public policy

Real world planning brings real free WiFi to Santa Clara


Free WiFi coverage in most of Santa Clara.

It’s a beautiful thing when the pieces fall into place and a city can maximize the value of past investments and decisions. Particularly when it means better and cheaper broadband service.

Santa Clara is rolling out an elegant solution for universal Internet access. The city owns and operates its own electric utility, and put in a fiber optic network to support it. The fiber’s reach is limited – it’s definitely not FTTH scale – but it’s enough to make broadband connectivity relatively easy throughout the city and keep the cost of Internet bandwidth down.… More

CPUC commissioner possible pick as new FCC chair

24 March 2013 by Steve Blum
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Catherine Sandoval, California Public Utilities Commission.

One person mentioned as a replacement for outgoing Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Julius Genachowski is Catherine Sandoval, a member of the California Public Utilities Commission and a law professor, currently teaching at U.C. Berkeley. A Silicon Valley resident, she’s taken up the telecoms portfolio on the CPUC and understands the industry from a West Coast perspective.

Sandoval would be a great choice. The FCC needs someone who’s been shaped by Californian culture, high tech and otherwise.… More

Genachowski leaving the FCC changed for the better

22 March 2013 by Steve Blum
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FCC chairman Julius Genachowski in San Leandro last month.

Julius Genachowski made it official this morning, stepping down as chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). He’s leaving behind an agency that is arguably keeping pace with the industry it’s regulating, something few agencies or politicians in Washington can do. With the telecommunications industry increasingly shunning copper-based telephone service as it shifts to delivering broadband via wireless and fiber optic technologies, it is no small achievement.… More

Party power (or lack thereof) shapes California broadband spending plans

19 March 2013 by Steve Blum
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The practical side of political alignment.

More than two-thirds of the seats in both the California Assembly and Senate are held by Democrats. That means it’s possible to add money to the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) and change its direction with no support at all from Republicans and no fear of losing the political cover a supermajority vote provides.
During hearings and meetings in Sacramento last week, Democrats focused almost exclusively on using CASF to increase the number of Californians who use the Internet.… More

CPUC floats phone company-grade scrutiny for all broadband subsidy applicants

18 March 2013 by Steve Blum
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AT&T gets a thorough examination. Why shouldn’t you?

More questions today from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) about the financial and oversight requirements unregulated Internet service providers would need to meet, should eligibility for California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) subsidies be extended to them.

CASF currently provides grants and loans that could total as much as 90% of the cost of building broadband infrastructure in eligible areas. But only to companies that qualify as a telephone company (the definition is broad), go through a rigorous certification process and are subject to the CPUC’s regulatory power.… More

Urban issues take the lead at Sacramento broadband meetings

15 March 2013 by Steve Blum
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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