Frontier’s federal CAF2 subsidised census blocks.
Two competing proposals to build a fiber to the home system in the San Bernardino County town of Phelan and surrounding communities are now a lot closer to meeting in the middle.
More than a year ago, in August 2015, Race Telecommunications submitted a proposal asking the California Public Utilities Commission for a $48 million grant from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) for its Gigafy Phelan project – that’s 60% of the then-estimated construction cost to reach about 10,000 homes with fiber. In January, Ultimate Internet Access filed an application for a $21 million subsidy to serve more or less the same number of homes in more or less the same area.
In the ensuing months, both companies have been in discussions with CPUC staff. As a result, UIA bumped up its request by $662,000 and Race slashed its proposal by more than half, to $23 million, and reduced the subsidised share from 60% of construction costs to 50%.
The CPUC posted the revised project descriptions last week, giving incumbents another formal chance to challenge the applicants’ position that the area is underserved, in other words the broadband service that’s available now doesn’t meet the minimum CASF standard of 6 Mbps download and 1.5 Mbps upload speeds. As a matter of practice, though, incumbents are allowed to challenge a CASF project proposal right up until the time the commission votes on whether or not to approve it.
Facts on the ground have changed somewhat over the past year. Frontier Communications has taken ownership of the telephone system serving the area, and has accepted federal subsidies to upgrade broadband service in much of it to at least the FCC’s 10 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speed standard. Charter Communications, which offers video but not Internet service, is under a CPUC order to upgrade its TV-only systems in California to broadband capability, at a minimum of 60 Mbps download speeds. Neither upgrade has actually happened yet, though.