Uncategorized

California’s net neutrality law needs a little bit of help from its tech friends

22 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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Only one group jumped in as a friend of the court – an amicus curiae – to help the federal justice department, and lobbyists for AT&T, Comcast, Charter Communications and Frontier Communications in their quest to kill California’s new network neutrality law. One point made – that California’s Internet law won’t stop at the Nevada line – can only be answered with technical expertise.

The friend was, of course, another group of lobbyists, which rather grandly calls itself the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America.… More

California broadband promotion, access grant program oversubscribed

21 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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Thirty three organisations – non-profits, and local government and educational agencies – asked the California Public Utilities Commission for a total of $8.4 million to pay for broadband education and access efforts – broadband adoption programs, as the California legislature labels it. A $20 million broadband adoption kitty was established by assembly bill 1665 last year, to ease the political pain of turning the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) into a $300 million gift to AT&T and Frontier Communications.… More

Fight begins over who gets spectrum assigned to self driving cars

20 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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The automotive industry might pay a high price for sitting on spectrum for 20 years, without using it. Ironically, it comes when an automotive use for the 75 MHz in the 5.9 GHz band allocated to Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) is right around the corner.

Lobbyists for Charter Communications, Comcast and other monopoly model cable companies want the frequencies reassigned and used to expand one of the unlicensed bands that’s commonly used for WiFi (although being unlicensed, it can be used for pretty much anything else, too).… More

FCC preemption of local street pole ownership takes effect in January

19 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission wasted no time in publishing its new rules regarding how cities and counties can regulate (or, really, not) small wireless facilities in the federal register. That means most of the rules take effect on 14 January 2019, unless one of the promised lawsuits materialises and a court puts everything on hold.

The new rules don’t force local governments to do anything – the FCC doesn’t have authority. But state and federal courts do, and the intent is to set standards that judges will apply when settling disputes between wireless companies and local agencies.… More

T-Mobile Sprint merger will eliminate thousands of California jobs, union says

18 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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The Communications Workers of America (CWA), which is the largest telecoms union in California, asked to join the California Public Utilities Commission’s inquiry into T-Mobile’s proposed takeover of Sprint yesterday. In its “motion for party status”, CWA said it represents wireless industry workers at AT&T and “as members of T-Mobile Workers United, an organisation of T-Mobile and MetroPCS employees”.

Many could lose their jobs, according to the union’s motion…

The T-Mobile/Sprint merger will have a significant impact on CWA members, both as workers in the industry and as consumers of wireless services.

… More

FCC’s have it both ways brief is California’s heads we win, tails you lose hope

17 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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Besides doing rhetorical back flips to explain why broadband isn’t a telecommunications service, the Federal Communications Commission’s defence of its decision to scrap network neutrality rules also goes to great lengths to justify its declaration that states cannot impose their own laws as a substitute. This specific preemption, along with federal law and the general constitutional principle that the federal government has sole authority over interstate commerce, forms the basis for the court challenge to California’s net neutrality law mounted by lobbyists for AT&T, Charter, Comcast, Frontier and other monopoly model telecoms companies, and the allied law suit filed by the Trump administration.… More

PG&E didn’t start any fires this week and Californians complain

16 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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Pacific Gas and Electric began shutting down electric lines in high risk fire zones on Sunday night, as winds topping 50 miles per hour ripped through northern California. At last report, PG&E had cut power in seven counties – Amador, Calaveras, El Dorado, Lake, Napa, Placer and Sonoma. Crews inspected lines for damage yesterday, as PG&E gradually restored power to the majority of blacked out customers. The job is expected to be finished today.

On Sunday, alerts were broadcast widely.… More

Former chief judge sues CPUC, claims firing due to PG&E investigation retaliation, racial bias

15 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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The California Public Utilities Commission is being sued by its former chief administrative law judge, Karen Clopton. She was fired from her job in 2017.

One of the few things the two sides agree on is that “the CPUC terminated [Clopton’s] employment” and that it was an “adverse action”, as one of the commission’s filings put it. The formal reason for the dismissal isn’t stated in court documents, by either side.

Clopton charges that the real reason she was fired was racial discrimination – she’s African American – and as retaliation for her cooperation “with state and federal investigations into the misconduct of CPUC commissioners and staff”, including allegations of “judge shopping”, during the CPUC’s own investigation of the fatal PG&E gas line explosion in San Bruno in 2010.… More

FCC’s definition of information is a bad 1990s nostalgia trip

14 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission is strenuously and – I’d say – unconvincingly arguing that broadband is an information service and not a telecommunications service, as it defends last year’s decision to roll back network neutrality rules. In a brief filed with a Washington, D.C. appeals court, the FCC defended both the logic of its decision and the way it arrived at it.

Courts have already told the FCC that it needs to define broadband as a telecoms services before it can impose common carrier obligations on providers, which, for all practical purposes is what network neutrality rules do.… More

Telecoms, data center infrastructure infiltrated, Bloomberg stories say, mystery deepens despite denials

13 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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Taken at face value, a pair of articles on Bloomberg by Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley details how Chinese government intelligence agencies snuck tiny chips into computer servers used by Amazon and Apple, and by at least one major U.S. telecoms company. The devices – as small as the tip of a pencil – could be used to listen to communications going in and out, or to dive deeper into those systems.

If true, Bloomberg’s reporting means that the Chinese government, and possibly other intelligence agencies and criminal groups, have a backdoor that leads deep into U.S.… More