Telcos, cable companies should face consequences for filing false California broadband data

2 December 2018 by Steve Blum
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AT&T, Frontier Communications, Charter Communications and Comcast have to file reports with the Federal Communications Commission detailing where they offer broadband service, how fast it is and what technology they use. The California Public Utilities Commission uses that information, along with other sources of data, to determine if particular areas or communities are eligible for broadband infrastructure subsidies, via the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) program.

The CPUC is rewriting the rules for those subsidies, as a result of the generosity of California lawmakers who rigged CASF so that big, monopoly model telecoms companies get a shot at hogging all the cash.

The availability data that those incumbents provide is of dubious quality. It’s largely based on marketing claims, and not on actual speed tests or subscriber information. The CPUC’s proposed new rules highlight comments that I drafted and filed in May on behalf of the Central Coast Broadband Consortium in which we called out, as an example, obviously false data that AT&T submitted about fiber to the home service.

The CPUC draft diplomatically attributes AT&T’s false reports to “miscoding”. We filed comments last week suggesting that this isn’t the time to be speculating on AT&T’s motives or possible excuses for giving the CPUC and the FCC bad information…

We did not attribute this false data to miscoding. AT&T has established “AT&T Fiber” as an “umbrella brand” which includes technology such as “the former AT&T GigaPower network” which does not, in all regards, meet the Form 477 definition of “fiber to the home or business end user”. It is reasonable to posit a connection between AT&T’s brand positioning and its Form 477 submissions.

In its comments, Race Communications, which has received several CASF grants to build FTTH systems in rural communities, urged the CPUC to hold companies accountable for their data…

The [proposed decision] properly notes that these errors have major consequences for the CASF program, because corrections are time-consuming for the Communications Division Staff, and errors cause confusion and frustration for communities and CASF applicants who must rely on the maps for eligibility decisions. Race contends that the Commission should take a more aggressive enforcement stance if data is consistently provided to the Commission that is erroneous and/or overstated by a particular existing provider. Providing erroneous data on coverage is a [CPUC rule] violation and should be treated as such.

The rule in question says that AT&T – and everyone else who does business with the CPUC – must agree “never to mislead the Commission or its staff by an artifice or false statement of fact or law”.

Just so.

Links to CASF reboot documents – decisions on other issues, drafts, comments and more – are here.