cpuc

When Californians are trapped in monopoly telecom markets, AT&T and Frontier take the money and run

24 July 2019 by Steve Blum
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Leaning pole

Competition matters. When telephone or cable companies face a competitive threat – either from each other or from an independent Internet service provider, they respond by upgrading infrastructure and service, and by cranking up the volume on promotional discounts. The converse is true: no competition means no infrastructure investment or service upgrades or marketing love.

That’s a lesson I’ve learned time and again with municipal and independent broadband projects. When a city or an independent credibly threatens to enter the market, incumbents respond.… More

AT&T redlines poor and rural Californians because it can, Frontier because it can’t afford otherwise, CPUC study says

23 July 2019 by Steve Blum
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History of the World, Part 1 - Piss Boy

Corporate choices made by AT&T and Verizon, and Frontier Communications’ dire financial condition created the growing divide between relatively modern telecoms infrastructure in affluent urban and suburban communities, and the decaying infrastructure in poor and rural ones. The result is “deteriorating service quality”, “persistent disinvestment”, an “investment focus on higher income communities” and an “increased focus on areas most heavily impacted by competition”, according to a study done for the California Public Utilities Commission by a Boston-based consulting company.… More

Caltech turns eastern California fiber network into earthquake detector

22 July 2019 by Steve Blum
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Caltech readout

Fiber optic networks do more than just ride out major earthquakes without dropping a bit. They can also detect and collect data on the quakes themselves. Two major quakes – magnitude 6.4 and 7.1 – hit eastern California on 4 and 5 July 2019 respectively, in the high desert of Kern and San Bernardino counties, where seismometers aren’t thick on the ground. To understand what happened, and what continues to happen, Caltech scientists needed to quickly get more sensors into the field.… More

California kicks T-Mobile-Sprint deal to September. Or maybe much later

17 July 2019 by Steve Blum
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Tmobile san francisco 18may2019

The California Public Utilities Commission can’t act on T-Mobile’s request for permission to acquire Sprint until the middle of September, at the earliest. Yesterday was the deadline for any proposed decisions – in any proceeding, T-Mobile or not – to be placed on the commission’s 15 August 2019 meeting agenda. The next scheduled meeting after that is on 12 September, which means a draft decision would have to be released for the legally required 30-day public review period by 13 August.… More

Charter and the State New York settle on terms for an honest broadband buildout

16 July 2019 by Steve Blum
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Charter Communications won’t be thrown out of the State of New York. The Public Services Commission voted last week to accept a settlement that ends a dispute over whether Charter is meeting the obligations it accepted when its acquisition of Time Warner Cable systems was approved in 2016. It ends the threat that Charter could lose its franchise to operate cable systems in New York because, the commission said, Charter was “just lining its pockets”.

One of the points of contention was whether Charter could count addresses in New York City towards its commitment to build out broadband service to under and unserved communities.… More

CPUC is next target for Newsom’s “strike team” leader

15 July 2019 by Steve Blum
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Batjer 2014

The new president of the California Public Utilities Commission is Marybel Batjer. Originally appointed by governor Jerry Brown, she heads the California government operations agency, which oversees “procurement, real estate, information technology, and human resources” for all state agencies. Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Friday that she will replace outgoing president Michael Picker.

Batjer seems to like a challenge. In his brief six months in office, Newsom has already tapped Batjer to clean up two bureaucratic black holes: the Department of Motor Vehicles and state government’s information technology “mess”.… More

Telephone deregulation bill amended by California senate committee, but it’s still a hot mess

11 July 2019 by Steve Blum
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Deregulation of telephone service – and with it, telecommunications infrastructure – moved ahead yesterday in the California senate’s energy, utilities and communications committee. Backed by AT&T, Frontier Communications, Comcast and other monopoly model incumbents, assembly bill 1366 was approved on a largely positive, but not quite unanimous vote. It extends a ban on regulation of voice over Internet protocol service (VoIP) by the California Public Utilities Commission and other state agencies. As the shift from old style, regulated telephone service to unregulated VoIP continues, the effect is to allow telcos and cable companies to back out from under the CPUC’s jurisdiction.… More

California senate committee considers AT&T-backed bill to end telephone service regulation

10 July 2019 by Steve Blum
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Darth leia 625

A bill that would extend California’s ban on regulation of “Internet protocol enabled” services, including voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) service, is due for a hearing in the California senate’s energy, utilities and communications committee today. Assembly bill 1366, authored by Lorena Gonzalez (D – San Diego), would allow AT&T, Frontier Communications, Comcast, Charter Communications and other big, monopoly model incumbents to do an end run around California’s laws, according to the California Public Utilities Commission.… More

California-funded fiber keeps (most) quake hit communities connected

Digital 395 19sep2013

I planned to write about Trona and Searle Valley today, but not with earthquakes in mind. Instead, I was going to look at a recent California Public Utilities Commission ruling that, in effect, disavowed a previous and pusillanimous decision to deny broadband infrastructure grants in those two towns. That’s for later. For now, it’s about the eastern California communities that got state and federal broadband grants and, as a result, maintained modern, gigabit-class broadband connectivity even as two major earthquakes – 7.1 and 6.4 magnitude – and a continuing swarm of fore and aftershocks hit.… More

AB 1366 will effectively end telecoms regulation in California, CPUC says

28 June 2019 by Steve Blum
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Cpuc graphic voip vs pots 24jun2019

Update: AB 1366 will be heard in the senate energy, utilities and communications the week after next (h/t to Adam Bender at Communications Daily for the heads up).

Assembly bill 1366 will block modernisation of California’s telecommunications grid and allow telephone and cable companies “to disregard California laws”, according to a position paper unanimously adopted by the California Public Utilities Commission yesterday. The commission’s opposition comes ahead of a California senate hearing on the bill scheduled for the week after next.… More