connect america fund

AT&T kills wired broadband service for half a million Californians

22 October 2020 by Steve Blum
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AT&T’s decision to stop selling legacy DSL service – the sort that uses 1990s technology and rides on regulated phone lines – affects 547,000 Californians, 1.4% of the state’s population. 67,000 of them will completely lose the ability to buy residential wireline broadband service from a commercial provider. Rural counties will be hit hard, with Tuolumne County taking the stiffest punch: 3.4% of its population will no longer be able to get wireline broadband service at any speed.… More

AT&T abandons rural broadband systems as it stops selling 1990s era DSL tech

8 October 2020 by Steve Blum
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AT&T will no longer sell new connections to old school DSL service, although it claims it will continue to support customers who already have it. It notified customers of the change via the last cycle of bill statements. In one respect, it’s a rational and proper decision – AT&T offers much better service via newer technology – but in another respect it’s bad news: wireline networks in rural communities redlined by AT&T haven’t been sufficiently maintained, let alone upgraded, to support modern systems.… More

FCC’s go it alone broadband subsidies burn state programs, commissioners say

4 March 2020 by Steve Blum
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Thirteen days before the November election, the Federal Communications Commission plans to give away $16 billion of subsidies to broadband service providers who can deliver at least 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds to census blocks that lack it. Commissioners voted last week to publish the proposed 22 October 2020 date to commence a reverse auction to determine who gets those subsidies, and ask for comments on a variety of technical issues that have to be sewn up before the bidding begins.… More

FCC revises subsidy rules, won’t zonk California because of our low broadband standards

19 February 2020 by Steve Blum
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Monty hall

The Federal Communications Commission approved a small do-over to the rules for its new broadband subsidy program, the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). Instead of blocking subsidies to any area where state broadband dollars are being spent, it will only do so where the money is paying for service at a minimum of 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds.

That’s good new for California. Our primary broadband subsidy program – the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) – deems communities with broadband at the achingly slow rate of 6 Mbps down/1 Mbps up as adequately served, and only requires grant recipients who build infrastructure with state money to hit the barely better speed of 10 Mbps down/1 Mbps up.… More

California gets a zonk from the FCC’s new broadband subsidy program

4 February 2020 by Steve Blum
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Zonk

The final language of the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to launch a new broadband subsidy program could cause headaches in California. The FCC approved the new $20 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) program last week, apparently with eligibility rule changes to the draft version published earlier in January.

In remarks prepared for the meeting, commission Geoffrey Starks flagged new language that would exclude places that are getting broadband subsidies from other sources…

I cannot support provisions of the Order that penalize the many states that have made their own investments in rural broadband deployment.

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$16 billion in broadband subsidies up for auction in November

31 January 2020 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission will begin the process of handing out $16 billion in broadband service subsidies in November, with another $4.4 billion coming sometime later. Commissioners approved the new Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) program at their meeting in Washington, D.C. yesterday. They set the minimum standard for acceptable broadband service at 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds: any census block that completely lacks access to service at that speed level will eligible for subsidies in November.… More

Investment analysts say AT&T, Frontier, others padded bottom line with FCC broadband subsidies

30 January 2020 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission is scheduled to vote today on a new ten year, $20 billion broadband subsidy program called the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) that will mostly benefit rural communities. The proposal on the table would set the U.S. minimum broadband standard at 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds. That’s a lot better than California’s pathetic standard of 6 Mbps down/1 Mbps up, and a significant improvement over the 10 Mbps down/1 Mbps up minimum that the FCC established for the Connect America Fund II program (CAF II), which RDOF will replace.… More

CPUC asks for more time to adapt to FCC broadband subsidy program, but doesn’t say how

28 January 2020 by Steve Blum
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Paicines pole route

The FCC is heading toward a vote on Thursday that would raise its eligibility and minimum service standards for broadband subsidies to 25 down/3 Mbps up and award $20 billion in broadband subsidies as quickly as possible, perhaps in a single reverse auction in November. That’s welcome progress and a great thing for states that either have rational broadband policies or have no interest in broadband policy at all.

But not so great for California, which has irrational broadband subsidy policies.… More

Keep broadband slow so we can ditch copper, AT&T, Frontier tell FCC

23 January 2020 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission heading toward a vote later this month on the structure of the new Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), which is the reboot of the Connect America Fund (CAF) broadband subsidy program designed for rural communities (although urban and suburban areas sometimes qualify, too). In their eternal quest for more public money and less public service, AT&T and Frontier Communications, among others, are urging the FCC to lower speed standards for subsidised broadband, so they can rip out ageing copper lines and replace them with limited capacity wireless systems.… More

With Frontier in free fall, California needs a Plan B

Frontier stock chart 8aug2019

Frontier Communications’ strategy of upgrading fiber speeds for high income, urban customers, and letting poor, rural ones rely on slow, wireless broadband systems didn’t seem to make an impression on Wall Street. The company’s stock price lost nearly 25% of its already diminished value after the release of second quarter 2019 results on Tuesday.

Even before this latest crash, a study by the California Public Utilities Commission concluded that Frontier is sinking in California, and it’s time to start thinking about what happens next…

While Frontier’s priorities are in maintaining and growing its [legacy telephone] properties, the company’s financial resources have become so deteriorated as to threaten its ongoing ability to pursue these priorities going forward.

… More