Investor-owned electric utilities won’t be California’s competitive broadband hope

27 November 2018 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

The door has officially closed on expansions of Pacific Gas and Electric’s and Southern California Edison’s telecommunications businesses. It’s a small issue compared to the wildfire disasters that both companies are grappling with, but it could have a significant and ongoing effect on California’s uncompetitive broadband services market.

At its last meeting, the California Public Utilities Commission voted to allow PG&E to withdraw its application to become a certified telecommunications company. It applied last year, hoping to make better use of the 2,600 miles of fiber optic routes it owns in northern California. It ran into the same knee-jerk reaction from so called consumer advocates, who don’t seem to realise that electric customers and broadband subscribers are the same people, as SCE did when it unsuccessfully asked for permission to streamline telecoms business requirements placed on it by the CPUC.

The CPUC’s decision rewards the efforts of the consumer groups and industry lobbyists who intervened in its review of PG&E request. The decision specifically allows them to apply for “intervenor compensation”, which has to be paid by PG&E, even though no decision was reached on the merits of the case. The decision calls their efforts a “substantial contribution” that expanded “the scope of this proceeding from the usual scope of applications for [telecom company certification]”.

They certainly did that. By making a grab for any likely profits PG&E (and SCE) might make from putting valuable dark fiber on the market and from offering other telecoms services that would offer competition to monopoly model telephone and cable companies, the intervenors and the commissioners who accepted their arguments killed the business case. It’s a victory for the lawyers and lobbyists who can now send their bills to PG&E, and for companies like AT&T, Comcast, Charter and Frontier, who would prefer to keep California’s telecoms market under their control.

It’s a defeat for everyone else.