Steve Blum's Blog
It’s time to close the door on the last round of applications for broadband construction subsidies from the California Advanced Services Fund. Of the 32 proposals submitted on 1 February 2013 – nearly a year and a half ago – 17 were funded for total of $48.6 million in grants and $127,000 in loans. The final two were approved by the CPUC in June – an FTTH project in Mono County and a fixed wireless system in Shasta County.… More
Fast, focused, low cost and sustainable projects are the answer to the problem of how to extend modern Internet access into publicly supported housing. That’s the conclusion of a report prepared by California Public Utilities Commission staff that lays out recommendations for implementing assembly bill 1299 – approved last year – which spends money from the California Advanced Services Fund on broadband facilities and marketing programs in public housing.
The report carefully draws boundaries. Inside wiring and networking equipment would qualify for CASF subsidies, backhaul fiber installed out in the street gets squat.… More
Twelve central coast communities have been designated as priority areas for broadband infrastructure development by the California Public Utilities Commission. In a unanimous vote on Thursday, 26 June 2014, commissioners endorsed the list presented in March by the Central Coast Broadband Consortium, following a month-long workshop on Civinomics.com.
The Pleasure Point/Twin Lakes neighborhood down coast from the City of Santa Cruz, the Brookdale area in the mountains and the town of Soquel made the list, along with Aromas, two rural areas outside of Hollister and six Salinas Valley communities: Castroville, Chualar, Gonzales, Soledad, Greenfield and King City.… More
Included in last week’s reboot of the California Advanced Services Fund’s broadband infrastructure subsidy program was a long priority list of places where broadband infrastructure is considered sub-standard by local communities. It’s the result of several months of work by regional broadband consortia throughout the state, most of whom presented their findings at a statewide broadband summit in Sacramento in March.
By approving the list – along with a new schedule and process for applying for CASF grants and loans – the California Public Utilities Commission put both incumbent cable and telephone companies and would-be competitors on notice that these dark spots on the California broadband map are ready to be filled.… More
It seems the only question left to answer about whether union pay scales and work rules will be applied to projects subsidised by the California Advanced Services Fund is where the money will come from. Following Wednesday’s hearing in the senate labor and industrial relations committee, it seems all but certain that the California legislature will approve assembly bill 2272, which would unequivocally impose so-called prevailing wage requirements on CASF infrastructure projects.
On a 4 to 1 party line vote, the committee approved the bill (with some clean up language), but didn’t include an amendment requested by lobbyists representing rural telecoms companies that would give them a statutory basis for asking the California Public Utilities Commission to cover the difference for existing projects.… More
Whether you like the rules or not – and for what it’s worth I don’t – it’s game on for the next round of broadband infrastructure construction subsidies from the California Advanced Services Fund. In a unanimous vote this morning, the California Public Utilities Commission approved new rules and a timeline for applying for CASF grants and loans.
Existing Internet service providers that offer substandard service (6 Mbps down/1.5 Mbps up, per the CPUC) are first in line: they can block potential competitors from getting CASF funding in their service areas.… More
A revised set of proposed new rules for getting broadband construction subsidies from the California Advanced Services Fund has been posted. It’s great news for incumbent telephone and cable companies, but it makes it harder – maybe impossible – for independent competitors to get in the game.
The first draft was floated last month, and generated a firestorm of comments, followed by counter-arguments, from incumbent service providers, regional broadband consortia and others. The result is a second draft that gives incumbents pretty much everything they wanted…
ViaSat showed the best speed and consistency in the FCC’s latest round of national broadband testing, but those same measurements also show that its subscribers don’t get anywhere near as much data as landline customers. Similar to last year’s poor report card, the FCC results show that about a third of ViaSat’s customers get less than 2 gigabytes a month and only one of those tested hit over 10 GB.… More
A couple of tweaks were made, but the substance of assembly bill 2272 remains the same following discussion and approval by the California senate energy, utilities and communications committee yesterday. AB 2272 would impose union pay and work rules requirements on all broadband infrastructure projects funded by the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), nearly doubling the cost for both taxpayers and ISPs.
The committee rejected a proposal to limit the new rules to future projects, opting instead to make the requirement retroactive.… More
Eight rebuttals were filed yesterday, in response to the 14 opening comments on a draft of new rules for infrastructure construction subsidies from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF).
Three sets of reply comments came from service providers, or those who represent them. Frontier, a coalition of small rural telephone companies and the lobbying front for the California cable industry – CCTA – followed up their original comments by largely agreeing with each other, and objecting to any notion that greater accountability should be expected of them.… More