cpuc

Even Google needs video to compete against broadband incumbents

17 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Cut the cord carefully, if you bleed Dodger blue.

Video is an essential part of high speed broadband service. That’s the conclusion that Google has apparently reached. Google Fiber exec Milo Medin spoke at a conference in Florida earlier this week and, according to a story in Fierce Telecom, said…

What we have found is that while it’s not necessary to offer voice service because of wireless [substitution], if you don’t offer a good TV service your ability to compete with incumbents that bundle Internet and TV together is significantly impaired.

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Comcast sings the same old tune in LA

16 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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You weren’t expecting a new act, were you?

It doesn’t look like any progress was made at a California Public Utilities Commission-supervised meeting between Comcast, its would-be mega-merger allies and opponents of the deal in Los Angeles on Tuesday. I was thinking of flying down to LA to see the show, but after reading the news accounts of it, I’m glad I didn’t. It seems – judging from those reports, anyway – that it was more of the same old, same old.… More

CPUC commissioner urges rejection of Comcast's California merger plans

13 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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It’s a new game.

The California Public Utilities Commission will formally consider denying Comcast’s proposed takeover of Time Warner and Charter cable systems in the state. Until now, the conversation has been guided by a tentative decision drafted by a CPUC administrative law judge that would approve the merger and market swap, with a long list of temporary conditions. On Friday, commissioner Mike Florio proposed an alternative decision that would reject the deal outright…

Certain material facts are beyond serious dispute: the merger will roughly double Comcast’s share of broadband subscribers in California, leaving it with several times more broadband customers than all its competitors combined; Comcast’s market dominance is even more dramatic if the market is defined as broadband above 25 Mbps; and given this substantial increase in market share, Comcast will have a concomitant increase in control over Californians’ access to online content and services…

Comcast and Time Warner each have an effective monopoly on providing broadband services within its local geographic area…a post-merger Comcast will have a monopoly on speed tiers of 25 Mbps and above in approximately 78 percent of California census blocks, with only one competitor in almost all the rest.

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Richmond's hail mary aside, second batch of CASF public housing proposals looks pretty much like the first

12 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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The second round of applications for grants to install broadband facilities in California public housing projects produced about as many proposals as the first, but the total ask is more than three times as high.

Forty-eight proposals seeking a total of $4.4 million were sent to the California Public Utilities Commission by the 1 April 2015 deadline, versus 52 totalling $1.3 million submitted three months earlier. The difference is in the technologies proposed.

The lion’s share of the requests this time around – $3 million – came from the Richmond Housing Authority in western Contra Costa County.… More

CPUC considers $3.3 million subsidy for two FTTH projects

9 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Poor broadband service in Helendale now, but fiber could be on the way.

Two fiber-to-the-home projects in the California desert, northeast of Los Angeles, will be getting a total of $3.3 million in subsidies from the California Advanced Service Fund (CASF), if the California Public Utilities Commission approves draft resolutions released last week.

The proposals, for Helendale and Wrightwood, were submitted last December by Ultimate Internet Access (UIA), an independent Internet service provider that’s already active in the area.… More

Clear and limited mandate proposed for CPUC's broadband oversight role

8 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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OK to open it back up again.

A bill raising broadband standards in California also clears up any confusion about whether state regulators can do the job delegated to them by federal law. Assembly bill 238, authored by assemblyman Mark Stone (D – Santa Cruz), originally focused on upping the minimum acceptable service level to 25 Mbps down/3 Mbps up for projects subsidised by the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF). As just amended, it still does that, but also…

  • Levels the playing field somewhat for independent Internet service providers and cities and counties that want to chase CASF dollars.
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A skeptical eye finds more broadband opportunities

5 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Click for the full presentation.

The California Public Utilities Commission collects a mountain of data from Internet service providers, and does a good job of sorting it out and publishing it in a very accessible way. But as a state regulatory agency, the CPUC can’t arbitrarily decide which claims it’ll believe and which it’ll discount. So it runs tests.

Ryan Dulin, the head of the CPUC division that regulates telecoms companies and manages broadband infrastructure subsidies through the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), demonstrated how that works for mobile broadband, running a speed test on his Verizon service during his presentation at a broadband conference for local government officials.… More

Comcast's monopoly power won't be dulled by weak conditions

4 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Nope, that’s not Pacman, it’s what Comcast’s market share will look like in California, with or without conditions.

More of the specific objections that led to a long list of proposed conditions for California Public Utilities Commission approval of the Comcast – Time Warner – Charter mega deal were posted yesterday. Although the juicy bits have been blacked out due to confidentiality concerns, the comments filed by a consumer advocacy group – TURN, which stands for Toward Utility Rate Normalisation the Utility Reform Network – back up the claim that the merger and market swap would give Comcast a virtual monopoly on broadband service in California.… More

Alternate ending emerges for California cable game

3 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Click to see the big picture.

Charter Communications, the fourth largest cable TV company in the U.S., has an agreement to buy Bright House Networks, the sixth largest. The deal sets up a couple of possible futures for broadband in California.

Bright House and Charter are already wrapped up in the proposed Comcast-Time Warner merger. Via a series of market swaps, Comcast would get all of Charter’s systems in the state, except for the one at Lake Tahoe.… More

Judge rules Comcast's Internet video plans are beyond CPUC's reach

2 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Internet video is a video service, not an Internet service.

Accusations that Comcast intends to begin selling video programming via the Internet won’t be considered by the California Public Utilities Commission administrative law judge reviewing its proposed merger with Time-Warner and market swap with Charter.

The problem, according to a report submitted by the CPUC’s office of ratepayer advocates (ORA), is that if Comcast gets into the Internet video business, it would be directly competing with other cable companies, like Time-Warner.… More