broadband

East Bay Broadband Report Card published by Tellus Venture Associates confirms benefits of competition


Download the full report.

I’ve published the final report on regional broadband resources, prepared for the East Bay Broadband Consortium. The East Bay Broadband Report Card gives a community-by-community assessment of core broadband infrastructure in Alameda, Contra Costa and Solano Counties, on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay.

The top line conclusions are…

The best consumer-grade broadband service is in central Contra Costa County, in the City of Concord (A-). It was the only one of the forty cities studied that rated an “A” level grade.

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San Antonio makes a fast move for Google fiber

14 March 2014 by Steve Blum
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Open the gates. It’s Google.

Wasting no time in working through Google Fiber’s checklist, the San Antonio city council approved a master lease agreement yesterday that would give Google the right to build 40 or so fiber huts – 12 by 26 foot shelters for the electronic equipment that powers fiber-to-the-home systems – on city property at an annual lease rate of $2,250 per site.
“It will probably be difficult to overstate the importance of this vote – akin to turning on the lights in San Antonio” said councilman Ron Nirenberg.… More

AT&T invests in California broadband, but very selectively

12 March 2014 by Steve Blum
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Be grateful for what you have.

AT&T wants you to believe that they’re investing billions of dollars in Calfornia to upgrade your broadband service. And it’s true, if you’re the right sort of customer. Even so, reading between the lines of the latest AT&T press release, the assumption has to be that your wireline service is as good as it’s going to get for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, if you have an AT&T mobile phone account – particularly 4G – and you live in a large metro area or in a nearby medium-sized market, your speeds probably did get faster last year, and you might see more improvements as time goes on.… More

CPUC commissioner proposes modest haircut for Cressman

11 March 2014 by Steve Blum
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Update 13 March 2014: The CPUC delayed the vote on the Cressman project to 10 April 2014.


It doesn’t have to look good to look better.

Commissioner Michel Florio wants to trim five homes from a project proposed by Ponderosa Telephone Company in Fresno County, and save the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) $373,000. The project in and around the remote community of Cressman has been stalled for months, at Florio’s request, and now it’s clear why…

The fiber optic extension from Lower Cressman to…Rush Creek will cost $621,700, or 36% of the total project costs.

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If you don't believe Google Fiber is serious about city cooperation, maybe you'll listen to AT&T

10 March 2014 by Steve Blum
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The odds of attracting FTTH investment depends on a lot more than luck.

AT&T was jolted into finding a fiber-to-the-home business case in Austin after Google Fiber said it was making the Texas capital and surrounding suburbs its next stop after Kansas City. But regardless of how it happened, AT&T is now singing in the FTTH choir. According to Fierce Telecom, CEO Randall Stephenson told an investment conference audience that the initiative, branded “Gigapower” is ready to roll out in Dallas this summer and other cities where it makes sense…

The market adoption and the performance of our U-verse Gigapower technology has been very, very encouraging…in fact, we’re so encouraged that we want to begin taking this to other communities.

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Google publishes broadband manifesto for cities

9 March 2014 by Steve Blum
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In Kansas City, my crews don’t wait for inspectors, the inspectors wait for them. We work with communities that make it easy for us. If you make it hard on us, enjoy your cable connection.
Milo Medin, head of Google Fiber, 24 October 2013.

If you want Google to run fiber through your city, be prepared to clear the path. That’s the message Google delivered to the 34 cities that it’s considering for the next round of fiber to the home build-outs last month.… More

Eastern Sierra consortium presents plans for building broadband out from Digital 395


Click for the full presentation

With the Digital 395 fiber optic backbone complete – running more than 500 miles from from Reno down the eastern side of California to Barstow – the focus in the region is on hooking up last mile broadband projects and extending middle connectivity to areas it doesn’t reach.

Julie Langou, the project manager for the Eastern Sierra Connect Regional Broadband Consortium, presented a plan for building out from the Digital 395 fiber route at the annual meeting of regional broadband consortia in Sacramento earlier this week.… More

Rural broadband appeals flood into the FCC


Round up twice the usual number of suspects.

There’s no lack of interest in the FCC’s rural broadband experiment. By 5:00 p.m. California time, more than 500 expressions of interest had been filed electronically with the FCC and posted on its website (h/t to The Baller Herbst List for pointing me to the link). The total appeared to be climbing, and I’m guessing that the FCC will be accepting letters at least until midnight Midway Island time, if not well into the weekend.… More

California broadband priorities by the numbers

6 March 2014 by Steve Blum
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It’s hard enough just with apples.

Measuring where broadband needs are and setting priorities for meeting them is an objective, quantitative process for many regional broadband planners in California, while others focus on qualitative assessments. Representatives from fourteen regional broadband consortia met for two days in Sacramento earlier this week, largely to talk about how the California Public Utilities Commission should set priorities for spending subsidy money on broadband infrastructure projects in the state.

There was no single approach presented that works everywhere.… More

Golden Bear fiber plan not sturdy enough to survive incumbent challenges

5 March 2014 by Steve Blum
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The two thousand mile, $120+ million Golden Bear middle mile fiber network is officially dead. Snaking through the canyons and river valleys of far northern California, the project was touted as a way of bringing fast, inexpensive backbone connectivity to areas far removed from bandwidth-rich regions to the south.

Effectively, backers were asking for 100% grant funding from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF). Nominally, the limit is somewhere between 60% and 70%, depending on the level of broadband service, if any, that is available.… More