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Google's wireless goal isn't fiber replacement or magic radios

13 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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No need to wait.

Google is asking the Federal Communications Commission for permission to run wireless transmission tests in and around the 3.5 GHz band, which has been designated for use under new Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) rules.
One reason for the request is sure to be Google’s increasing focus on wireless technologies as a substitute for or supplement to fiber. But Google has another, immediately practical interest at stake too: widespread use of CBRS spectrum requires real time frequency coordination amongst users, who have varying degrees of priority in that band.… More

Green light for telecoms policy bills in Sacramento

12 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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Telecoms legislation is popular in Sacramento this summer. Legislative leaders allowed several important bills to move ahead yesterday, albeit without finalising all of the language. Negotiations and amendments will continue behind closed doors as the full assembly and senate get ready to vote.

The four bills that make up the grand package of California Public Utilities Commission reforms agreed to by the governor and three key lawmakers are moving ahead. Senate bill 215, by senator Mark Leno (D – San Francisco), tightens rules on who can speak with CPUC decision makers and when.… More

CPUC gut-and-amend reform bill published

11 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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No surprise, really.

A draft of a bill to overhaul the California Public Utilities Commission is up on the state legislature’s website. It’s a gut-and-amend job by assemblyman Mike Gatto (D – Los Angeles) on an assembly bill – AB 2903 – that originally concerned damages resulting from the state’s energy crisis in 2000.

It appears to be in line with the grand compromise reached with governor Brown in June. The California Research Bureau, a division of the state library, would get the job of evaluating the CPUC’s future role in telecoms regulation.… More

Caltrans shovels hard to avoid digging once

11 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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Proceed with caution.

The only opposition so far to a bill that would require Caltrans to cooperate with broadband projects and notify companies and local governments when opportunities arise to install conduit is coming, not surprisingly, from Caltrans itself.

Assembly bill 1549 by Jim Wood (D – Healdsburg) has so far sailed through the California legislature unanimously. But with the bill sitting in the senate appropriations committee, the final stop before a full floor vote, the state finance department is pushing Caltrans’ bizarre argument that it’s not needed because its record keeping is so screwed up that fixing it would only make it worse…

Caltrans does not keep a complete and up-to-date inventory of all existing conduits within its existing right-of-way.

… More

FCC can't preempt state limits on muni broadband, appeals court rules

10 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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Park the bulldozer.

Congress did not give the Federal Communications Commission the authority to override state government-imposed limits on expansion by municipal broadband systems. That’s the simple and – as far as it goes – unanimous opinion of three federal appeals court judges who overturned the FCC’s preemption of muni broadband restrictions in Tennessee and North Carolina.

In general, a state has complete authority to determine what cities and counties can do, within the limits of the law.… More

Silicon Valley drops off of Google Fiber roadmap

10 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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Google has scrapped seemingly imminent plans to start laying fiber in Silicon Valley. According to a story yesterday in the San Jose Mercury News, Google has told officials in Palo Alto and Mountain View that the project is on hold, and the group that was to do the work has been disbanded…

The company was set to begin digging in San Jose last month, but nearly 100 employees hired to install Google Fiber were pulled into an office and told the project was being delayed, according to workers.

… More

No progress, no paperwork, no grants for California broadband projects

9 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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Five broadband projects are about to lose funding, as the California Public Utilities Commission prepares to cancel $4.5 million worth of grants originally given to pay for construction costs. The companies that would have received the subsidies either decided not to move ahead with the project or just sort of disappeared and failed to file the proper paperwork.

Verizon had two of the projects – one in Pinyon in Riverside County and the other in the Sea Ranch area of Sonoma County.… More

Small group of Californian lawmakers make big broadband policy

8 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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Gut and amend.

Major broadband-related legislation is on the horizon this week in Sacramento, although how it will ultimately read is completely unknown right now. The way things are lining up, we probably won’t know until the end of the month, when the legislature goes into its final, end-of-the-session whirlwind.

Action on a thoroughly innocuous bill involving the California Public Utilities Commission – AB 2902 – by a telecoms industry ally, assemblyman Mike Gatto (D – Los Angeles), has been pushed back a couple of times and is sitting on hold.… More

California still needs to be a broadband activist

7 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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Market actor.

Ahead of a legislative effort to shake up the way it does business, the California Public Utilities Commission adopted a high-level strategic management plan at its last meeting. The document contains the usual boilerplate about agency effectiveness, performance, and respect for the staff and the public, and touches all the politically correct bases.

But it also describes an activist role in managing the industries under its jurisdiction, including telecommunications, whether or not it can do so via direct, regulatory authority.… More

Ready or not, T-Mobile wants to push ahead into unlicensed bands

6 August 2016 by Steve Blum
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Standard-setting groups have been trying to work out a peaceful coexistence strategy for traditional WiFi and carrier-class mobile data traffic in unlicensed bands. The mobile industry’s primary thrust is the LTE-U protocol, which would use the same basic technology as licensed 4G cell sites in the same bands as WiFi, with, it is hoped, sufficiently intelligent, active management of transmissions so as not to crowd out everyone else.

The Federal Communications Commission has to certify that the equipment being used meets its rules for operating in unlicensed spectrum, and it has held off doing so until the Wi-Fi Alliance comes to an agreement with mobile industry groups, including the LTE-U Forum, on coexistence plans.… More