casf

Two projects ask for $99 million California broadband subsidy

10 August 2015 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

Two big requests were filed with the California Public Utilities Commission today. Race Telecommunications is asking for $48 million to build a fiber-to-the-home system in San Bernardino County, and Inyo Networks wants $51 million to link Eureka to Redding with fiber along State Route 299.

I’ll have more on Digital 299 in tomorrow’s blog post, and on Gigafy Phelan on Wednesday. If you’re keeping track, there’s now $173 million in proposals chasing about $156 million in the California Advanced services fund kitty.… More

CPUC says yes to Petrolia and queues up Backus


Click to get the big picture for Backus Road.

Frontier Communications will get $203,000 from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to build a microwave middle mile connection to the Humboldt County town of Petrolia and upgrade DSL service to 25 Mbps down and 1.5 Mbps up. The California Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously on Thursday to award the grant. Petrolia was initially identified as a candidate for a CASF subsidy by the Redwood Coast Broadband Consortium and is the first on a long list of high priority communities – as determined by the CPUC – to get actual project approval.… More

Cooperative FTTH looks like a low cost option for a lucky few in California

19 July 2015 by Steve Blum
, , , ,


Southwestern Riverside County just got in line for a fiber to the home (FTTH) upgrade. The Anza Electric Cooperative submitted an application for $2.8 million from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to run fiber alongside its existing electric system…

Connect Anza will deploy a fiber optic cable on existing poles and rights of way and establish a network of sufficient capacity to establish high speed, quality internet service for Anza Electric Cooperatives existing service territory covering over 500 square miles, located wholly within western Riverside County.

… More

Public housing gets broadband love from federal government

16 July 2015 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

Fresno and Los Angeles made the list of 27 cities and one tribal nation that will be getting federal help in extending broadband service to more public housing residents. The ConnectHome program was announced yesterday by U.S. president Barack Obama. The press release was a hodge podge of details, but it seems to boil down to…

  • Some of the communities – but not LA or Fresno – will get discounted, or even free, Internet access in public housing projects from ISPs, including Suddenlink, Cox, CenturyLink and Google Fiber.
… More

Frontier says California approval delayed is funding denied

8 July 2015 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

Let’s hope there will be something to celebrate come New Year’s Eve.

It’s worth $192 million to rural areas of the state if the California Public Utilities Commission sticks to the schedule it set for reviewing Frontier Communications’ proposed purchase of Verizon’s wireline telephone systems. That’s one of the significant points of a joint response made by the two companies to questions posed by the Federal Communications Commission as it also reviews the transaction.

Frontier says it will use state and federal subsidies to upgrade broadband infrastructure in California…

If Frontier is able to obtain regulatory approvals for the Transaction prior to December 31, 2015, it will utilize available funding for broadband deployment in the high cost areas within the Transferring Companies’ territories.

… More

Petrolia project shows how middle mile subsidies boost last mile speeds

21 June 2015 by Steve Blum
, ,

Click for more maps and financials.

Frontier Communications is asking the California Public Utilities Commission for $203,000 from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to pay for 60% of the cost of upgrading a microwave link between the tiny and remote Humboldt County town of Petrolia and high capacity fiber backhaul to the north in Ferndale. The application made it through the review process, and is now scheduled to be voted on by the CPUC next month.

… More

Trans Sierra project proposes to bridge a mountain broadband gap

9 June 2015 by Steve Blum
, , , , ,


Click for all the maps.

Inyo Networks – one of the companies behind the Digital 395 network that serves the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada – is asking the California Public Utilities Commission for a $3.7 million subsidy to build access nodes along an existing fiber route that runs between Reno and Sacramento, more or less down the I-80 corridor, and includes a spur that connects the system to the Tahoe basin. The project was developed with considerable help from the Tahoe area’s broadband consortium.… More

Digital 395 proposes Inyo County FTTH expansion

3 June 2015 by Steve Blum
, , , , ,


Click for a bigger version.

Four more remote towns in the eastern California desert are in line for gigabit-class fiber-to-the-home service, thanks to the Digital 395 middle mile network that stretches more than 500 miles down the east side of the Sierra Nevada, from Reno to Barstow.

Inyo Networks – one of the companies behind the Digital 395 project – is asking the California Public Utilities Commission for $4.4 million to extend its middle fiber another 20 miles, reaching from Olancha to Keeler and Darwin, and to build FTTH systems in those three communities, plus the nearby town of Cartago.… More

Fiber to the home subsidies approved for two California communities

14 May 2015 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

Fiber to the cabin coming to Wrightwood.

The first two broadband infrastructure grants of the year, totaling $3.3 million, were approved last week by the California Public Utilities Commission. Ultimate Internet Access’s Helendale and Wrightwood projects sailed through on a unanimous vote by commissioners. Both are fiber to the home proposals promising to deliver a gigabit up and down to about a couple thousand residents each for $70 per month.
With one exception, the projects as approved were the same as originally outlined last month by CPUC staff.… More

More trouble for Sierra Nevada broadband grant proposals

28 April 2015 by Steve Blum
, , ,


Click and see for yourself.

Another challenge has been filed against the applications submitted by Cal.net for broadband infrastructure grants from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF). Conifer Communications – another wireless Internet service provider in the Sierra Nevada and San Joaquin Valley – served notice yesterday that it objected, at least in part, to Cal.net’s plans to serve Calaveras, Tuolumne and Mariposa counties. It’s the second formal objection to the projects made public; a group of rural telcos filed the first last week.… More