casf

California broadband subsidy approved for Mother Lode WISP

13 November 2016 by Steve Blum
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Calaveras County won’t be limited to traditional forms of entertainment.

Nearly 5,000 households in Calaveras and Amador counties, along with a few in Alpine County, will be offered faster wireless broadband service, at a minimum of 6 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload speeds, and ranging up to 25 Mbps download and 4 Mbps upload speeds. At least that’s the plan as presented to the California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday, as it approved a $2.9 million construction grant from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to a local wireless Internet service provider, Cal.net.… More

More California regional broadband consortia funded

12 November 2016 by Steve Blum
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Click to see the previous boundaries.

Three regional broadband consortia were approved for funding by the California Public Utilities Commission this week. That brings the total to nine, with three more queued up for next month’s meeting. Here’s how it lines up…

Approved on 10 November 2016:

  • Gold Country Broadband Consortium, $300,000 over two years. Covers Sierra, Nevada, Placer, El Dorado and a part of Alpine counties, except for the Tahoe Basin area, which [has its own, separate consortium]().
… More

Status quo for broadband policy in Sacramento

11 November 2016 by Steve Blum
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Bradford is back.

There’s no predicting what impact the political upheaval in Washington, D.C. will have on broadband policy and development, but there’s likely to be little change here in California as a result of Tuesday’s election.

The one significant change that was at stake in Sacramento was a possible democratic supermajority in the California legislature. Votes will continue to be counted until Monday, but at this point it appears that democrats will have a supermajority in the assembly, but not in the senate.… More

Two more eastern California towns in line for FTTH

30 October 2016 by Steve Blum
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Bridgeport and Walker in northern Mono County will get gigabit-class fiber to the home service, if the California Public Utilities Commission votes to approve a $3.1 million grant from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), as recommended by a long delayed draft resolution prepared by staff.

The grant would go to Race Telecommunications, which has been building fiber to the home systems along and near the Digital 395 middle mile fiber route. Both the last mile systems and Digital 395 have benefited from CASF subsidies and, in the case of the Digital 395 project, a federal broadband stimulus grant.… More

Now or never: California broadband subsidies will end without fast action

21 October 2016 by Steve Blum
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It’s not just the lakes that are drying up.

No more money will be flowing into the California Advanced Services Fund to pay for broadband infrastructure subsidies. The program has hit the limit set by the California legislature, and the tax that funds it will no longer be collected.
By this time next year, if not sooner, the infrastructure kitty will likely be spent down to zero. If more money is ever going to be added, it’ll have to happen soon.… More

Last call for California broadband infrastructure subsidies

17 October 2016 by Steve Blum
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Drink up time.

The California Public Utilities Commission scrapped the tax that pays for the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF). The California legislature limited CASF to a total of $315 million, most of which goes to pay for broadband infrastructure projects. It’ll reach that limit by the end of next month, so the CPUC voted on Thursday to halt collection of the CASF surcharge – about half a percent – on telephone bills in California, effective 1 December 2016.… More

Reboot for dueling San Bernardino FTTH projects

10 October 2016 by Steve Blum
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Frontier’s federal CAF2 subsidised census blocks.
Two competing proposals to build a fiber to the home system in the San Bernardino County town of Phelan and surrounding communities are now a lot closer to meeting in the middle.

More than a year ago, in August 2015, Race Telecommunications submitted a proposal asking the California Public Utilities Commission for a $48 million grant from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) for its Gigafy Phelan project – that’s 60% of the then-estimated construction cost to reach about 10,000 homes with fiber.… More

Frontier gets California subsidy to upgrade Shasta County service

1 October 2016 by Steve Blum
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A thousand homes in the rural Shasta County community of Shingletown will be getting faster DSL service from Frontier Communications, as a result of a $546,000 subsidy from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) that was okayed by the California Public Utilities Commission at its meeting last week. According to the resolution approving the grant…

Frontier submitted an application for CASF funding to build 64,950 feet of fiber cable from the Shingletown, California central office to six digital loop carrier sites…The sites under this grant are currently served by broadband over copper facilities to DSLAM’s served from the Shingletown central office in Shasta County.

… More

California public housing broadband subsidies extended

28 September 2016 by Steve Blum
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Governor Jerry Brown signed senate bill 745 yesterday, extending the life of the California Advanced Services Fund’s (CASF) public housing broadband program.

It’s a good news/bad news sort of bill. On the one hand, instead of expiring at the end of this year and being re-absorbed into other CASF accounts, the money that hasn’t been spent yet will remain available through 2020. Originally, $20 million was set aside to subsidise broadband facilities (but not the service itself) in public housing communities, and $5 million was allocated to pay for broadband marketing and digital literacy efforts aimed at convincing residents to get online.… More

Military homes proposed for California broadband grant

24 September 2016 by Steve Blum
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High density, low service.

A broadband subsidy plan for Vandenberg Air Force Base could bring fiber to the home (or at least to the building) service to military housing there. Renegade Technologies, a Lompoc-based information technology company, submitted an application for a $460,000 grant and a $154,000 loan from the California Advanced Services Fund, proposing to “provide advanced Internet access services to all dwelling units in residential areas of Vandenberg Air Force Base including apartments & dormitories by installing a new fiber-to-the-building (FTTB) infrastructure”.… More