fcc

CPUC asks for more time to adapt to FCC broadband subsidy program, but doesn’t say how

28 January 2020 by Steve Blum
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Paicines pole route

The FCC is heading toward a vote on Thursday that would raise its eligibility and minimum service standards for broadband subsidies to 25 down/3 Mbps up and award $20 billion in broadband subsidies as quickly as possible, perhaps in a single reverse auction in November. That’s welcome progress and a great thing for states that either have rational broadband policies or have no interest in broadband policy at all.

But not so great for California, which has irrational broadband subsidy policies.… More

Keep broadband slow so we can ditch copper, AT&T, Frontier tell FCC

23 January 2020 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission heading toward a vote later this month on the structure of the new Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), which is the reboot of the Connect America Fund (CAF) broadband subsidy program designed for rural communities (although urban and suburban areas sometimes qualify, too). In their eternal quest for more public money and less public service, AT&T and Frontier Communications, among others, are urging the FCC to lower speed standards for subsidised broadband, so they can rip out ageing copper lines and replace them with limited capacity wireless systems.… More

Pai offers net neutrality rules custom made for AT&T’s, Comcast’s business models

16 January 2020 by Steve Blum
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Pai shapiro 1 ces 7jan2020

Ajit Pai’s three-year delayed debut at CES as Federal Communications Commission chair last week was a friendly, and at times lighthearted, conversation with Gary Shapiro, the CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, which produces the show. Pai used the opportunity to float what he seems to thinks are consensus network neutrality rules. What he’s really proposing is to cement major ISPs and mobile carriers’ monopoly model business plans into federal law.

Shapiro led off by asking Pai about the FCC’s decision to scrap network neutrality rules two years ago.… More

Don’t expect fiber or 5G in rural communities, FCC commissioners say

14 January 2020 by Steve Blum
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John deere booth ces 7jan2020

Fiber and mobile 5G are fine for cities and suburbs, but rural communities can look forward to satellites and fixed wireless broadband service, according to the Federal Communication Commission’s republican majority. Speaking at CES in Las Vegas this week, FCC chair Ajit Pai, republican commissioners Michael O’Rielly and Brendan Carr, and their democratic colleague Geoffrey Starks were upbeat about 5G, fiber and, as Carr put it, the “new wave of innovation and services”.

But that wave will only break on urban and suburban beaches, at least via conventional broadband service.… More

WiFi and 5G win spectrum that the satellite and car industries lose

10 January 2020 by Steve Blum
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Pai shapiro 1 ces 7jan2020

Despite his enthusiasm for federalising any policy that touches on telecoms, big footing state and local governments isn’t at the top of Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai’s 5G wish list. Pai and three of his fellow commissioners spoke at CES in Las Vegas earlier this week. When asked about the main barriers to widespread deployment of 5G broadband service, Pai listed cost, spectrum and the availability of trained construction crews.

Although there’s not a lot that a telecoms regulator can do about workforce training or construction costs, spectrum availability is the FCC’s core responsibility.… More

FCC promises more of the “P-word” – preemption – in 2020

8 January 2020 by Steve Blum
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Line to see pai ces 7jan2020

Due to the nature of the program, you’re going to have to go through metal detectors.
CTA staffer to long queue waiting to see Ajit Pai.

Ajit Pai made his first appearance at CES as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission yesterday, sitting down for a talk about the coming year with Gary Shapiro, the CEO of the show’s organiser, the Consumer Technology Association. Much of the conversation was about 5G infrastructure, and the public policy that surrounds it.… More

Some people aren’t buying the false data big ISPs sold to the FCC

27 December 2019 by Steve Blum
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Microsoft oregon analysis 5dec2018

The Federal Communications Commission’s broadband testing program evolved from a engineering-driven performance assessment when it was launched in 2012 to a marketing tool for monopoly model Internet service providers. That’s partly the result of the FCC republican majority embracing a role as a cheerleader for big telecoms companies, but it also reflects tensions in the program that date back to when it began under a democrat-majority commission.

Jim Warner, who recently retired from a long career as the network engineer for the University of California, Santa Cruz and still chairs the Central Coast Broadband Consortium’s technical expert group, helped design the FCC’s program, along with several others from the academic side of the house as well as industry representatives.… More

FCC allows big ISPs to add performance enhancing juice to speed tests, WSJ says

19 December 2019 by Steve Blum
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Syringe

The fast, reliable broadband service claims endorsed by the Federal Communications Commission are based on test data that’s been doctored by California’s monopoly model Internet service providers, according to a Wall Street Journal article Shalini Ramachandran, Lillian Rizzo and Drew FitzGerald (h/t to Jim Warner for sending me the link).

Annual speed measurements taken to evaluate U.S. broadband service are “juiced” by AT&T, Comcast, Charter Communications and others, who know ahead of time where the tests are run and afterwards lobby the FCC to suppress bad results and hype good ones, the story says…

[AT&T] pushed the Federal Communications Commission to omit unflattering data on its DSL internet service…

In the end, the DSL data was left out of the report released late last year, to the chagrin of some agency officials.

… More

California net neutrality law stuck in deep freeze as federal appeal drags on

16 December 2019 by Steve Blum
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California’s network neutrality law won’t be enforced for at least a few more months. Last year, California attorney general Xavier Becerra agreed not to enforce the 2018 law enacted by California senate bill 822 while the legality of the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of net neutrality rules was still being challenged at the federal level. On Friday, the wait got longer as four new petitions asking for rehearings of an October federal court decision were filed with the federal appeals court based in Washington, D.C.… More

Without a broadband cop, big ISPs write their own rules

13 December 2019 by Steve Blum
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Reno 911

Tomorrow is the second anniversary of the Federal Communications Commission’s vote to end network neutrality protections. At the time, lobbyists for monopoly-model incumbents, like Comcast and AT&T, fell all over themselves promising that regulated or not, they would abide by open Internet principles.

That promise wasn’t kept, according to a blog post by Public Knowledge’s Lindsay Stern (h/t to the Baller list for the pointer)…

Researchers from Northeastern University and University of Massachusetts Amherst found that almost all wireless carriers pervasively slow down internet speed for selected video streaming services.

… More