ab1665

More comments are in about how broadband adoption programs should be funded by the California Public Utilities Commission. Or rather, I’ve found more comments – the filings from the CPUC’s office of ratepayer advocates (ORA) and the Central Sierra Connect regional broadband consortium landed in my spam folder last week.

It’s a chronic bug in the CPUC’s service list system. Anytime you submit something – comments, grant applications, motions, protests, whatever – regarding a formal CPUC proceeding, you have to send copies to anyone who’s signed up to be notified.… More

Big telco and cable interests accounted for two of the fourteen organisations that commented on proposed changes to the California Advanced Services Fund’s (CASF) broadband subsidy program for public housing and the new digital literacy and broadband access grants that’ll be available later this year. Frontier Communications and cable lobbyists submitted their remarks on Friday. AT&T was silent.

The California Cable and Telecommunications Association (CCTA), which is the lobbying front for Comcast, Charter Communications and other cable companies in California, wants the CPUC to better protect its members’ monopoly business model in public housing communities.… More

Public housing property owners can get grants from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to install broadband facilities and serve residents. Hundreds of communities have taken advantage of it, despite churlish opposition from cable companies, particularly Charter Communications. The California Public Utilities Commission is revising the program, to bring it into line with new rules laid down by assembly bill 1665 last year.

The biggest change is to retroactively enforce restrictions, imposed by an earlier measure, senate bill 745, that require properties receiving grants to be “unserved”, which means that at least one residence lacks service at 6 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds.… More

Fourteen organisations offered comments on Friday regarding California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) grant requirements and application procedures for public housing broadband facilities and for broadband adoption efforts, which are generally reckoned to be digital literacy classes and “broadband access” programs – i.e. computer centers, hotspots and free computers – programs. Suggestions for how the CASF broadband infrastructure loan program should be wound down were also submitted.

The new adoption grant program, and the revisions to the public housing and infrastructure loan programs were mandated by assembly bill 1665, which was approved by the California legislature and signed into law last year.… More

When lobbyists for big telcos and cable companies rewrote California’s primary broadband infrastructure subsidy program – the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) – last year, they carefully maximised the money they’d get while minimising, even eliminating, independent competition and inconvenient rules.

One of the perks approved by lawmakers is particularly pleasing to the cable lobbyists who asked for it: a money laundering scheme that allows them to get broadband construction subsidies without the need for any annoying oversight or other regulatory entanglement with the California Public Utilities Commission, which gives out the grants.… More

One-third or more of broadband infrastructure subsidies would go to low income areas, if the California Public Utilities Commission adopts new rules proposed by staff for the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF). Although the draft rewrite published on Wednesday by commissioner Martha Guzman Aceves is just the starting point for a debate that won’t be resolved until the end of the year, it is consistent with comments that she and other commissioners have made on many occasions.… More

California’s broadband primary infrastructure program, the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), is in for an overhaul by the California Public Utilities Commission. Last year, the California legislature passed and governor Jerry Brown signed assembly bill 1665, which pumped more money into the fund but also placed severe, incumbent-centric restrictions on how it can be spent.

It’s up to the CPUC, though, to decide the detailed objectives, rules and procedures for the program. Yesterday, commissioner Martha Guzman Aceves posted a scoping memo and ruling, which outlines extensive changes proposed by CPUC staff, and a schedule for reaching a decision.… More