casf

Oops, Charter proves it can't serve public housing residents

20 February 2015 by Steve Blum
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Okay, people, you have to tell me these things, alright? I’ve been frozen for 30 years, okay?

In a self-defeating gesture, Charter Communications is challenging four public housing broadband grant applications made to the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF).

Charter claims residents at four complexes – two in Long Beach and two in San Bernardino – can buy Internet service at speeds in the 100 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload range.

Unfortunately for Charter, it doesn’t really matter.… More

WiFi dominates California public housing broadband grant proposals

18 February 2015 by Steve Blum
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Good enough for public housing.

Wired networks account for only two of the 52 public housing grant proposals made to the California Public Utilities Commission in the first round of applications. The rest either rely on WiFi – mesh networks, mostly – or, in the case of 24 projects proposed by the San Bernardino County housing authority, don’t specify a technology type.

Promised service speeds are consistent with both the technology proposed and the CPUC’s disappointing low minimum of 1.5 Mbps down and nothing particular for uploads, significantly less than the 6 Mbps down/1.5 Mbps minimum it thinks is acceptable for Californians who don’t live in public housing, and nowhere near the FCC’s new standard of 25 Mbps down/3 Mbps up.… More

Eastern California gets more FTTH love

2 January 2015 by Steve Blum
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Race Telecommunications is on the way to becoming the fiber king of eastern California. On New Year’s Eve, Race submitted 3 more grant applications to California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for fiber-to-the-home projects in Mono, Inyo and eastern Kern counties: Gigafy Backus, Gigafy Mono and Gigafy North 395.

Backus – actually, the Backus Road area – is south of the Mojave Air and Space Port, where Race received its first grant from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) in 2010.… More

Pressure to spend CASF money will grow in 2015

31 December 2014 by Steve Blum
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The new round of grant and loan proposals for the California Advanced Services Fund is remarkably different from the 2013 batch. Back then, 32 proposals were dumped on the CPUC all at once, ready or not. This time around, the application window will stay open until the money is gone, which means applicants can prioritise quality over deadline driven speed. And, it is hoped, the review process won’t be as clogged or as fraught – if an application is rejected now, it can be fixed and resubmitted.… More

Spend broadband subsidies on state of the art service, CPUC report says

27 December 2014 by Steve Blum
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Don’t subsidise old, slow broadband technology. That’s one of the conclusions of an analysis of mobile broadband performance done for the California Public Utilities Commission (H/T to Jim Warner for the pointer).

Right now, the CPUC’s minimum service availability mark is 6 Mbps down and 1.5 Mbps up – if a community gets less than that, it’s eligible for broadband infrastructure subsidies from the California Advanced Services Fund. Conversely though, to get those subsidies, broadband projects only have to meet that level of service – the minimum is good enough.… More

Public housing broadband heading for second class status in California

18 December 2014 by Steve Blum
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Lower broadband performance standards for Californians living in public housing are one step away from adoption by the California Public Utilities Commission. As it stands now, later this morning the CPUC will approve subsidy rules for broadband facility upgrades in publicly supported housing that set 1.5 Mbps download speeds as the minimum acceptable level, and no service level requirements at all for upload speeds. The stuff that’s installed has to be capable of supporting higher speeds, but actual performance is optional.… More

Big questions for a California broadband subsidy proposal, but worth answering

14 December 2014 by Steve Blum
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All over Helendale.

There’s a business case for resurrecting dead copper broadband systems. At least UIA thinks there is, given a sufficient subsidy from the California Advanced Services Fund. The company has submitted two projects for consideration for CASF grants in the current round. One is in Helendale, a small San Bernardino County community in the desert between Victorville and Barstow, where a cable system built by Falcon Cable – acquired by Charter Communications – was left to rot.… More

Subsidising second class broadband is a bad deal for all Californians

11 December 2014 by Steve Blum
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Hotel WiFi service is usually good enough to deal with email, Facebook and airline check-ins. It’ll do the work you have to get done before morning – maybe even a Skype call. But it’s rarely robust enough to reliably watch videos or jam a deadline on virtualised enterprise services or relax with an online game. It’s not a workhorse you can depend on. It’s an amenity, no more able to support day to day business than the tiny pool and token workout room can handle Ironman base training – I know, I tried.… More

California beats the odds in FCC rural broadband experiments

10 December 2014 by Steve Blum
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Sometimes things turn out better than you might expect.

California came out pretty well in the FCC’s provisional rural broadband experiment decisions. Of the 40 bidders that were accepted, 3 proposed a total of 9 projects in California. That’s 11% of the total number of accepted projects. In dollar terms, projects in our state did even better, claiming $16 million of the $99.5 million, 16% of the money tentatively awarded by the FCC.

There wasn’t much information given about the projects or the bidders by the FCC, just names, number of bids selected, total amount of the grant requested and total number of census blocks covered.… More