Steve Blum's Blog
There might yet be an intellectual debate at the FCC about network neutrality. A debate on facts and philosophy, rather than a negotiation for spoils or a partisan punch up. Four commissioners – the entire FCC minus chair Tom Wheeler who did a solo turn earlier – had an hour-long conversation with new CTIA head (and former FCC commissioner) Meredith Baker at a standing room only session at the CTIA show in Las Vegas last week.… More
Any Californian ISP that gets funding from the FCC to build out and operate an experimental rural broadband system can also get money from the California Advanced Services Fund. The California Public Utilities Commission yesterday approved a blanket 10% match of any federal funds an ISP might win via the FCC’s program.
The hope is that the extra CASF subsidy will buy down the cost of pursuing those rural broadband experiments in California, making them more cost effective in the eyes of the FCC and giving them a competitive edge against proposals from other states.… More
It was high drama at today’s California Public Utilities Commission meeting in San Francisco, at least by the CPUC’s normally placid standards. Commissioners first voted 3 to 2 to tell the FCC that broadband infrastructure should be regulated under common carrier rules. About an hour later, after commissioners returned from a nominal five minute break that lasted somewhat longer, commissioner Carla Peterman asked to change her yes vote to abstain.… More
“Our goal in this proceeding is to establish the rules of the road for Internet openness that will provide certainty in the marketplace”, FCC chair Tom Wheeler told his former clients at the CTIA wireless show in Las Vegas on Tuesday. He was talking about network neutrality rules that he drafted and hundreds of thousands of people and organisations are commenting on now. Rules that set up a process for governing the Internet that will be anything but open and certain.… More
Finding new radio bandwidth for mobile broadband services and then figuring out how to pry it out of the hands of businesses and government agencies that don’t use it particularly well is a perpetual challenge for the FCC. Four commissioners – the whole bunch except for chair Tom Wheeler – took questions from CTIA president Meredith Baker at the CTIA show in Las Vegas this afternoon. Not surprisingly, given the venue, much of the hour-long session focused on moving twentieth century technologies and analog users off of spectrum, particularly in the coveted 600 MHz bands, to make way for twenty-first century digital services.… More
America’s telecommunications lobbyist-in-chief showed up at the CTIA show this morning, full of sunny remarks and gentle chiding for the wireless industry. FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, who used to hold the top job at CTIA, was clearly coming home.
“It was ten years ago, ten years ago, that I last stood on this stage,” he said. He recalled that when he was up for confirmation of his current assignment, he told U.S. senators he hoped he was a pretty good representative of the mobile telecoms industry.… More
The rebooted CTIA mobile telecoms show is ramping up in Las Vegas today. It officially opens tomorrow, but pre-show activities and associated meetings – particularly the Competitive Carriers Association – are already underway.
This new version of the show is, among other things, a combination of the big, technology and business-focused CTIA springtime convention and its fall MobileCon conference, which was more about applications and services. But the market is crowded and both shows were faced with declining attendance.… More
If local governments, advocacy groups and ordinary citizens want to challenge a cable or telephone company’s right to offer video services under statewide authority granted by the California Public Utilities Commission it can be done, but not while a company is trying to renew its franchise.
That was message from several commissioners – Carla Peterman, Mike Florio and Catherine Sandoval – as they reluctantly voted on 28 August 2014 to approval a video franchise renewal process that all but shuts out any opportunity for public scrutiny or challenge.… More
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler laid out his vision for the future of broadband. We applaud his focus on the importance of broadband competition to benefit all Americans.
So says Comcast’s chief lobbyist David Cohen in a blog post yesterday. He goes on at length about how Comcast is a living example of everything Wheeler said about the wonders of a competitive broadband market in a speech the day before.
And Cohen is right. Wheeler’s vision is also Comcast’s vision: a broadband market managed in Washington by people like Wheeler and Cohen who rotate jobs between government posts and giant incumbent companies, pretending to be acting for the greater good of all.… More
Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the FCC, gave a ringing speech yesterday at a Washington incubator, calling for more broadband competition, decrying the poor choice and service across huge swaths of the U.S., plugging municipal broadband and admitting that mobile service is no substitute for wireline networks, particularly fiber.
All good things. All wonderful words. The question, though, is whether he’ll follow through or if he’ll use pro-competition rhetoric to lay down a smoke screen for incumbent-friendly policies.… More