Steve Blum's Blog
FCC commissioner Ajit Pai objected to part of the FCC order approved last week that raised the minimum download speed for subsidised broadband projects to 10 Mbps (the upload standard remains at 1 Mbps). His objection wasn’t to the faster standard, but rather to the slow pace of implementation and what he sees as the commission’s failure to put its money where its mouth is…
… MoreThree years ago, the FCC told rural Americans they could stop waiting.
The minimum download speed for FCC-subsidised broadband projects and services in rural areas is now 10 Mbps. The commission raised the standard on Thursday. Required upload speeds haven’t change, though…
… MoreThe FCC will now require companies receiving Connect America funding for fixed broadband to serve consumers with speeds of at least 10 Mbps for downloads and 1 Mbps for uploads. That is an increase reflecting marketplace and technological changes that have occurred since the FCC set its previous requirement of 4 Mbps/1 Mbps speeds in 2011.
There’s a business case for resurrecting dead copper broadband systems. At least UIA thinks there is, given a sufficient subsidy from the California Advanced Services Fund. The company has submitted two projects for consideration for CASF grants in the current round. One is in Helendale, a small San Bernardino County community in the desert between Victorville and Barstow, where a cable system built by Falcon Cable – acquired by Charter Communications – was left to rot.… More
You’ve got to hand it to the people at ViaSat. They don’t give up. If FCC tests – correctly – show that satellite Internet service has both advantages and disadvantages, then shout the good news loud enough to shake the rafters and browbeat the FCC into suppressing the bad. If the FCC wants to conduct an experiment to see if there are technologies and business models that can deliver urban-quality broadband service to rural customers, try to duck the quality requirements when no one is looking.… More
Hotel WiFi service is usually good enough to deal with email, Facebook and airline check-ins. It’ll do the work you have to get done before morning – maybe even a Skype call. But it’s rarely robust enough to reliably watch videos or jam a deadline on virtualised enterprise services or relax with an online game. It’s not a workhorse you can depend on. It’s an amenity, no more able to support day to day business than the tiny pool and token workout room can handle Ironman base training – I know, I tried.… More
California came out pretty well in the FCC’s provisional rural broadband experiment decisions. Of the 40 bidders that were accepted, 3 proposed a total of 9 projects in California. That’s 11% of the total number of accepted projects. In dollar terms, projects in our state did even better, claiming $16 million of the $99.5 million, 16% of the money tentatively awarded by the FCC.
There wasn’t much information given about the projects or the bidders by the FCC, just names, number of bids selected, total amount of the grant requested and total number of census blocks covered.… More
Two companies – Race Telecommunications and Ultimate Internet Access – submitted a combined total of 3 broadband project proposals yesterday for consideration in the new round of California Advanced Services Fund grants and loans. All are in or near the desert areas northeast of Los Angeles.
Race’s application is for the Five Mining Communities project, which takes in Randsburg, Johannesburg, Red Mountain, Searles Valley and Trona, in the high desert where Inyo, Kern and San Bernardino counties meet.… More
The FCC has provisionally blessed 86 project bids submitted by 40 different companies for the rural broadband experiments program. The total tab is $99.5 million, just inside the $100 million limit for the program’s kitty. The companies selected have 10 days to submit the rest of the required financial, technical and other information.
It’s hard to tell much from the information released by the FCC – just total dollars and census blocks for each company.… More
There are three ways to deal with a monopoly, natural or otherwise: hope new technology will eventually render it obsolete, accept it but control it with regulation, or use anti-trust rules to break it up.
In a rapidly evolving environment, waiting out a monopoly can be a viable, if uncomfortably lengthy, strategy. Microsoft’s de facto user-side control of computer technology is long gone thanks to iOS, Android and Linux, and not because of the nibbling of regulatory snapping turtles.… More
With Austin done and dusted, the next big decision point on Google’s fiber-to-the-home odyssey is: which cities will make the short list for the next round of builds? Back in May, after the deadline had passed for 34 cities to submit their responses to Google’s fiber ready checklist, the company said “We still plan to announce which cities will get Google Fiber by the end of the year“.
Well, it’s the end of the year.… More