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El Dorado was the county of gold, now it struggles to keep AT&T's copper

6 May 2016 by Steve Blum
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Putting it in, or taking it out?

Rural counties in California are lining up against a plan to allow AT&T to replace rural and inner city wireline networks with wireless service. The board of supervisors in El Dorado County voted 4 to 1 on Tuesday to send a formal letter opposing assembly bill 2395 to its author Evan Low (D – Silicon Valley) and members of the appropriations committee, which are next in line to say yes or no to it, likely later this month.… More

AT&T releases copper fog over California

4 May 2016 by Steve Blum
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Opposition is growing to AT&T’s attempt to rewrite California law so it can pull out its wireline networks in rural and inner city communities, and use wireless networks to provide broadband and phone service instead. In response, AT&T is pushing misleading and lawyerly talking points to elected officials in rural counties and to non-profit groups in urban areas.

If you examine the claims made in the documents submitted by AT&T into the public record (see links below), each one is arguably true when read in isolation.… More

Charter's bid to buy Time Warner faces headwinds but no hurricane in California

3 May 2016 by Steve Blum
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No landfall in Alta California so far.

There’s opposition to Charter Communication’s proposed takeover of Time Warner and Bright House cable systems in California, but it’s nothing like the fierce reaction to last year’s failed deal that would have allowed Comcast to buy Time Warner, effectively do the same with Bright House and swap markets with Charter to gain control of something 80% of California cable homes. Opposition to that plan approached holy war levels, and eventually led to it being scrapped by federal regulators.… More

Draft decision allowing Charter to buy Time Warner is a good deal for California

2 May 2016 by Steve Blum
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A plan to upgrade ancient, analog cable systems in the Salinas Valley and elsewhere in California to full digital capability could be on the California Public Utilities Commission’s agenda as soon as next week. A CPUC administrative law judge has recommended approval of Charter Communication’s proposed purchase of Time Warner and Bright House cable systems, with a long list of conditions that include digital upgrades for at least 70,000 analog homes and line extensions to 80,000 more that have no service at all.… More

Subsidised dark fiber leverages private investment for Salinas Valley last mile upgrades

29 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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Middle mile threads last mile gaps; last mile follows.

A project that will bring fast, fiber optic broadband to the Salinas Valley is nearing the halfway mark and could be done by this coming fall. Sunesys LLC (now owned by Crown Castle) won a $10.6 million grant from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) in 2014 to build a 91-mile open access middle mile fiber line from Santa Cruz to Soledad. It will bring cheap, wholesale bandwidth to towns along the way – Castroville, Chualar and Gonzales, for example – that lack Internet access that meets the California Public Utilities Commission’s minimum standard of 6 Mbps download and 1.5 Mbps upload speeds.… More

Broadband lifeline program unjustly slow but has room to improve

28 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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You’ll have to wait and see what next year’s model looks like.

There’s good news and bad news in the full text of the Federal Communications Commission’s lifeline subsidy program for broadband service, which was released yesterday. The bad news is that previous summaries were correct about the low performance standards for subsidised broadband:

  • 10 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds for fixed service (wireline or wireless), except where existing networks can’t support that level.
… More

AT&T offers $10 service to low income homes lucky enough to have wireline service

27 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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Oops. There goes the $10 a month service.

AT&T is rolling out its low cost Internet access program for low income households. It’s one of the conditions attached to the FCC’s approval of AT&T’s purchase of DirecTv last year.

It only applies to homes where Internet access service “is delivered to a fixed location over a physical wire or cable“. In other words, the wireless service AT&T wants to use to replace wireline service in rural and inner city California isn’t eligible.… More

Charter gets tentative federal approval and conditions for Time Warner takeover

26 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission and the federal justice department gave their conditional blessing yesterday to Charter Communications’ proposed purchase of Time Warner and Bright House cable systems. Links to the documents that have been published so far are below. The justice department’s settlement was based on its belief that the merger would reduce competition in the video distribution market. The FCC’s conditions deal with both broadband and television service.

The known highlights are…

  • No consumer data caps or usage-based pricing allowed for seven years.
… More

The week AT&T, cable lobbyists ran up the score in Sacramento

25 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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It could have been a winning week (or two) for broadband infrastructure advocates in the California capitol, but instead last week turned into a victory march for AT&T and cable lobbyists as they fought to further entrench the cosy monopoly/duopoly conditions that underpin their business models. I’ve been blogging more or less on a play by play basis, but I think it’d be helpful to try to pull it briefly together.

It comes down to four key assembly bills, all of which landed in the assembly utilities and commerce committee over the past couple of weeks:

AB 1758 – an effort by Santa Cruz democrat Mark Stone to raise California’s broadband standard to 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds, and put $350 million into the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) for infrastructure upgrade subsidies and a variety of other programs.… More

Bait and switch for California bill to allow AT&T's rural abandonment

22 April 2016 by Steve Blum
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Not the result he was expecting.

No real changes were made in to a proposed new law that would allow AT&T to pull out its wireline systems in rural and inner city communities in California, despite promises to the contrary.

The new text of assembly bill 2395 is now available, and it’s nothing like the way it was characterised by AT&T and its legislative cheering section during an assembly utilities and commerce committee hearing last week.… More