Uncategorized

California legislature approves LA fast track wireless reviews, sorta

12 September 2016 by Steve Blum
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The way California law works now, if a permit application for a new cell tower is held up for more than five months because of reviews or challenges resulting from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), then the permit is deemed approved. Yep, regardless of whatever other issues are involved, once the shot clock expires, permission to build a new cell tower is automatically granted.

Suppose, though, that CEQA didn’t apply to…

  1. Antennas, including microwave dishes and arrays.
… More

Smart policy has to lead smart technology to make a smart city

11 September 2016 by Steve Blum
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Nobody knows what a smart city is. Or rather, everybody defines smart city differently, depending on individual goals: it’s a means to an end.

For equipment makers and service providers, a city is smart if it buys their stuff. To a network operator, a smart city is one that hangs that stuff, whatever it might be, on its network. On the private sector side, the smart city vision is marketing driven and has a distinctly vertical focus – there was little or no interest in horizontal integration on display at the smart city panel sessions I sat in on at the CTIA show in Las Vegas last week.… More

Surviving CPUC reform bills sent to governor

10 September 2016 by Steve Blum
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Final versions of two utility regulation reform bills have been sent to governor Brown for his review. Senate bill 62 and SB 512, carried by senator Jerry Hill (D – San Bruno), change the way the California Public Utilities Commission conducts business. Both were passed in the final hours of the legislative session last month, without last minute changes.
SB 512 is the more consequential of the two. It aims to open CPUC proceedings to greater public scrutiny and participation.… More

FCC set top box plan takes app-based approach

9 September 2016 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission has backed off from requiring pay-TV companies – cable, telco, satellite – to open up their networks and allow consumers to buy and use a set top boxes made by third party companies. Instead, the FCC is pushing a hybrid plan – given the litigious response from the industry, I wouldn’t call it a compromise – that would have pay TV operators create apps that can run on third-party boxes.

The FCC has only released a summary of the proposed new rules.… More

Expect more federal preemption of local wireless site reviews

8 September 2016 by Steve Blum
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There’s no partisan bickering in Washington over locating cell sites. The great divide is between federal and local governments. After making the obligatory nods toward local communities, top aides to all five FCC commissioners agreed that clearing the path for the millions of new cell sites that 5G networks will require is a top priority. They told the audience at the CTIA’s trade show in Las Vegas yesterday that in order to make 5G work, the cost of constructing cell sites, particularly the time and money required to get permit approval from cities and counties, has to come down.… More

FCC chair Wheeler says fiber companies can't hold 5G hostage

7 September 2016 by Steve Blum
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Valediction.

Backhaul is critical to development of next generation mobile networks, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler said in Las Vegas this morning, promising the commission will ensure “that lack of competition in some places cannot be used to hold 5G hostage”.

It doesn’t look like the Federal Communications Commission will be taking up pricing and access regulations for middle mile backhaul in September, though. In what could be his final CTIA keynote as FCC chair, Wheeler promised new rules, but “before the end of this year” and not before the end of the month.… More

New network standards fuel Verizon IoT push

7 September 2016 by Steve Blum
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U.S. mobile carriers will offer specialised Internet of things (IoT) services in a big way next year. Some of the motivation is competitive, the result of pressure from companies using unlicensed spectrum, but it seems to be mostly the result of new technology protocols for the LTE standard that support IoT applications and, critically, business cases.

Verizon announced its plans for full, nationwide deployment of a key IoT standard by April 2017 at the Telit IoT Innovation conference in Las Vegas yesterday.… More

Ballot measure floated for California telecoms regulation

6 September 2016 by Steve Blum
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Out of time and running room.

A new attempt to overhaul the California Public Utilities Commission is bobbing on the horizon. Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D – Los Angeles), who fronted a failed effort in the legislature, says he’s talking with “like-minded reformers” about a ballot initiative. That’s a bit unsettling, since his fellow travellers this year have largely been telecoms lobbyists and trial lawyers. Those are two groups with deep pockets for friendly policies and long arms for compliant politicians.… More

Sparse CTIA show looks at dense cell networks

5 September 2016 by Steve Blum
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CTIA – the trade group formerly known as the Cellular Telephone Industries Association – is holding its last show in Las Vegas this week. Next year, it’s combining with the GSM Association to produce a new show in San Francisco. GSMA is the organiser of the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, which is the go-to conference for the mobile industry.

The event will shift to the second week after Labor Day, which presumably will get it out from under Apple’s shadow – as in the past, CEO Tim Cook’s fall announcements, which are usually mobile-focused, will happen right smack in the middle of CTIA’s opening keynote session.… More

Rapid climb in California's broadband speeds and use

4 September 2016 by Steve Blum
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The average speed at which Californians connected to Akamai’s content delivery network in the first quarter of 2016 was 16.4 Mbps, according to Akamai’s State of the Internet Report for the first quarter of 2016. Despite lagging behind U.S. leaders, that’s stilll a healthy jump from a year earlier, when the average was 13.6 Mbps, and a huge improvement over the 5.7 Mbps we were clocking five years ago – a 188% improvement.

The average Californian can and does buy faster Internet service plans as well.… More