cpuc – Page 97 – Steve Blum's Blog

Urban issues take the lead at Sacramento broadband meetings

15 March 2013 by Steve Blum
ab1299, broadband, cetf, cpuc, public policy, regional consortia, sb740

Not this meeting. Ours took longer and no decision was made. But at least we were co-ed.

Digital literacy and broadband adoption – the wired kind anyway – were high on most priority lists in Sacramento this week. Broadband infrastructure, well, not so much. For four days, various (directly and indirectly) state-funded broadband groups met with agency and legislative staff, policy makers and telecoms companies. Much of the talk was about social service and educational programs, and how to fund them.… More

A lifeline for broadband

14 March 2013 by Steve Blum
broadband, cetf, cpuc, fcc, public policy, regional consortia

Telephone and electrical service have long been considered a basic necessity for day to day living. “Lifeline” programs provide discounted service to those who need it and universal service programs subsidize infrastructure in areas where costs are high and population densities low. That same thinking is now being applied to broadband service.

“California was ahead of the curve and actually reformed the program before the FCC did,” said Kim Scardino, who helps to run a broadband lifeline pilot program for the Federal Communications Commission.… More

Mobile carriers not convincing key California assemblyman

13 March 2013 by Steve Blum
ab1299, att, broadband, casf, cpuc, mobile, public policy, sb740

Present company not included.

“I know a whole lotta dumb people with smart devices,” said Steven Bradford, a Los Angeles assemblyman and chair of the California assembly’s utilities and commerce committee. He’s a member of the California Broadband Council, which met today in Sacramento. The reason people have $500 smart phones, he said, is because telephone companies “practically give them away and lock them into a long term contract.”

Bradford takes issue with the way telephone companies are enthusiastically – and expensively – building out mobile networks in California and signing up customers, while at the same time letting wired service languish.… More

L.A. WiFi project connects businesses and community

12 March 2013 by Steve Blum
broadband, casf, cpuc, public policy, regional consortia, san leandro

Eric Sloan talks about lighting up Los Angeles communities.

A community-based WiFi project in the Manchester area of Los Angeles was one of the highlights of the first day of regional broadband consortia meetings organized in Sacramento by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). Eric Sloan, director of technology for Manchester Community Technologies, described how his organization created free, community WiFi access by working with local businesses.

“It is a business initiative to get people to adopt and use broadband,” Sloan said.… More

Broadband infrastructure a low priority at California Assembly hearing

11 March 2013 by Steve Blum
broadband, casf, cpuc, public policy, verizon

Whose turn in the barrel?

I might have headlined this post “bridging California’s digital divide is a high priority”. That was the stated topic at today’s Assembly utilities and commerce committee hearing in Sacramento. Assembly members, representatives from urban non-profit groups and state and local agencies spoke eloquently about the need to improve California’s current 73% broadband adoption rate in order to equalize opportunities for all.

However, the financing source under consideration is money set aside for infrastructure projects in the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF).… More

It's Broadband Week in Sacramento

10 March 2013 by Steve Blum
broadband, casf, cetf, cpuc, public policy, regional consortia

It’s a doin’s.

Four days of broadband related meetings are set to begin on Monday in Sacramento.

First up, on Monday afternoon, the assembly utilities and commerce committee plans a hearing on “bridging the digital divide in California: a foundation for a better way of life”. The immediate topic is assembly bill 1299, which would direct California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) money generally toward public housing programs. The draft language is very broad, but there’s been discussion that it’ll be tightened up to focus specifically on smart housing initiatives.… More

Surf's up for Georgia municipal broadband

8 March 2013 by Steve Blum
broadband, community networks, cpuc, public policy

A Grand Old Party for elephant seals too.

When the best thing you can say about a proposed new law is that everyone who’s really mad about it is exempt from it, maybe it’s time to fold your hand. Georgia representative Mark Hamilton, the sponsor of a bill to effectively prohibit local governments there from pursuing municipal broadband projects, decided to play it through to the end. And he lost.

The George house of representatives, the (structural, if not intellectual) equivalent of the California state assembly, spiked the bill yesterday with a vote of 70 in favor and 94 against.… More

Stingy data caps throttle ViaSat subscribers

7 March 2013 by Steve Blum
broadband, casf, cpuc, public policy, satellite broadband, viasat

Download speeds don’t mean much when the price of a byte goes orbital. For the first time, a satellite Internet service provider, ViaSat, was included in the FCC’s Measuring Broadband America report. Satellite Internet subscribers live in severe broadband poverty, according to the FCC’s data.

Based just on ability to actually deliver advertized speeds, ViaSat was the clear winner in the testing. The download speeds experienced by users were, on the average, 37% better than promised.… More

CPUC's second field test building consistent picture of mobile broadband performance

6 March 2013 by Steve Blum
broadband, ccbc, cpuc, mobile, ucsc

Spring up, Fall back.

More mobile broadband performance measurements are available and accessible to Californians, thanks to field testing done by the California Public Utilities Commission and mapping and analysis done by Jim Warner at U.C. Santa Cruz.

Warner, who is a network engineer for the University and chair of the Central Coast Broadband Consortium’s technical expert group, took the data collected in the CPUC’s first and second rounds of mobile data field testing and fed it into Google maps.… More

CASF consortia producing broadband projects

28 February 2013 by Steve Blum
broadband, casf, ccbc, community networks, cpuc, escrbc, public policy, race telecommunications, regional consortia

ESCRBC meeting in June Lake last November brought broadband supply and demand together.

Race Telecommunication’s proposal to build fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) systems in four Mono County communities shows how middle mile fiber can make last mile service possible and how the regional broadband consortia funded by the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) can bring together the right people at the right time.

Those four small systems would be built along the Digital 395 route between Reno and Barstow.… More