broadband

Salinas pursues fast broadband to build ag tech corridor


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With big and small agricultural companies expanding in downtown Salinas and the southeast area of the city earmarked as an Ag Tech Corridor, the need for better broadband infrastructure is becoming critical. Yesterday, the Salinas City Council voted to ask for proposals from potential private sector partners who are interested in using city assets to build out high capacity networks.

Tellus Venture Associates recently completed a study for the City of Salinas that evaluated existing infrastructure and examined options for improving it.… More

No clear winner in net neutrality appeal argument

5 December 2015 by Steve Blum
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Network neutrality rules, adopted by the Federal Communications Commission earlier this year, were examined yesterday by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. Both sides – the FCC and its allies that favor tighter regulation of Internet service providers, and telecommunications companies of all technological flavors that do not – came out of the session with upbeat assessments of whether the three-judge panel would buy their arguments.

According to an article in Ars Technica, the judges seemed amenable to the idea that the FCC can subject residential broadband to common carrier rules but more skeptical about whether those same rules may be applied to mobile services or interconnection agreements between companies…

“The argument started off in a way that we took to be quite hopeful,” according to attorney Kevin Russell, who is representing consumer advocacy groups and other interveners who support the FCC’s rules…

Appeals Court Judge David Tatel “ask[ed] the challengers whether the Supreme Court hadn’t already decided most of the case in a prior decision called Brand X, which he suggested was best read to say that the commission gets broad authority to decide how best to classify these kinds of services,” Russell said…

Potential problem areas for net neutrality proponents include the FCC’s assertion of authority over interconnection disputes, the application of net neutrality rules to mobile networks, and questions about whether the FCC provided the public enough notice before enacting its rules.

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Intelligent management of broadband subsidies works

18 November 2015 by Steve Blum
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Each taking care of its own.

I had the opportunity to speak at the California Broadband Workshop in Mountain View yesterday, organised by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Here are the remarks I prepared, which greatly resemble the remarks I delivered…

Good morning. I’d like to make three points.

First, public subsidies provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number when used to leverage private capital and steer it toward public policy goals. Publicly owned assets are a powerful tool for encouraging competitive builds and keeping public policy goals front and center.… More

Rural areas get biggest benefit from higher Californian broadband standard

17 November 2015 by Steve Blum
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Another try at raising California’s minimum broadband standard to 25 Mbps down/3 Mbps up, from the current 6 Mbps down/1.5 Mbps up level, is gathering momentum in Sacramento. Introduced earlier this year by Santa Cruz assemblyman Mark Stone, assembly bill 238 would have raised the bar both for eligibility requirements for California Advanced Service Fund (CASF) subsidies, and for the infrastructure that’s built using that money. It’s stalled now, due to unexpected opposition from rural interests as well as the usual suspects.… More

Broadband is on CPUC's short list for review of Charter deal

16 November 2015 by Steve Blum
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Charter bundles broadband. Why shouldn’t the CPUC?

The cost and availability of broadband in California will be a key factor in determining whether Charter Communications is allowed to buy Time Warner’s and Bright House Networks’ cable systems. That was the decision on Friday by the president of the California Public Utilities Commission, Michael Picker, as he set out the criteria and the schedule for deciding if the transaction will be approved.

On the surface, it is a far less ambitious review than the CPUC undertook of the now dead Comcast mega-merger and market swap with Time Warner and Charter.… More

Plenty of broadband money for some in rural California, if there's cooperation

4 November 2015 by Steve Blum
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Worlds apart.

If the two primary California and federal broadband subsidy programs – the California Advanced Services Fund and the FCC’s Connect America Fund – were coordinated, many rural areas could see significant infrastructure upgrades. Maybe even fiber to the home systems, or at least fiber to the node. As it is, though, those two programs run completely separately, even to the point of having such disparate service standards that broadband systems built for one wouldn’t necessarily meet the requirements of the other.… More

Telecoms lobbyists tell Calfornia lawmakers which side of the digital divide they're on

2 November 2015 by Steve Blum
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Lobbyists for AT&T and the California cable industry gave state assembly members clear insight into why rural broadband development is such an intractable challenge. It wasn’t exactly the insight they were planning to deliver – that consisted mostly of platitudes about the wonderful work they’re doing and the evils of subsidising independent companies that would dare to compete against them. The insight came from the way they tried to divert attention away from the rural questions that the assembly’s select committee on the digital divide in California is tasked with answering, and toward the investment they’re indisputably making in more lucrative urban areas.… More

California broadband follows people, not land

30 October 2015 by Steve Blum
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Click for the full picture.

It’s easy to think that the California you see is the California you have. If you live and work in, say, the Bay Area or Los Angeles, California is a mix of freeways, strip malls and offices packed with creative, tech savvy people. That view, or something not far from it, is what 95% of Californians see. But it’s only 5% of the state.

The other 5% of Californians and 95% of the state is rural.… More

Three ways to bridge California's digital divide

29 October 2015 by Steve Blum
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Not the best way to solve transportation problems either.

I was at the state assembly’s select committee on the digital divide in California on Tuesday, and offered my comments…
Good morning. My name is Stephen Blum, my company is Tellus Venture Associates, in Marina, in Assemblyman Stone’s district. I’m a broadband development consultant and a member of the Central Coast Broadband Consortium. I work for several cities and other regional broadband consortia in California, in both urban and rural areas.… More

Cutting the cord doesn't really mean cutting the cord

18 October 2015 by Steve Blum
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It’s still a battle.

Nearly a quarter of the U.S. population doesn’t have a pay TV subscription, via cable or satellite. A report published by Forrester Research and reported on by the FierceOnlineVideo and the Wall Street Journal says that 24% of U.S. television viewers don’t buy linear cable or satellite packages. What’s interesting, though, is that the number of people who have never been subscribers is three times as high as people who have bought it at one point and then cut the cord, as they say in the cable business.… More