casf – Page 11 – Steve Blum's Blog

California broadband subsidies set for CPUC vote, as Charter attempts last minute hit (but not on its own grants)

3 December 2019 by Steve Blum
casf, charter, cpuc, cruzio, frontiercommunications

As of last night, all 11 broadband infrastructure projects tentatively approved for subsidies from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) are slated for a final vote by the California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday. Arguments for and against the projects and grant conditions as drafted have also been filed. Links to (I think) all of the comments are below.

Frontier Communications made pitches for full funding of their projects as proposed, which were seconded by the California Emerging Technology Fund.… More

Frontier digs a deeper digital divide in rural California with taxpayers’ shovel

13 November 2019 by Steve Blum
casf, cpuc, frontiercommunications, public policy, rural broadband

A handful of rural communities in Lassen, Modoc and Kern counties will get their first taste of wireline broadband service from Frontier Communications if the California Public Utilities Commission approves infrastructure construction grants next month.

Unfortunately, it’s just a taste.

Frontier’s (and AT&T’s) strategy, as identified by a CPUC study earlier this year, of “disinvesting in infrastructure overall”, which is “most pronounced in the more rural and low-income service areas”, continues to be business as usual.… More

CPUC queues up $24 million subsidy for 11 California broadband projects

4 November 2019 by Steve Blum
casf, charter, cpuc, cruzio, frontiercommunications

Eleven broadband infrastructure projects by four companies will be considered by the California Public Utilities Commission next month. Draft resolutions approving California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) subsidies for 11 out of the 13 grant proposals submitted in the May application window were posted on Thursday. The drafts are linked below.

Making the CPUC’s new six month deadline for processing applications is a major milestone for staff, and they deserve congratulations. In the past, reviews have sometimes dragged on for years, with endless and often meritless challenges allowed from marginal broadband providers who wanted to fence off service-poor communities.… More

CPUC approves DSL upgrade subsidy for Frontier at $4,700 per home

27 September 2019 by Steve Blum
ab1665, casf, cpuc, frontiercommunications, public policy

The California Public Utilities Commission approved a $693,000 grant to Frontier Communications from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) for a DSL equipment upgrade in the Placer County community of Weimar earlier this month. It was a considerably smaller grant than Frontier requested.

The project originally included the somewhat larger town of Colfax and called for a CASF subsidy of $2.3 million to reach 1,400 homes that, Frontier said, lacked access to broadband service at California’s pathetic minimum of 6 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds.… More

Picker ends his term as CPUC president

16 August 2019 by Steve Blum
casf, cpuc, public policy

Yesterday was Michael Picker’s last meeting as president of the California Public Utilities Commission. He stepped down at the request of California governor Gavin Newsom, who named Marybel Batjer, his strike team leader, to head the commission. She’ll be able to assume the job while the state senate decides whether to confirm her appointment.

Picker leaves behind positive accomplishments. He took over from Michael Peevey, who was under criminal investigation for backroom dealings. The switch from Peevey’s big man on campus persona to Picker’s soporific style was effective in dampening much of the heated criticism of the CPUC at the time.… More

A decade late and megabucks short, Kern County fiber project gets environmental approval

7 August 2019 by Steve Blum
casf, cpuc, digital 395, mediacom

After ten years of review, the California Public Utilities Commission is about to approve environmental clearances for a middle mile fiber project in Kern County, subsidised by the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF). Mediacom, a cable company that owns a handful of scattered systems in remote parts of California, applied for a $286,000 CASF grant in 2009, intending to build a 32 mile middle mile fiber route from Inyokern – an unincorporated community along U.S. 395 near Ridgecrest – to its system that serves the Lake Isabella area in eastern Kern County.… More

“Hunger games” duels for broadband subsidies proposed by FCC

5 August 2019 by Steve Blum
casf, connect america fund, cpuc, fcc, public policy

Broadband subsidies from the Federal Communications Commission are paid for out of the Universal Service Fund" (USF) which, in turn, gets its money from taxes on telephone bills. The FCC runs four programs that way: the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (formerly known as the Connect America Fund), the e-rate program that pays for broadband service to schools and libraries, the rural health care program, which does the same for hospitals, and the Lifeline program, which buys down service costs for low income households.… More

Caltech turns eastern California fiber network into earthquake detector

22 July 2019 by Steve Blum
casf, cpuc, digital 395, emergencyservices, geek stuff

Fiber optic networks do more than just ride out major earthquakes without dropping a bit. They can also detect and collect data on the quakes themselves. Two major quakes – magnitude 6.4 and 7.1 – hit eastern California on 4 and 5 July 2019 respectively, in the high desert of Kern and San Bernardino counties, where seismometers aren’t thick on the ground. To understand what happened, and what continues to happen, Caltech scientists needed to quickly get more sensors into the field.… More

CPUC is next target for Newsom’s “strike team” leader

15 July 2019 by Steve Blum
ab1366, casf, cpuc, public policy

The new president of the California Public Utilities Commission is Marybel Batjer. Originally appointed by governor Jerry Brown, she heads the California government operations agency, which oversees “procurement, real estate, information technology, and human resources” for all state agencies. Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Friday that she will replace outgoing president Michael Picker.

Batjer seems to like a challenge. In his brief six months in office, Newsom has already tapped Batjer to clean up two bureaucratic black holes: the Department of Motor Vehicles and state government’s information technology “mess”.… More

California-funded fiber keeps (most) quake hit communities connected

9 July 2019 by Steve Blum
casf, cpuc, digital 395, emergencyservices, race telecommunications

I planned to write about Trona and Searle Valley today, but not with earthquakes in mind. Instead, I was going to look at a recent California Public Utilities Commission ruling that, in effect, disavowed a previous and pusillanimous decision to deny broadband infrastructure grants in those two towns. That’s for later. For now, it’s about the eastern California communities that got state and federal broadband grants and, as a result, maintained modern, gigabit-class broadband connectivity even as two major earthquakes – 7.1 and 6.4 magnitude – and a continuing swarm of fore and aftershocks hit.… More