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Don’t expect fast rural broadband from AT&T or Frontier, lobbyists tell CPUC

Ernestine

Judging from presentations made by AT&T and Frontier Communications lobbyists at a California Public Utilities Commission workshop on Monday, the companies have no plans for significant upgrades to rural broadband service, comparable to urban improvements, despite taxpayer subsidies. Which doesn’t bode well for a $2 trillion infrastructure spending deal announced yesterday in Washington, D.C.

Rural broadband infrastructure was one of the few specific items that came out of a meeting yesterday between president Donald Trump, house speaker Nancy Pelosi and senate democratic leader Chuck Schumer.… More

Plumas and Lassen County broadband projects proposed for California subsidies

30 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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Mohawk vista

Applications for broadband infrastructure subsidies from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) are due tomorrow, but the Plumas-Sierra Electric Co-op (PSEC) wasn’t in a mood to wait. It submitted five project proposals on Saturday, totalling $12 million in grant requests.

PSEC serves Plumas, Sierra and Lassen counties in northeastern California, and is one of three electrical service cooperatives in the state. It branched out into broadband service several years ago and has received both state and federal grants to build out its network.… More

“Revolutionary opportunities” or higher prices, poorer service and less rural coverage from T-Mobile’s takeover of Sprint?

29 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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Maduro inaguration

California is either heading for a proletarian broadband paradise or an economic meltdown of Venezuelan proportions. Following months of testimony, document dumps and stupid lawyer tricks, on Friday the companies and their opponents laid out arguments for why the California Public Utilities Commission should or shouldn’t approve the deal.

In two separate filings, T-Mobile (and technically Sprint, but it’s T-Mobile that’s running the show) mostly reiterated the same points and pleadings they’ve been pushing since the beginning: the CPUC is sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong and the merger will benefit everyone – Californian consumers, rural communities, low income and disadvantaged people, job seekers, employees hoping to keep their jobs, and the list goes on.… More

AT&T, Comcast blamed for stonewalling burnt out Paradise residents, as CPUC approves broadband grant pilot

26 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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California wildfire ruins

The California Public Utilities Commission decided to be more generous with broadband construction subsidies for low income home owners and tenants yesterday, but also took aim at AT&T, Comcast and other big telecoms companies that refuse to take advantage of state broadband subsidies or cooperate with communities that need service. Commissioners voted to raise the proposed limit of $5,300 on line extension program grants to $9,300 per household, as they unanimously approved implementation plans for the $5 million pilot project, paid for by the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF).… More

VoIP regulation promised by California lawmakers after AT&T-backed bill boomerangs

25 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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Feral kid boomerang

Once again, a higher power interrupted the ongoing love affair between AT&T, Comcast and friends, and the California assembly’s primary telecommunications policy committee. As with the last time, the central issue is voice over Internet protocol service, with major labor unions – particularly, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) – opposing an attempt to exempt VoIP and other “IP enabled services” from oversight by the California Public Utilities Commission.

Assembly bill 1366 would extend a 2012 law that bans the CPUC from regulating IP-delivered services.… More

T-Mobile, CETF slammed for $35 million deal to win approval of Sprint merger

24 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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Your winnings sir

A $35 million payoff that, um, inspired the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) to “enthusiastically and wholeheartedly support” T-Mobile’s acquisition of Sprint was lambasted yesterday by organisations that still oppose it. The California Public Utilities Commission’s Public Advocates Office (PAO) and two advocacy organisations, TURN and the Greenlining Institute, filed objections to the agreement.

One issue in dispute is whether it is a formal settlement, which has to be negotiated and reviewed under CPUC rules, or something else.… More

Comcast tells CPUC it must say yes to rural cherrypicking because it can’t say no

Paicines pole route

Comcast took its best shot at explaining why it should be allowed to jump the queue and start competing against Ponderosa Telephone before the California Public Utilities Commission decides what the future will be for small, rural telephone companies. The answer: because the developer wants us and the Federal Communications Commission says we can.

The dispute centers on Tesoro Viejo, an upscale master planned community under construction in the foothills of Madera County. Comcast claims the developers offered Tesoro Viejo as a cherry ripe for picking, and it wants to oblige them.… More

Local challenges to FCC streetlight preemption order move ahead

22 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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Charlottesville streetlights

A federal appeals court commissioner has, for now, set a schedule that sorts out the various challenges to last year’s Federal Communications Commission decisions that preempted local ownership of streetlights and similar infrastructure, and put tight restrictions on how local governments manage public right of ways. Last week Peter Shaw, a commissioner for the ninth circuit federal appeals court in San Francisco, met with attorneys for local agencies and associations that are challenging various aspects of the order, and with lawyers for mobile carriers that are pretending to be upset with the FCC’s decisions, but are actually jumping in on its side.… More

5G hype gets a reality check in 2020

19 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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It looks like 2020 will be the year that genuine 5G smartphones will finally be in the hands of consumers. Two developments this week cleared away significant uncertainty about who will be offering 5G phones, when it will happen and whose technology they’ll use.

The two companies settled a long running legal dispute over intellectual property rights to core 5G technology, including a deal for Apple to buy modem chips, which do the heavy processing work of wrangling radio waves into data streams at one end and reading them at the other.… More

T-Mobile, Sprint scramble to keep merger deal alive in California

18 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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The odds of T-Mobile getting permission from federal and California regulators to buy Sprint are getting longer. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the federal justice department is reluctant to approve the deal in its current form. That has a familiar ring to it – it was the same kind of antitrust concerns that led to the justice department and Federal Communications Commission killing Comcast’s bid to take over Time Warner’s cable systems and do market consolidating swaps with Charter in 2015.… More