public policy

Experience and expertise give ISPs an edge in hunt for federal rural broadband subsidies

21 June 2019 by Steve Blum
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Salinas ag tech summit 13jul2018

The federal agriculture department’s ReConnect program is new. It supplements an older program that wasn’t much use in California. We’re hopeful this new version will be better for us. But we won’t know until we see results. Grant money will be awarded on a competitive basis, with the first grant application deadline last month, and windows for grant/loan combinations and pure loans coming up.

On paper, it’s easier for Californian projects to qualify – e.g. projects submitted by private, for profit ISPs, which we have, as opposed to co-ops and similar, which we don’t so much.… More

FCC will preempt San Francisco apartment broadband access ordinance, and that’s just for starters

20 June 2019 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to preempt part of a San Francisco ordinance that requires landlords to open up access to existing wiring within a building, and allows any Internet service provider to use it to deliver service to tenants. In a draft ruling released yesterday, the FCC proposes to block any requirement that forces a landlord to share wiring it owns that’s already in use. It would apply to both residential buildings, such as apartments or condos, and office buildings – “multiple tenant environments” (MTEs), as the FCC puts it.… More

100 Mbps broadband means 0.2% to 0.3% lower unemployment, biggest impact in rural communities, study says

18 June 2019 by Steve Blum
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We can do it

Faster and better broadband service means more jobs and lower unemployment. Rural communities benefit more from gaining access to high quality broadband service than urban and suburban areas. That’s the conclusion of a study by three researchers, Bento Lobo and Rafayet Alam at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s finance and economics department, and Brian Whitacre – at Oklahoma State University’s agricultural economics department.

They compared high speed broadband availability – defined as 100 Mbps download speed or better – to unemployment statistics in Tennessee between 2011 and 2015.… More

Tacoma moves from courtship to consumation of deal to sell muni broadband system. Maybe

17 June 2019 by Steve Blum
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Good to be the king

The Tacoma city council unanimously approved a plan to lease its municipal cable system, called Click, to a relatively small local Internet service provider. After years of study and negotiation, the choice came down to turning over the struggling system to one of two locally based companies: Wave Broadband, which has a growing footprint of cable and telecoms operations in California, Oregon and Washington, and Rainier Connect, which operates primarily as a reseller in the Tacoma area.… More

AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, PRTC plead their pain of not getting everything they want from Santa the FCC

14 June 2019 by Steve Blum
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The opening arguments submitted by AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and the Puerto Rico Telephone Company in their appeal of last year’s Federal Communications Commission’s pole ownership preemption decision do little more than lend credence to the allegation that their challenges were launched in collusion with their friends at the FCC in a vain judge shopping attempt.

The 2018 FCC wireless order was a gigabuck early Christmas present to mobile carriers. It gave them the right to use city-owned property in the public right of way, such as street light poles, at below market rates, sharply restricted fees that local government could charge for permits to do so, and limited local discretion over street management and aesthetic standards.… More

FCC’s local pole preemption order based on speculation, ignores substantial evidence, cities tell appeals court

12 June 2019 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission’s preemptions of local property rights – particularly city-owned street light poles – and local rules regulating the use of public right of ways are contrary to federal law and violate the federal constitution, according to arguments submitted to a San Francisco appeals court by dozens of cities, counties and local government associations. In their opening brief submitted on Monday, they made their case for overturning last year’s FCC rulings that swept away state and local land use, road maintenance, property leasing practices and other policies that mobile carriers find bothersome.… More

Opening briefs challenging FCC pole and right of way preemptions filed in ninth circuit

11 June 2019 by Steve Blum
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Tmobile small cell riverside

Dozens of local governments from across the U.S. filed joint arguments yesterday with the ninth circuit federal appeals court in San Francisco, as challenges to two 2018 Federal Communications Commission decisions move ahead. Mobile carriers and municipal electric utilities also filed opening briefs. I’ll dive deeper into the arguments in the next few days, but you can read them here now:

Petitioner Local Governments’ joint opening brief, 10 June 2019
Brief of petitioner the American Public Power Association, 10 June 2019
Petitioner Montgomery County, Maryland’s opening brief, 10 June 2019
Joint opening brief for Petitioners Sprint Corporation; Verizon Communications Inc.;… More

FCC puts political agenda ahead of regulatory relevance

10 June 2019 by Steve Blum
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Self licking ice cream cone

The Federal Communications Commission is in danger of becoming just another one of Washington, D.C.’s self licking ice cream cones. Some would argue that it has already achieved that exalted status, but until pending court challenges to recent, major decisions – net neutrality and local property rights preemption, particularly – are decided, there’s still hope.

The latest example of hype-over-substance from the FCC’s current republican majority is the annual broadband deployment report that, at times, reads like an update from the old Soviet Union about its latest five year plan for increasing tractor production.… More

AT&T, Charter, Comcast, Frontier, Digital Path challenge California broadband subsidy proposals

6 June 2019 by Steve Blum
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Santa barbara county pole 29oct2015

Of the 13 new projects proposed for construction subsidies from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) in May, only four are unchallenged: three proposed by Charter Communications in Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties, and one proposed by a wireless Internet service provider in Sonoma County. The rest face objections from incumbent Internet services providers that want to protect their turf.

Ten challenges, plus a snarky letter from AT&T, were filed against broadband projects being reviewed for CASF grant eligibility by yesterday’s deadline.… More

Another bipartisan bill preempting local ownership of streetlight poles lands in U.S. senate

4 June 2019 by Steve Blum
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Despite promises to work with local government representatives to develop less onerous language, a bill to preempt local ownership of streetlight poles and other municipal property that is 1. located in the public right of way and 2. coveted by wireless broadband providers was re-introduced in the U.S. senate with no significant changes. S.1699 is sponsored by the same bipartisan team of John Thune (R – South Dakota) and Brian Schatz (D – Hawaii) that pushed it last year.… More