California telecoms rules

3 October 2016 by Steve Blum
, ,

Telecommunications regulation reform may live on in California, kept alive by executive order. Even though a grand deal to overhaul the way the California Public Utilities Commission does business collapsed in the final hours of the legislative session in August, a key provision – a review of telecoms regulatory responsibilities – seems to have been brought back from the dead.

When governor Jerry Brown signed the surviving remnants of the deal last week, he included a message to lawmakers detailing his intention to keep pushing ahead with reforms, with or without them.… More