Eligibility, application details for $600 million rural broadband subsidy program released

21 December 2018 by Steve Blum
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Salinas valley field

Rural broadband grant money will go to areas where 100% of homes do not have access to sufficiently fast service, which is defined as 10 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds from a wireline or fixed wireless provider. Mobile and satellite service don’t count. If a mix of grant and loan is applied for, then only 90% of the homes have to be unserved at that level.

The federal agriculture department rolled out its new ReConnect program in a webinar yesterday, and filled in a lot of the details about what sort of areas are eligible, which will score higher than others, and who can apply for the $300 million in grants and $300 million in loan money approved by congress earlier this year.… More

Muni property rights are written into federal law and FCC decisions, North Little Rock tells appeals court

20 December 2018 by Steve Blum
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Burlingame poles

The case against the FCC’s preemption of local property ownership is taking shape. The first city to ask federal appellate court judges to put the FCC’s September wireless order on hold while legal wheels grind is North Little Rock, Arkansas, in partnership with a Missouri muni utility association.

Most of North Little Rock’s arguments are specific to municipal electric utilities. Federal law exempts municipal utilities from FCC pole attachment oversight. Muni electric utilities also have to follow more rigid safety requirements – working on high voltage lines is a dangerous job – and they have long-established procedures for working with telecommunications companies, wired and wireless alike.… More

FCC and friends want to keep muni pole ownership preemption challenges in Denver

19 December 2018 by Steve Blum
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Neither the Federal Communications Commission or mobile telecoms companies want to go to San Francisco to defend the agency’s preemption of local ownership of municipal property in the public right of way. They want to keep the growing list of appeals court challenges to the FCC’s September wireless deployment order in Denver.

In separate, but very similar, rebuttals the FCC and the beneficiaries of its generosity argued that the cases shouldn’t be transferred to the ninth circuit federal appeals court in San Francisco, as requested by the City of San Jose and its partners.… More

The rent in our contract is more than the FCC likes, so rip it up, Verizon tells city

18 December 2018 by Steve Blum
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Chevy chase chainsaw

Verizon is waving the Federal Communications Commission’s pole ownership preemption order like a chainsaw as it tries to shred existing lease contracts it signed, but doesn’t like. In a request to put that order on hold, the City of North Little Rock included a copy of a letter it received from Verizon, in response to a wireless ordinance it adopted in July.

In it, Verizon told the city…

We’ve also compared our existing Master Lease Agreement (“MLA”) with the City to the FCC Order.

… More

$600 million federal rural broadband subsidy program launches, grant applications due in April

17 December 2018 by Steve Blum
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Salinas ag tech summit 13jul2018

The federal agriculture department will be handing out $300 million in broadband upgrade grants, and making another $300 million in loans next spring. It’s the result of a new rural broadband subsidy program that was included in a massive federal budget bill earlier this year. The (sparse) details were announced on Thursday, the day after the federal farm bill was passed by congress.

The ReConnect program, as it’s called, has a lot in common with the 5 year, $350 million per year broadband subsidy funding in the farm bill.… More

Lobbyists ask FCC to hit cities with another taxpayer funded broadband mugging

16 December 2018 by Steve Blum
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The ravaging horde of (largely) telco and cable lobbyists known as the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband deployment advisory committee (BDAC) has drafted its latest letter to Santa advice to FCC chair Ajit Pai.

Not surprisingly, it thinks that Charter Communications, Comcast, AT&T and other monopoly model broadband service providers aren’t getting enough love from local governments. Love, in this case, meaning give us everything you have, then go out and get us more.

If a city owns dark fiber, then it should be required to hand it over to “any private sector communications provider” on demand, and only be allowed to keep enough for its “reasonably anticipated 50-year fiber needs”.… More

More cities join the court battle against FCC muni property preemption ruling

15 December 2018 by Steve Blum
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Riverside pole mount

More than two dozen eastern, midwestern and Texan cities jumped into the court fight against the Federal Communications Commission’s preemption of local ownership of street light and other municipal property planted in the public right of way. The group, led by the City of Austin, filed its paperwork in the federal appeals court headquartered in the District of Columbia.

If I’m counting right, the deadline has now passed for any additional appeals, but there’s always the opportunity to join the fun as an intervenor, as the City of New York did.… More

CPUC reboots California broadband infrastructure subsidies, as well as can be hoped

14 December 2018 by Steve Blum
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California has more than $300 million available to subsidise broadband infrastructure, thanks to a law passed last year by the California legislature. Also thanks to that law, the rules governing who can get the subsidies and where it can be spent were rigged, with the aim of protecting telco and cable monopolies, and funneling money into their pockets.

It was up to the California Public Utilities Commission to rewrite the rules that subsidy applicants have to follow and that govern how broadband subsidy proposals will be evaluated and approved.… More

Lots of fiber in federal farm bill, and it’s not just hemp

13 December 2018 by Steve Blum
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Hemp

A five year farm bill with billions of dollars set aside for improving broadband infrastructure in rural areas is heading for president Donald Trump’s desk. Negotiators from the federal senate and house of representatives cobbled together a compromise bill earlier this week, and the house gave it a final blessing yesterday. It keeps most of the pro-broadband development provisions in earlier drafts.

The bill also legalises hemp production – the roping, not the doping kind.

The conference report is more than 800 pages long, and until I get through it all in detail I’m not going to try to figure how much broadband money is actually in it.… More

FCC says it’s legal to give muni property to mobile companies because it’s illegal for cities to say no

12 December 2018 by Steve Blum
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Alice tall 625

The Federal Communications Commission says it has the authority to tell cities and counties what they can do with property they own, because otherwise they would be breaking the law. In a decision that should have surprised no one, the FCC refused to put its September wireless preemption ruling on hold.

Instead, in an odd bit of contradictory reasoning, the FCC’s latest order says it’s not taking away cities’ rights to property they own that’s located within the public right of way (ROW), such as street light poles and traffic signals.… More