community networks

California shut out of rural community broadband grants, again

23 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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Can’t see California from here.

For the third year running, the U.S. department of agriculture passed over California while handing out Community Connect grants, a program run by the Rural Utilities Service. The agency released a list of 8 relatively small broadband projects that will be getting a total of $13.7 million. None of which are in California.

It’s possible, of course, that there were no applications submitted from here. I’ve been looking around on the web to see if that info has been published anywhere, but no joy so far.… More

Governor Brown signs community broadband bond financing bills into law

30 September 2014 by Steve Blum
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Cities and other local agencies in California will be able to issue bonds to pay for building broadband infrastructure, thanks to two new laws approved by Governor Brown yesterday. Assembly bill 2292 and senate bill 628 expand the use of infrastructure financing districts (IFDs), on the one hand specifically allowing broadband to be included in old-style IFDs and creating a new kind, called enhanced infrastructure financing districts, on the other. In both cases, the bonds can be repaid by earmarking the incremental tax revenue that the project is expected to produce.… More

Is Google Fiber making a power (zone) play in Austin?

25 September 2014 by Steve Blum
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Google has finally broken ground in Austin, Texas for its third fiber-to-the-home project. The announcement came in a blog post, complete with a couple of pictures that show guys boring a hole in the ground for conduit and doing something – it’s not clear what – with a power transformer on a utility pole.

Yes, the guy in the bucket truck is working in the power zone – the area of the the pole reserved for electrical distribution.… More

California legislature puts broadband infrastructure financing on par with water and roads

19 August 2014 by Steve Blum
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Roads, water, sewers, broadband. You need it all to build an economy.

It’s up to governor Brown to decide whether broadband infrastructure gets equal treatment with transportation and water projects in California, at least when local governments want to build it. On a lopsided vote, the state assembly approved the final version of assembly bill 2292 yesterday, which explicitly allows local governments to use infrastructure financing districts (IFDs) to issue bonds to build broadband projects, and then pay the money back with property tax revenue.… More

California legislature can help and hurt broadband infrastructure development this week

18 August 2014 by Steve Blum
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One step forward and two slides back.

Two bills with big implications for broadband infrastructure in California are queued up for votes in the state legislature this week. Assembly bill 2272 was blessed by the senate leadership last week and sent on for a floor vote. The date hasn’t been set yet.

That bill would put a huge dent in the California Advanced Services Fund by requiring all the projects it subsidises to follow an inflated statewide set of union work rules and pay scales, regardless of who is doing the job or what the going rates are in a particular area.… More

California bill defining broadband as public infrastructure diverted for review

8 August 2014 by Steve Blum
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A proposal to include broadband infrastructure in the list of things that special infrastructure financing districts (IFD) can pay for in California has been kicked to an assembly committee.

The measure – assembly bill 2292 – was approved by the California senate earlier this week, and was headed to a vote by full assembly. But because it was done using the gut-and-amend process – the text in an earlier bill that had almost nothing to do with the subject was stripped out and replaced with broadband financing language – the bill was diverted to the local government committee for review.… More

New public financing method for broadband clears California senate

5 August 2014 by Steve Blum
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Padilla steps up for local broadband financing.

Broadband would be added to the list of public works projects that cities and counties in California can pay for via infrastructure financing districts (IFDs), under a bill passed by the state senate yesterday on a 36 to 0 floor vote. Assembly bill 2292 started life as a way of financing rail transport at the Port of Oakland, but was gutted and rewritten by assemblyman Rob Bonta (D – Oakland), at the suggestion of San Leandro’s mayor, Stephen Cassidy.… More

The history of electricity does explain muni broadband, if you read the whole book

31 July 2014 by Steve Blum
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There are parallels to be drawn between municipally operated electric utilities and broadband systems. Brian Fung, a blogger writing in the Washington Post, (h/t to Fred Pilot at the Eldo Telcom blog for the pointer) uses the example of the growth of depression-era federal projects, initiated by Franklin Roosevelt, that generated electricity and used city-run electric systems to distribute it…

Roosevelt launched the Tennessee Valley Authority…and the Rural Electrification Administration, among a number of other offices meant to provide power to those who’d been passed over by the privately owned utilities because those areas weren’t as profitable.

… More

FCC offers first class and coach options for commenting on muni broadband petitions

30 July 2014 by Steve Blum
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The FCC now has two petitions in front of it, asking that state restrictions on municipal broadband be swept aside. In both cases – Chattanooga, Tennessee and Wilson, North Carolina – the cities are already operating fiber-to-the-home systems in conjunction with muni electric utilities and want to expand their service areas. The Tennessee and North Carolina laws are different, but each in its own way effectively prevents FTTH expansion outside of the city or its immediate surroundings.… More

Three reasons to ignore the muni broadband debate at the FCC

28 July 2014 by Steve Blum
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Over the past few days, I’ve written several posts about what I characterise as FCC chairman Tom Wheeler’s muni broadband posturing. I don’t think anything good or useful will come of it. In a comment on yesterday’s post though, Christopher Mitchell, a muni broadband advocate, asked a very relevant question, which I will boil down to: so what?.

It’s a fair question. I take Robert Heinlein’s maxim as axiomatic: Certainly the game is rigged.… More