broadband

Silicon Valley cities offer few concessions for Google Fiber

21 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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Five Silicon Valley cities made Google’s list of 34 fiber candidates, the only cities in California to do so. The deadline to complete the Google Fiber checklist was 1 May 2014. Each city responded, or not, in its own way.

Mountain View: Google’s home town likes the idea of fiber, but says it doesn’t review proposed construction plans as quickly or comprehensively as the company wants. Its solution is to hire more staff at Google’s expense.… More

Smart decision 15 years ago brings $40 FTTH to Brentwood now

20 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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The biggest independent Internet service provider in northern California is building a fiber-to-the-home (and business) system in Brentwood. The eastern Contra Costa County city gave Sonic.net permission to use more than a hundred miles of conduit…

In 1999 the City implemented a requirement that all new development in the City be constructed with conduit to the home/business via the joint trench. The conduits were then dedicated to the City for future use. The City now has approximately 120–150 miles of City owned conduit reaching over 8,000 homes in addition to all commercial areas constructed over the past 15 years.

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DirecTv's installer network is hidden gem in AT&T deal

19 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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AT&T intends to expand its high speed broadband footprint with wireless service, a goal that’ll be much easier to achieve if its acquisition of DirecTv goes through. There’s a lot of talk about the television side of the deal – and rightly so – but wireless broadband is a core element too, according to AT&T’s announcement…

AT&T will use the merger synergies to expand its plans to build and enhance high-speed broadband service to 15 million customer locations, mostly in rural areas where AT&T does not provide high-speed broadband service today, utilizing a combination of technologies including fiber to the premises and fixed wireless local loop capabilities.

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Bay Area Council expert roundtable finds common ground on broadband challenges

18 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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A wide ranging conversation on Californian broadband development policy last week amongst a diverse collection of policy makers, academics, consultants and Internet businesses ended with broad, if not unconditional, agreement that making progress requires meeting four major challenges.

The first is extending the diversity and capacity of network connections that are clustered in the San Francisco Bay Area, coastal Los Angeles and, to a lesser extent, San Diego and Sacramento into smaller inland metro areas and rural communities.… More

FCC chair offers guaranteed income to lobbyists and lawyers

16 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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The 99 page dissertation on Internet regulation released by the FCC yesterday only contains 2 pages of actual draft rules, which rely almost entirely on what the FCC considers reasonable on any given day. For example…

A person engaged in the provision of fixed broadband Internet access service…shall not engage in commercially unreasonable practices. Reasonable network management shall not constitute a commercially unreasonable practice.

Actually, that’s not an example. That’s the sum total of chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposed net neutrality rule.… More

FCC opens public debate on a vague draft of Internet rules

15 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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Wheeler lays out his position.

The FCC voted 3–2 along party lines today to start the formal debate on whether and how Internet access and traffic should be regulated. Looked at another way, though, the deck is pre-stacked in so far as the discussion starts with a proposed set of poorly defined regulations that would have the FCC managing the Internet on a day to day basis.

That doesn’t mean the outcome is predetermined. The broad range of questions the FCC is asking – including whether consumer Internet access or interconnection and traffic handling for content providers should be regulated as a traditional common carrier utility – leaves the door open to substantial changes before anything is finalised.… More

Comcast keeps pay-per-byte consumer metering option open

14 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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Pay on the way in and pay on the way out.

Comcast’s chief staff lobbyist – executive vice president David Cohen – spoke at an investment conference today, covering a wide range of topics, including an update on usage-based pricing experiments in a handful of markets. He said that Comcast is looking for a way to bill subscribers for monthly downloads over a certain amount, without making them mad or driving them to competitors.… More

Developing countries take the lead in global broadband adoption

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By the end of the year, 3 billion people will be on the Internet, according to the latest projections by the International Telecommunications Union. Of those, three-quarters will be getting broadband access via mobile networks (with or without wireline access, too), a five-fold jump since the end of 2008. The majority of Internet users will be in the developing world, according to the report…

The new figures show that, by the end of 2014, there will be almost 3 billion Internet users, two-thirds of them coming from the developing world, and that the number of mobile-broadband subscriptions will reach 2.3 billion globally.

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Filling more holes in California's broadband consortia map


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Two more regional broadband consortia are in the pipeline for coastal California. The California Public Utilities Commission has a draft resolution in front of it that proposes putting $550,000 into broadband planning in two new regions: the Pacific Coast consortium for San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties and the North Bay/North Coast consortium for Marin, Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino Counties. Both would be funded for two years, getting a total of $300,000 and $250,000 respectively.… More

Coalition of the thinking emerges at FCC

11 May 2014 by Steve Blum
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The typical – and intentionally designed – division within the FCC is partisan. Democrats and republicans control two commission seats each, with the chairman’s job going to whichever party holds the White House. So it’s interesting when another kind of split develops.

Republican Ajit Pai and democrat Jessica Rosenworcel both called on chairman Tom Wheeler to delay consideration of new Internet regulations that would allow network operators to sell fast lanes to content companies willing and able to pay the price.… More