cpuc

PG&E pole attachment shot clock ready for another CPUC vote

4 October 2019 by Steve Blum
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The do-over of a settlement resolving a utility pole attachment dispute between Pacific Gas and Electric and Crown Castle is queued up at the California Public Utilities Commission. The original settlement was drafted by administrative law judge Patricia Miles and approved in March. But commissioners reversed the decision due to procedural mistakes, and told Miles to fix those errors try again. She did, and the new draft is the same as the old one.

If approved, the imposed settlement gives PG&E forty five days to “provide a response” to a pole attachment request from Crown Castle.… More

Sprint took megabuck subsidies for inactive lifeline customers, federally and in California

30 September 2019 by Steve Blum
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Sprint could be collecting payments from California’s broadband and telephone lifeline subsidy program for hundreds of thousands of inactive accounts. A Federal Communications Commission press release accuses Sprint of taking “tens of millions of dollars” for 885,000 federally subsidised customers who weren’t using the service anymore. That represents 30% of Sprint’s national lifeline customer base, says the FCC.

Sprint is the 500 pound gorilla of the California Public Utilities Commission’s lifeline program, which supplements the $9.25 monthly federal subsidy with up to $15 per month.… More

CPUC approves DSL upgrade subsidy for Frontier at $4,700 per home

27 September 2019 by Steve Blum
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The California Public Utilities Commission approved a $693,000 grant to Frontier Communications from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) for a DSL equipment upgrade in the Placer County community of Weimar earlier this month. It was a considerably smaller grant than Frontier requested.

The project originally included the somewhat larger town of Colfax and called for a CASF subsidy of $2.3 million to reach 1,400 homes that, Frontier said, lacked access to broadband service at California’s pathetic minimum of 6 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds.… More

T-Mobile waters down California job pledge as it refiles for Sprint merger permission

23 September 2019 by Steve Blum
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T-Mobile (and Sprint, but it’s T-Mobile running the show) refiled and amended its application for merger approval with the California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday, as directed by the administrative law judge managing the case. Generally, the changes add a bit more detail about how the settlement T-Mobile reached with the federal justice department’s antitrust enforcers changes the promises it made to the CPUC earlier in the proceeding.

The core of the settlement involves transferring most of Sprint’s prepaid customers, along with retail outlets, cell sites and spectrum, to DISH, in order to create a new competitor in the mobile broadband market.… More

California legislature tweaks telecoms policy instead of killing it

16 September 2019 by Steve Blum
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Despite AT&T’s quest for de facto deregulation of telecommunications infrastructure and service, no major telecoms policy changes emerged from the California legislature this year. A few small ball telecoms-related bills did emerge by the end of the 2019 session early Saturday morning, though, and were sent on to governor Gavin Newsom.

Assembly bill 1366 is dead, at least for this year. There was no last minute conniving to pull it out of the committee deep freeze it landed in earlier in the week.… More

AT&T’s backdoor telecoms deregulation bill runs out of room in the California senate

11 September 2019 by Steve Blum
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“AB 1366 was pulled by the author, so it will not be considered today”, said senator Ben Hueso (D – San Diego) as he called the senate’s energy, utilities and communications committee to order yesterday. Assembly bill 1366 would extend a ban on regulation of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and other “Internet protocol enabled” services in California.

Conventional wisdom says the bill is dead for this year. It wasn’t amended before last night’s constitutional deadline, so there’ll be no more wrangling over the bill’s language.… More

California telecoms backdoor deregulation bill, AB 1366, stalls

10 September 2019 by Steve Blum
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Assembly bill 1366 was “pulled by the author” ahead of a committee hearing this afternoon. The California senate’s energy, utilities and communications committee was supposed to review amendments made last Friday, but that didn’t happen. No reason was given. The bill might be dead, or it might be going through a final rewrite, ahead of tonight’s hard, constitutional deadline for amending it. Or something else – anything is possible today. Tomorrow, well, that’ll be a different story.… More

“Rate neutral framework”, whatever that is, promised as PG&E offers plan to pay wildfire costs and get out of bankruptcy

10 September 2019 by Steve Blum
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PG&E filed its plan for coming out of bankruptcy with the federal judge handling the case yesterday. The company proposes to give $8.4 billion to those harmed by wildfires over the past four years, both individual and public agencies, another $8.5 billion to insurance companies that have already paid out claims resulting from those fires, as well as a previously agreed $1 billion to a group of northern California public agencies.

In a press release, PG&E’s CEO, Bill Johnson, was quoted as saying the reorganisation plan is a “rate neutral framework”, but didn’t elaborate.… More

AT&T snakes perks into California deregulation bill, while its author ducks for cover

9 September 2019 by Steve Blum
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AT&T slipped more special privileges into a bill that would, in effect, deregulate broadband and modern voice service in California. At the same time, the bill was disowned, sorta, by its godmother, assembly member Lorena Gonzalez (D – San Diego).

Assembly bill 1366, which would extend an existing ban on regulation of voice over Internet protocol service (VoIP), was amended ahead of Friday’s soft deadline for changing bill language in the California legislature (Tuesday is the hard, constitutional cutoff for amendments).… More

Unanimous approval by key committee sends AT&T’s deregulation bill to a vote of the full California senate

3 September 2019 by Steve Blum
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When the legislative dust settled on Friday, after a whirlwind morning in which the fate of hundreds of bills were announced after being decided behind closed doors in Sacramento, assembly bill 1366 remained alive. Carried by assembly member Lorena Gonzalez (D – San Diego) would, on the face of it, simply extend an existing ban on regulation of “Internet Protocol enabled communications services”, including voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephone service.

Given the increasing number of consumers switching – and being switched without their consent – from legacy copper-based plain old telephone service (POTS) to VoIP since the regulatory ban went into effect six years ago, AB 1366 spells a de facto end to state oversight of broadband and telephone infrastructure and service in California.… More