Deadline soon for Californian broadband upgrades or obstruction

31 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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Moderately Lucid Legal.

The first shoe is about drop for the next round of California Advanced Services Fund broadband subsidies. Any “existing broadband provider” can file a letter with the California Public Utilities Commission saying it’s making a commitment to upgrading its infrastructure in a given area, using its own money. If it does, the CPUC will freeze that area for up to a year – not allow any CASF infrastructure grant or loan applications to move forward.… More

Speech isn't free when ISPs can set prices based on content

30 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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FedEx doesn’t charge based on what a document says. Neither should Comcast or AT&T.

California Public Utilities Commissioner Catherine Sandoval has arguedand voted – in favor of regulating broadband infrastructure companies as common carriers, in much the same way as telephone companies, but with a “light touch”. She made her case in testimony at a congressional hearing in Sacramento in September, and later polished it and submitted it to the FCC for consideration in its network neutrality deliberations.… More

Outside plant vandalism is an inside job

29 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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bt photo
On the other hand, he might have just noticed that the concrete lid says “fiber”.

Good information regarding fiber optic networks is often hard to come by. Companies that own it – particularly last mile companies like AT&T and Comcast – don’t want customers or competitors picking apart their offerings, either in terms of unbundling network elements from managed service or trying to figure out in advance where gaps in service might be.

One reason reflexively given is security, but time and again events show that if there’s a threat to physical infrastructure, it’s from inside.… More

Broadcasters delay spectrum auction for at least year, but hey, they're entitled

28 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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Ten years isn’t so long. Unless you’re a dog. Or the Internet.

The possibility of converting prime spectrum from TV broadcasting to mobile broadband use has been pushed off another year. The FCC is delaying the planned auction of 600 MHz broadcast frequencies until 2016, instead of next summer.

It’ll take that long to sort out a lawsuit filed by the National Association of Broadcasters – the primary lobbying organisation for TV and radio station owners – according to the FCC

Earlier this week, the court issued a briefing schedule in which the final briefs are not due until late January 2015.

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Cities can still use positive incentives to influence wireless broadband builds

27 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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Cities and counties are still in control of their own property, at least concerning decisions about where to install wireless broadband facilities. In a recent ruling that tightens the limits on how local governments may regulate cell towers, antennae and other wireless infrastructure, the FCC said those rules don’t apply when cities are simply acting as landlords…

Courts have consistently recognized that in “determining whether government contracts are subject to preemption, the case law distinguishes between actions a State entity takes in a proprietary capacity— actions similar to those a private entity might take—and its attempts to regulate.”…Like

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Mobile broadband gets faster in California, but maybe not fast enough

26 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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Click for a bigger version.

Mobile broadband is better in California, and improvements have been made quickly. That was one of the takeaways from a meeting of Central Coast Internet service providers and California Public Utilities Commission staff in Seaside last week. Jim Warner, a network engineer at U.C. Santa Cruz and chair of the Central Coast Broadband Consortium’s technical expert group, discussed his analysis of results from the latest round of the CPUC’s mobile broadband field testing.… More

Comcast seems to think there's a difference between complete or just overwhelming market control

25 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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Comcast could end up with half of the broadband subscribers in the U.S. or maybe only something more than a third, if it’s allowed to take over Time-Warner and swap markets with Charter Communications. Whether it’s a half or just a third (or a bit more), depends on your definition of what broadband is and is not.

A Bloomberg article by Todd Shields and David McLaughlin breaks down the dilemma. If you take the FCC’s current minimum standard – speeds of 4 Mbps down and 1 up – then Comcast would only own 35.5% of U.S.… More

Rural broadband needs are low and highly confidential, AT&T says

24 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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AT&T knows what rural broadband customers need. And it’s not nearly as much as what people living in high potential urban and suburban communities need, according to arguments AT&T and DirecTv are making to the FCC, in support of their proposed merger

Within its wireline footprint, AT&T will extend its ultra-fast, fiber-to-the-premises (“FTTP”) GigaPower wireline broadband service with speeds of up to 1 Gbps to at least 2 million locations. At the same time, in rural, often underserved areas, AT&T will deploy fixed wireless local loop (“WLL”) broadband to an additional 13 million locations.

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California shut out of rural community broadband grants, again

23 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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Can’t see California from here.

For the third year running, the U.S. department of agriculture passed over California while handing out Community Connect grants, a program run by the Rural Utilities Service. The agency released a list of 8 relatively small broadband projects that will be getting a total of $13.7 million. None of which are in California.

It’s possible, of course, that there were no applications submitted from here. I’ve been looking around on the web to see if that info has been published anywhere, but no joy so far.… More

FCC narrows scope for local review of wireless build outs

22 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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The FCC’s decision to tell local governments that if they don’t approve permit applications for relatively minor modifications to wireless infrastructure within 60 days then permission is automatically “deemed granted” is a bit less than absolute. Local governments can still go to court to stop installations, and there’s a narrow set of reasons that permit applications can be rejected.

But make no mistake: the FCC is severely limiting the scope for local review of “collocation, removal, or replacement of transmission equipment on an existing wireless tower or base station,” or other work on on that infrastructure if it doesn’t involve a substantial change to its existing dimensions.… More