rural broadband

Comcast games expiring VoIP regulation ban to win CPUC permission to cherry pick suburbs

18 October 2019 by Steve Blum
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Tesoro viejo 25aug2019

Comcast’s sideways pleading for permission to compete against a subsidised rural telephone company demonstrates why it was wise to allow California’s ban on voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) service regulation to expire. And why Comcast, along with Charter Communications, AT&T and Frontier Communications, handed so much cash offered highly intellectual arguments to California legislators in their failed (so far) attempt to extend the ban.

Ponderosa Telephone Company offers service in the foothills and the Sierra generally north and east of Fresno.… More

Faster broadband gains subscribers but slow service loses them, CenturyLink says

22 August 2019 by Steve Blum
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Centurylink building

CenturyLink confirmed earlier this month that faster broadband service is the pathway to keeping subscribers on board, and gaining new ones.

In the company’s presentation outlining its second quarter 2019 financial results, it noted that it lost a total of 56,000 consumer-grade broadband customers. However, when that top level figure is broken out by speed, the company gained 48,000 subscribers at the 100 Mbps download speed level or better. The negative subscriber numbers were all at lower speeds: a net loss of 26,000 subscribers who were taking service at speeds levels of from 20 Mbps to less than 100 Mbps, and a loss of 78,000 subscribers who were buying service slower than 20 Mbps.… More

With Frontier in free fall, California needs a Plan B

Frontier stock chart 8aug2019

Frontier Communications’ strategy of upgrading fiber speeds for high income, urban customers, and letting poor, rural ones rely on slow, wireless broadband systems didn’t seem to make an impression on Wall Street. The company’s stock price lost nearly 25% of its already diminished value after the release of second quarter 2019 results on Tuesday.

Even before this latest crash, a study by the California Public Utilities Commission concluded that Frontier is sinking in California, and it’s time to start thinking about what happens next…

While Frontier’s priorities are in maintaining and growing its [legacy telephone] properties, the company’s financial resources have become so deteriorated as to threaten its ongoing ability to pursue these priorities going forward.

… More

Frontier CEO confirms affluent, urban communities to get 1,000X better broadband than poor, rural ones

Frontier 2q2019 broadband results

On Tuesday, Frontier Communications’ CEO confirmed the findings of a California Public Utilities Commission study that concluded that Frontier (as well as AT&T) is “disinvesting in infrastructure overall”, and the disinvestment is “most pronounced in the more rural and low-income service areas”. The company released its financial results for the second quarter of this year on Tuesday, announcing a $5.3 billion loss for the three months and 71,000 fewer broadband subscribers.

Most of the lost accounts – 46,000 – were DSL customers, served, at least in California, via decaying copper networks Frontier acquired from Verizon.… More

FCC approves new broadband subsidy and data collection programs, but each ignores the other

2 August 2019 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission will be asking for comments on its plan to spend, at first, $16 billion and eventually $20 billion on rural broadband subsidies, with a minimum speed requirement of 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up. It’s also moving ahead with a new broadband availability data collection process, based on electronic map files, rather than spreadsheets. The two initiatives were approved at yesterday’s FCC meeting.

Both democratic commissioners – Jessica Roseworcel and Geoffrey Starks – objected to the republican majority’s blind acceptance of broadband availability data submitted by Internet service providers as a basis for deciding where subsidies should be spent.… More

FCC’s rural broadband subsidy reboot proposes faster speeds, but performance is still a question

18 July 2019 by Steve Blum
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Paicines pole route

Broadband service at 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds “is not a luxury” reserved for people who live in cities and suburbs, according to a draft FCC notice that kicks off the process of rebooting federal broadband service subsidies for rural communities. In August, the FCC plans to vote on a draft notice of proposed rulemaking that would open the door to comments and proposals – from any interested party – regarding how to spend “at least” $20.4 billion earmarked for the “rural digital opportunity fund”.… More

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

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

Shift California’s broadband subsidies from consumer upgrades to paying incumbents to serve public agencies, CPUC told

7 June 2019 by Steve Blum
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There’s an idea on the table to make it even easier for big, monopoly model broadband service providers to tap into the taxpayer-funded telecoms piggybank created by the California legislature when it approved assembly bill 1665 a couple of years ago. AB 1665 rewrote the rules for the state’s primary broadband infrastructure subsidy program, the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF).

The latest proposal to remake CASF surfaced at a panel discussion organised by the California Public Utilities Commission in Sacramento a couple of weeks ago.… More

Comcast tells CPUC it must say yes to rural cherrypicking because it can’t say no

Paicines pole route

Comcast took its best shot at explaining why it should be allowed to jump the queue and start competing against Ponderosa Telephone before the California Public Utilities Commission decides what the future will be for small, rural telephone companies. The answer: because the developer wants us and the Federal Communications Commission says we can.

The dispute centers on Tesoro Viejo, an upscale master planned community under construction in the foothills of Madera County. Comcast claims the developers offered Tesoro Viejo as a cherry ripe for picking, and it wants to oblige them.… More