casf

Rural telcos challenge Sierra wireless broadband proposals

26 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Click for the complete challenge letter.

Three rural telephone companies are challenging wireless broadband projects in the Sierra Nevada proposed by Cal.net for construction grants from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF).

Volcano Telephone Company, Calaveras Telephone Company and Sierra Telephone Company jointly sent a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission on Friday saying they provide adequate broadband service – at least 6 Mbps download and 1.5 Mbps upload speeds – to some of the areas targeted by Cal.net… More

Harder push for faster broadband speeds in California

23 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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California should raise its minimum standard for broadband, CPUC commissioner Catherine Sandoval said during yesterday’s meeting of the California Broadband Council in Sacramento. The goal “is to the increase the minimum speed that counts as served in California to mirror the FCC’s speed of 25 mbps down and 3 up”, she said. “I think it’s imperative that the state amend its definition”. Sandoval said she’ll be working to do that via existing California Public Utilities Commission processes, and also pointed to a bill sponsored by Santa Cruz legislator Mark Stone – assembly bill 238 – that would do the same thing.… More

Public sector broadband customers are slow to change, even when it means fast broadband

22 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Schools and other big broadband users have been slow to sign up for service on Digital 395, a 500-plus mile fiber network that reaches from Reno, down the eastern Calfiornia side of the Sierra Nevada, along U.S. Highway 395, to Barstow. The slower than expected take up rate for anchor institutions is causing financial headaches for the system, according to Michael Ort, president of Praxis Associates, the lead company on the Digital 395 project.… More

Richmond's hail mary aside, second batch of CASF public housing proposals looks pretty much like the first

12 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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The second round of applications for grants to install broadband facilities in California public housing projects produced about as many proposals as the first, but the total ask is more than three times as high.

Forty-eight proposals seeking a total of $4.4 million were sent to the California Public Utilities Commission by the 1 April 2015 deadline, versus 52 totalling $1.3 million submitted three months earlier. The difference is in the technologies proposed.

The lion’s share of the requests this time around – $3 million – came from the Richmond Housing Authority in western Contra Costa County.… More

CPUC considers $3.3 million subsidy for two FTTH projects

9 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Poor broadband service in Helendale now, but fiber could be on the way.

Two fiber-to-the-home projects in the California desert, northeast of Los Angeles, will be getting a total of $3.3 million in subsidies from the California Advanced Service Fund (CASF), if the California Public Utilities Commission approves draft resolutions released last week.

The proposals, for Helendale and Wrightwood, were submitted last December by Ultimate Internet Access (UIA), an independent Internet service provider that’s already active in the area.… More

A skeptical eye finds more broadband opportunities

5 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Click for the full presentation.

The California Public Utilities Commission collects a mountain of data from Internet service providers, and does a good job of sorting it out and publishing it in a very accessible way. But as a state regulatory agency, the CPUC can’t arbitrarily decide which claims it’ll believe and which it’ll discount. So it runs tests.

Ryan Dulin, the head of the CPUC division that regulates telecoms companies and manages broadband infrastructure subsidies through the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), demonstrated how that works for mobile broadband, running a speed test on his Verizon service during his presentation at a broadband conference for local government officials.… More

Cal.net seeks $8.1 million grant for Sierra wireless projects

1 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Click for more info and bigger maps.

Four wireless broadband projects intended to cover 18,000 homes in six Sierra Nevada counties are in the hunt for $8.1 million from the California Advanced Services Fund. Submitted yesterday by Cal.net, the plan is to use several kinds of unlicensed and semi-licensed spectrum – 5 GHz, an LTE-type technology in the 3.65 GHz band, a new but a not yet approved allocation in the 3.55 GHz range and television white space – to cover 1,440 square miles in Alpine, Amador, Calaveras, El Dorado, Mariposa and Tuolumne counties.… More

Last mile Internet service grows from northern California middle mile project

8 March 2015 by Steve Blum
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Another state and federally subsidised middle mile project is spawning last mile service in northern California. Plumas-Sierra Telecommunications (PST), which is a subsidiary of the Plumas-Sierra Rural Electric Cooperative, provides Internet service to rural communities in Plumas, Sierra and Lassen counties. It recently filed an application for a $677,000 grant from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to build out last mile service to 4,400 homes and businesses using middle mile fiber it built using money from the 2009 federal stimulus program and CASF.… More

California's Lost Coast found in a Frontier CASF proposal

7 March 2015 by Steve Blum
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The western edge of Humboldt County is known as the Lost Coast. The name comes from both the wave of depopulation the area experienced during the Depression, and from the fact that its rugged terrain left it largely ignored by state highway construction plans. The area was likewise bypassed by telecoms infrastructure.

Frontier Communications is the local phone company, having taken over the original rural telco that served the area. Don’t even ask about cable.… More

California legislature considers raising broadband standard to 25 Mbps

2 March 2015 by Steve Blum
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Californians can and should go faster.

While we’re waiting for the FCC to let us know what it actually did in its net neutrality and muni broadband decisions last week, let’s take a look at new broadband development bill that’s in the hopper in Sacramento: assembly bill 238, introduced by assemblyman Mark Stone (D – Santa Cruz).

Stone wants to raise the minimum broadband speed in California to meet the FCC’s recently adopted 25 Mbps down/3 Mbps up standard.… More