Community broadband expertise from Tellus Venture Associates…
News and analysis from Steve Blum’s Blog…
With the stroke of a pen, governor Jerry Brown transformed the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) into a piggy bank for AT&T and Frontier Communications. Carve outs for federally subsidised service areas and the right of first refusal on unserved areas give them an opportunity to claim CASF money for the projects they want to do, and block independent projects virtually everywhere else in their service areas.
Going forward, two questions need to be answered: what will happen to pending CASF infrastructure grant applications and how will ... continue reading »
Preemption of municipal ownership of street lights and other vertical infrastructure failed in Sacramento this year because of overreach, not because there’s fundamental opposition to the concept. Mobile carriers and other telecoms companies will deploy bus loads of lobbyists armed with bags of cash sincerely worded nonsense arguments to push it through again next year.
The California legislature approved senate bill 649 by a slim, but sufficient, margin. Governor Jerry Brown finally nixed it, but said in his veto message that “there is something of real value ... continue reading »
