cpuc

Fires will drive price hikes for electricity and broadband

24 November 2018 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

Pacific Gas and Electric and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Southern California Edison face the potential of billions of dollars of liability for 1. this year’s wildfires, 2. last year’s wildfires and 3. preventing next year’s wildfires. Someone will have to pay the tab that fires have already run up in California. Under state law, if a utility is even partly to blame it has to bear the full burden, generally. But utilities, even highly regulated ones like privately owned electric companies, can pass some or all of those costs on to their customers.… More

T-Mobile not worried about speed or result of CPUC review of Sprint deal

22 November 2018 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

T-Mobile doesn’t seem to be too worried about getting approval from the California Public Utilities Commission for its proposed takeover of Sprint. The company’s chief financial officer, Braxton Carter, spoke at an investment conference in Barcelona last week, and offered an optimistic timeline to complete the transaction…

The goal, we believe, is still to close this transaction…in the first half, probably in the second quarter of ’19. You look at the shot clock with the FCC, it’s really implying a very early April end of that shot clock at this point, and that’s why I’m more pointing to the second quarter is more probable.

… More

CPUC opens investigation into consumer broadband prices and other utility rates

21 November 2018 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

The cost burden of consumer broadband service will be evaluated by the California Public Utilities Commission, as part of a larger inquiry into the affordability of all types of utility services. A “scoping memo”, released by commissioner Clifford Rechtschaffen on Monday, outlines the issues on the table as the CPUC tries to develop common metrics and methods for evaluating the affordability of all utility services under its jurisdiction.

The idea was floated in July, and utilities had a chance to offer their opinions on what should be considered and how it should be done.… More

U.S. mobile bandwidth is rich world’s most expensive, and it could get worse

20 November 2018 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

Mobile broadband prices in the U.S. are the highest in the developed world, according to a report just published by a Finnish research company. A study by Rewheel concluded that even though there are four seemingly competitive mobile operators in the U.S., “gigabyte prices are not competitive”, and “the US has the 5th highest gigabyte prices in smartphone plans and is the most expensive market in mobile broadband among the 41” European Union and other developed countries (i.e.… More

PG&E reports second “incident” near Camp Fire ignition point, faces CPUC investigation

17 November 2018 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

At least 71 people are dead, more than a thousand are missing, and the fight to contain the Camp Fire in Butte County continues. As dense smoke settled over its San Francisco headquarters, the California Public Utilities Commission said it will take a hard look at Pacific Gas and Electric, which might have been responsible for starting it.

In yet another bizarre twist to the story, PG&E filed a second incident report with the CPUC late yesterday afternoon, revealing that it “experienced an outage on the Big Bend 1101 12kV circuit in Butte County”, in the community of Concow, at 6:45 a.m.… More

CPUC allows AT&T, Frontier to tap dance their way out of fines for bad service

16 November 2018 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

AT&T and Frontier Communications were fined $2.2 million and $823,000, respectively, by California Public Utilities Commission, for “chronic” service failure, primarily in rural California. Sorta. Kinda.

Well, not really.

At its meeting in Fresno last week, the CPUC voted unanimously to allow Frontier and AT&T to skip the fines, which were mostly for taking too long to restore telephone service for customers who experienced outages. In return, the companies promised to make “incremental” investments in improving service quality.… More

Money and performance at center of CETF’s fight with Frontier

14 November 2018 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

Frontier Communications says the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) has to return $714,000, if it asks for it. CETF’s response on Friday was we don’t have it anymore.

When Frontier won California Public Utilities Commission approval in 2015 to buy Verizon’s landline telephone systems in California, a long list of conditions was attached. Among them was a contract that committed “up to” $3 million to achieve the “aspirational goal” of signing up 200,000 low income Californian households for broadband service – from any provider, not just Frontier.… More

California broadband subsidy reboot draft posted, and it’s mostly good

13 November 2018 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

The long awaited revisions to the California Advanced Service Fund’s (CASF) infrastructure grant program are finally on the table, more than a year after it was signed into law by governor Jerry Brown. A draft of the new rules was published late Friday afternoon, with the goal of putting it to a vote of the California Public Utilities Commission next month. There’s a lot of good news in the draft, but also some bad news.… More

SDG&E shuts off electricity in fire danger areas, possible SCE link to Woolsey blaze ignition

12 November 2018 by Steve Blum
, , , , , , ,

Update, 13:48, 12 November 2018: SCE has begun proactive shutoffs, according to its website “due to dangerous high winds in Red Flag fire areas, SCE shut off power to roughly 50 customers in the Moorpark area at about 10:50 a.m. this morning”.

Much of California is under a red flag warning this morning. High winds and dangerously dry conditions could mean yet more wildfires, and more trouble for the three major fires already burning. The death toll from the Camp Fire in Butte County rose to 29 overnight, with hundreds of people still missing.… More

Californians must choose between tragedy and inconvenience. It’s not hard

10 November 2018 by Steve Blum
, , , , , , ,

Three massive wildfires continue to burn this morning in California; one in Butte County, two in Ventura and Los Angeles counties. The cost in human life is immeasurable, with nine people confirmed dead in northern California and many more missing. There’s no way to gauge the damage to property and the disruption to lives: what is the price of a town burned to the ground?

The town is, or was, Paradise, a community of 26,000 people in the northern Sierra Nevada foothills.… More