muni broadband

FCC broadband committee offers letter to Santa deployment advice

14 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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There was a mix of good and awful policy on the table last Thursday as the Federal Communication Commission’s broadband deployment advisory committee (BDAC) heard from its five working groups. The BDAC was created by Ajit Pai shortly after he got the nod to be Donald Trump’s FCC chairman. Its job is to offer advice on how to speed up broadband deployment by breaking down legal, regulatory and bureaucratic barriers. Although there are nuggets of sound policy to be found, what it came up with mostly reads like wish lists written by telecoms lobbyists.… More

New Benicia broadband RFP comes with money on the table

24 August 2017 by Steve Blum
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The City of Benicia is taking another try at priming the pump for upgraded industrial and commercial class broadband infrastructure and service. A request for proposals was posted this week, backed by up to $750,000 of city money. The objectives include…

  • Specific service proposals for the Benicia Industrial Park and the adjacent Arsenal area, which, among other things, is being developed as a home for high tech start-ups.
  • Generally, improving availability of high quality managed services and unbundled network elements, such as dark fiber, throughout the City.
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Rural Michigan voters approve higher taxes for faster broadband

20 August 2017 by Steve Blum
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Voters in a Michigan town overwhelmingly approved adding about $22 a month to their tax bills, in order to pay for the construction costs of a municipal fiber to the home system. Lyndon Township is in a rural area of southern Michigan, where broadband service is described by a local news site as “almost entirely lacking” (h/t to MuniNetworks.org for the pointer). According to a story in the Chelsea Update by Lisa Allmendinger, the vote was 66% to 34% in favor of the property tax hike…

Based on currently available taxable valuation data for Lyndon Township, the average cost per property owner for this construction will be about $21.92 per month.

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Be glad the FCC lost its muni broadband bulldozer

23 July 2017 by Steve Blum
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Municipal broadband dodged a bullet when a U.S. appeals court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission can’t tell states that they have to allow cities to build networks and offer service. It seemed like a good idea to many muni advocates at the time (although not me, I’ll immodestly point out) because of all the warm and fuzzy love that the Obama administration was bestowing on the concept.

Had that preemption withstood court challenges, muni broadband would be at the mercy of the current FCC majority, which includes Michael O’Rielly, who recently offered his thoughts to a group of state legislators.… More

Consider who pays for broadband studies, but don't stop there

2 July 2017 by Steve Blum
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Gamblers or exiled royalty?

I’ve commented on a couple of university studies recently, one critical of municipal broadband’s business model and the other ripping AT&T’s infrastructure upgrade redlining in California. In neither case did I write about who picked up the tab for the work. That’s because I thought that both analyses stood on their own. But it’s a fair question to ask and, for the muni broadband study at least, it’s a significant one because the source of the money was the primary basis for challenging the work.… More

Better data would support better muni broadband decisions

4 June 2017 by Steve Blum
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Not suprisingly, the municipal fiber to the home analysis done by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Innovation, Technology and Competition, comes to the conclusion that the more successful systems (or, from the study’s glass half empty perspective, the ones that are failing less badly than the others) keep revenue high and costs low. Operating efficiency – the ratio of operating costs to revenue – and revenue per household had a greater impact on near term positive cash flow and long term capital payback than the per household construction costs…

The fact that these regressions yielded statistically significant results based on only 19 or 20 observations is remarkable.

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Muni FTTH study estimates the cost of local subsidies

2 June 2017 by Steve Blum
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Municipal fiber to the home systems are not money makers, according to a study done by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Innovation, Technology and Competition. It started by identifying 88 muni systems in the U.S., and then dove into a top-line financial analysis of the 20 that publish separate separate operating statements – the rest consolidate their FTTH reporting with the results from their muni electric utilities.

According to the authors, less than half are showing positive cash flow and most of the rest aren’t making enough to pay back basic construction costs…

The data contained in this study are sobering.

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Google lights up muni broadband model in Huntsville

Three takeaways from Google Fiber’s announcement that it’s now an active tenant on the Huntsville, Alabama municipal fiber network:

  • The customer owns the marketing buzz. Huntsville put up the capital, Google buys access to end users and gets the headlines.
  • Google continues to pull back from the capital intensive business of owning and operating infrastructure.
  • Competition matters.

Google Fiber’s blog post belongs to the happy, happy, joy, joy school of public relations, but also makes it clear that it’s no longer interested in sinking its own capital into broadband infrastructure…

As an enterprising city, Huntsville explored new ways to connect residents and small businesses and is building a municipal fiber network through Huntsville Utilities.

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Muni ISPs are as common a carrier as any other

15 May 2017 by Steve Blum
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Buried within a half million comments about common carrier regulation of broadband service, in the midst of a system crash brought about, or not, by a John Oliver rant, is a letter from 19 municipal (to one degree or another) Internet service providers supporting the Federal Communications Commission’s current effort to roll those rules back.

In what must have been an epic, nay, herculean, speed reading session, FCC chair Ajit Pai came across those comments and felt compelled to issue a press release trumpeting the blindingly obvious conclusion that, hey, these guys agree with me so they must be pretty smart.… More

Broadband, conduit bills left stranded in Washington, D.C.

13 December 2016 by Steve Blum
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The 114th congress ended with a stack of unfinished broadband business. The most consequential might be the failure to confirm Jessica Rosenworcel for a new term on the Federal Communications Commission, but buried in the wreckage of more than a dozen broadband-related bills are hints of what to expect from the new congress and the new administration next year.

The one major bill with a chance to pass muster with lawmakers as well as the white house was the Mobile Now act.… More