charter

Comcast occupies Crimea, I'm sorry, California

28 April 2014 by Steve Blum
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Comcast will be, by far, the dominant cable company in California, if the proposed acquisition of Time-Warner Cable and today’s announcement of a pie-slicing deal with Charter Communications come to pass.

In order to get the Time-Warner purchase past federal regulators, Comcast wants to trim back what would be its combined customer base to 30 million homes, which is about half the cable TV subscribers in the U.S. So this morning it announced a scheme to spin off some Time-Warner subscribers into a company effectively controlled by Charter Communications (which would become the second biggest cable operator in the U.S.),… More

Watsonville moving ahead with city fiber project to replace Charter service

18 September 2013 by Steve Blum
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New conduit is in blue, existing conduit in red, existing fiber in green.

The Watsonville, California city council voted last week to ask for bids to build a fiber optic backbone network that will connect public facilities from one end of the city to another.

The first phase of the project, which is now out to bid, involves installing a total of about one mile of conduit that will link up to another three miles or so of existing conduit and fiber lines, creating a continuous path.… More

Mobile carriers' broadband coverage claims challenged by ISPs

Availability maps submitted by mobile telephone carriers are a problem for local Internet companies trying to expand and improve broadband service in California’s central coast region.

Representatives from six Internet service providers – Central Coast Internet, Charter, Cruzio, Razzolink, Redshift and Surfnet – participated in a workshop yesterday organized by the Central Coast Broadband Consortium (CCBC). A number of concerns were discussed, including construction permits, funding, and coordination with other utility and local government projects.… More

Incumbents fighting CASF proposals

Five applications comprising three projects were submitted for California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) subsidies last month by competitive broadband service providers. All are under review by California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) staff. Incumbent carriers – AT&T and Charter Communications – have challenged all three projects (and four of the five applications).

Because of the way CASF rules are written, two of the projects – Race Communications in Kern County and WillitsOnline in Mendocino County – had to file two grant applications each.… More