public policy

Caltrans shovels hard to avoid digging once

11 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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Proceed with caution.

The only opposition so far to a bill that would require Caltrans to cooperate with broadband projects and notify companies and local governments when opportunities arise to install conduit is coming, not surprisingly, from Caltrans itself.

Assembly bill 1549 by Jim Wood (D – Healdsburg) has so far sailed through the California legislature unanimously. But with the bill sitting in the senate appropriations committee, the final stop before a full floor vote, the state finance department is pushing Caltrans’ bizarre argument that it’s not needed because its record keeping is so screwed up that fixing it would only make it worse…

Caltrans does not keep a complete and up-to-date inventory of all existing conduits within its existing right-of-way.

… More

FCC can't preempt state limits on muni broadband, appeals court rules

10 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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Park the bulldozer.

Congress did not give the Federal Communications Commission the authority to override state government-imposed limits on expansion by municipal broadband systems. That’s the simple and – as far as it goes – unanimous opinion of three federal appeals court judges who overturned the FCC’s preemption of muni broadband restrictions in Tennessee and North Carolina.

In general, a state has complete authority to determine what cities and counties can do, within the limits of the law.… More

Federal appeals court rejects FCC's muni broadband preemption

10 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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The FCC cannot preempt state law in Tennessee and North Carolina, and give local governments permission to extend the reach of municipal broadband systems if state legislatures say otherwise. That’s the bottom line from an appeals court decision issued this morning by a three judge federal appeals court panel in Cincinnati. I’ll have more when I’ve finished reading the decision, or you can read it for yourself here:

Federal appeals court opinion reversing FCC municipal broadband preemption

Small group of Californian lawmakers make big broadband policy

8 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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Gut and amend.

Major broadband-related legislation is on the horizon this week in Sacramento, although how it will ultimately read is completely unknown right now. The way things are lining up, we probably won’t know until the end of the month, when the legislature goes into its final, end-of-the-session whirlwind.

Action on a thoroughly innocuous bill involving the California Public Utilities Commission – AB 2902 – by a telecoms industry ally, assemblyman Mike Gatto (D – Los Angeles), has been pushed back a couple of times and is sitting on hold.… More

California still needs to be a broadband activist

7 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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Market actor.

Ahead of a legislative effort to shake up the way it does business, the California Public Utilities Commission adopted a high-level strategic management plan at its last meeting. The document contains the usual boilerplate about agency effectiveness, performance, and respect for the staff and the public, and touches all the politically correct bases.

But it also describes an activist role in managing the industries under its jurisdiction, including telecommunications, whether or not it can do so via direct, regulatory authority.… More

Californian telecoms policy decisions slide out of public view in Sacramento

4 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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Affairs of state.

Several broadband-related bills pending in the California senate were sent to the suspense file by the appropriations committee this week. That’s a standard maneuver that keeps them on ice until near the end of August when the session ends. At that point, a small group of legislative leaders will decide which will move forward and which will not.

A proposal to prevent lifeline telephone customers from switching carriers is one of the bills that’s on hold.… More

Telecoms companies don't manage information, they just transmit data

3 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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Honest, dude. You’re a dumb pipe.

There’s one big question at the center of the wrangling over whether Internet access can be regulated under common carrier rules: is it a telecommunications service or an information service? Federal law says telecommunications is a common carrier service and information is not.

When telecom laws were last overhauled 20 years ago, Internet access looked a lot like an information service. Nearly everyone dialled up an online service – America Online or Earthlink, for example – that, at a minimum, handled your email and provided a portal to proprietary data, public but non-Internet protocol content such as Usenet groups, and FTP and other servers, as well as the world wide web.… More

California dig once broadband conduit bill heard and held

2 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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Wasn’t Caltrans supposed to tell us about this?

The California legislature returned from its summer break yesterday, and immediately got to work on broadband-related issues. The big one on the table yesterday was assembly bill 1549.

Testifying in front of the senate appropriations committee, the bill’s author, assemblyman Jim Wood (D – Healdsburg) said that Caltrans isn’t following an executive order by then governor Arnold Schwarzenegger directing it to cooperate with broadband development efforts, and was lackadaisical about the one open trench pilot program that it ran…

AB 1549 puts in statute many of the requirements of the executive order from 2006.

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Your freedom of speech belongs to you, not your ISP

1 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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Freedom means what?

The most dangerous argument against treating Internet access as a common carrier service was made by a Texas wireless Internet service provider last Friday. In a petition asking a federal appeals court to reconsider its decision to uphold the Federal Communications Commission’s common carrier rules for broadband, Alamo Broadband made the outrageous claim that its First Amendment rights were violated because its right to freedom of speech includes the right to decide what its subscribers can and can’t see on the Internet.… More

Whose network is the network now?

31 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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No network to see here. Move along.

One of the six requests for another appellate court review of the Federal Communications Commission decision to regulate broadband as a common carrier service came from the mobile industry’s lobbying front, CTIA. It objects to being under the same regulatory umbrella as plain old telephone service, as do some of the other appellants.

CTIA’s argument hinges on what the definition of public switched network really is – under federal law, mobile broadband can only be regulated as a common carrier service when connected to it.… More