While offering a token defence of its original request, the Ponderosa Telephone Company has effectively agreed to chop $373,000 from a $1 million proposal to build fiber middle mile connections and upgrade DSL service in the Sierra Nevada near Cressman in Fresno County. The company asked for a grant from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) for the project, but ran into opposition at the California Public Utilities Commission.
Commissioner Michel Florio put an alternative on the table, that would remove 5 homes – at a cost to CASF of $75,000 each – from the project and ask Ponderosa to come back with a more cost effective plan to serve them and their neighbors. The revised project would reach 65 homes at a cost of about $10,000 each.
Via its lawyers, Ponderosa is now saying that’s OK…
Although Ponderosa would prefer that the Draft Resolution be adopted, [Florio’s] Alternate Draft Resolution correctly captures Ponderosa’s viewpoint regarding the alternative proposal for the project:
Ponderosa stated that if the Commission determines that eliminating the Rush Creek segment of the project is a more prudent use of CASF funds, they will still consider the revised project technically and financially viable.
Ponderosa supports the Alternate Draft Resolution in the event that the original Draft Resolution is not adopted.
Although there’s a vague commitment from Ponderosa to “provide wholesale access to its network”, there’s still no specific pricing or cost formula required, as the commission has done in the past with the Karuk tribe’s middle mile project in Humboldt County and as proposed for the Sunesys project in the Salinas Valley.
The Cressman project is on the CPUC’s agenda for a vote tomorrow morning.