rural broadband

EPA wants to send broadband experts to your town

25 January 2016 by Steve Blum
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Top. Men.

The Environmental Protection Agency is the latest federal agency to jump into the broadband development game. Let’s get the bad news out of the way first: there’s no money on the table.

What the EPA is offering is “a team of experts [that] will help community members develop strategies and an action plan for using planned or existing broadband service to promote smart, sustainable community development”. In other words, if you are in a small rural town and have a broadband project in mind or, better yet, one that’s already funded, the EPA – working with the U.S.… More

Small ISPs get a break from FCC transparency rules

17 December 2015 by Steve Blum
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Small and medium sized Internet service providers are getting a year’s reprieve from the Federal Communications Commission. They won’t have to file reports detailing the prices, fees and data caps that apply to the services they offer to public, nor will they have to provide performance data, such as packet loss or peak usage time throughput, or information about network management policies and practices. At least not for the next year.

The requirements – transparency rule, as it’s called – were included in the FCC’s original decision back in February to impose common carrier regulations, up to a point, on broadband service.… More

Faster rural Internet headlines faster Canadian election

29 August 2015 by Steve Blum
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Speed matters in Canada.

Better broadband infrastructure and service seems to be the shortest route to rural voters hearts, at least in Canada. Instead of hyping more generous farm subsidies or big, new water projects, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper is making faster Internet access for rural areas a top promise, as he campaigns for a fourth term…

At a campaign event in the eastern Ontario community of Lancaster, south of Ottawa, Mr. Harper says there is no infrastructure investment more critical to Canada’s economic fortunes than Internet access.

… More

Closer look points to more California communities redlined by Charter

10 August 2015 by Steve Blum
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Charter offers broadband in the yellow areas, but not the blue. Click for a much bigger version.

A second, more detailed look at map analysis done by the Central Coast Broadband Consortium (full disclosure: I’m part of that effort) shows even more rural areas redlined out of broadband service by Charter Communications in California.

The technique is simple and not completely foolproof, but in the few places where the ground truth has been checked, the results have been borne out.… More

Cooperative FTTH looks like a low cost option for a lucky few in California

19 July 2015 by Steve Blum
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Southwestern Riverside County just got in line for a fiber to the home (FTTH) upgrade. The Anza Electric Cooperative submitted an application for $2.8 million from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to run fiber alongside its existing electric system…

Connect Anza will deploy a fiber optic cable on existing poles and rights of way and establish a network of sufficient capacity to establish high speed, quality internet service for Anza Electric Cooperatives existing service territory covering over 500 square miles, located wholly within western Riverside County.

… More

Charter starts California regulatory approval quest by telling CPUC a whopper

14 July 2015 by Steve Blum
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Blue indicates likely communities redlined by Charter, although analysis is still in progress. Yellow is where Charter offers broadband. Click for a bigger – 8.5 MB – version.

Hoping to get its proposed purchase of Time Warner and Bright House cable systems approved, Charter Communications filed a formal application with the California Public Utilities Commission earlier this month. Technically, it’s a joint filing of all three companies, but in reading through the claims and arguments, it’s clear that it’s primarily a Charter document.… More

Frontier tells CPUC it will expand DSL service in rural California


Click for the full-sized version.

Frontier Communications executives outlined the company’s plans for the Verizon wireline systems it intends to acquire – ex parte communications in regulatory jargon – were made public last week.

The meetings confirmed that Frontier will get the retail businesses – “voice, Internet, VoIP and video service”, including FTTH FiOS systems – while Verizon will keep its mobile network and “other businesses”, which presumably include middle mile and commercial fiber. Verizon owns a lot of that in California.… More

Move at the FCC to unlink rural broadband subsdies from telephone service

2 July 2015 by Steve Blum
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Wouldn’t it be easier to just Skype?

Federal Communications Commission rules require any service provider that applies for broadband subsidies under universal service fund programs also offer telephone service. It’s not because of any law of nature – the California Advanced Services Fund functions quite well without screwing around with dial tone requirements – but rather simply the result of bureaucratic inertia.

The FCC’s decision to bring broadband service and infrastructure under common carrier rules hinted at broadband-only subsidies.… More

Midwestern broadband experiments get most of the love from the FCC

29 May 2015 by Steve Blum
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No mountains or trees to get in the way of the view. Or the broadband.

Six Internet service providers have been given the green light by the Federal Communications Commission to move ahead with a total of 15 projects in its rural broadband experiments program. All together, the projects will receive $12.6 million in subsidies over ten years to serve areas that lack 3 Mbps down/768 Kbps up service.

As with most federal broadband subsidy programs, the lions share of the money went to projects in the midwest.… More

AT&T says its future is fiber, but that doesn't mean yours is too

30 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Hanging out, but not hanging fiber.

With the Comcast mega-merger officially dead, the next big deal in line for federal review is AT&T’s proposed purchase of DirecTv. The buzz is that regulators don’t have the same concerns and the expectation is that AT&T will get a green light. The odd thing, though, is that the idea that the deal will improve rural broadband seems to have caught on in Washington.

AT&T sent a letter (h/t to the Eldo Telecom blog for the pointer) to the FCC claiming that consumers would see faster broadband speeds if the deal is approved because off-loading video delivery onto satellite will free up wireline bandwidth and that, somehow, the deal will make fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) service economically feasible for two million more homes.… More