cpuc

CPUC won’t kill SCE’s dark fiber business. Yet

15 August 2018 by Steve Blum
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Southern California Edison fought its dark fiber battle to a draw, but all out war looms on the horizon. That’s my reading of a proposed decision by a California Public Utilties Commission administrative law judge that would end SCE’s quest for approval of a bulk fiber lease deal with Verizon, if the commission votes to approve it next month.

SCE, like other electric utilities in California, installed fiber optic cables on its pole routes, initially to monitor and operate its infrastructure.… More

Frontier knows how to game the broadband subsidy system, and that’s OK CPUC says

12 August 2018 by Steve Blum
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The California Public Utilities Commission has decided that broadband subsidy proposals can be challenged almost forever, instead of right up until the moment commissioners vote, as it has allowed in the past. It rejected an appeal of a 2017 grant by a wireless Internet service provider in Trinity County, Velocity Communications, ruling that once a draft decision is issued, ISPs can’t submit speed test data that purports to show that the area in question is “served” and thus ineligible for a California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) grant.… More

PG&E cancels competitive dark fiber business plan

10 August 2018 by Steve Blum
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That didn’t take long.

Four days after informing the California Public Utilities Commission that it couldn’t reach agreement with a grab bag of protesting organisations, Pacific Gas and Electric threw in the towel. It’s ending its plan to become a competitive telecommunications company. It won’t put its extensive inventory of surplus dark fiber, and potentially other services, on the open market.

In its request to withdraw its application for certification as a competitive telecoms company, PG&E said the world has changed since it began the process more than a year ago…

Given PG&E’s present circumstances, it is in the public interest that PG&E make current informed decisions in light of the new environment before investing significant resources in launching the new [competitive telecoms] business.

… More

PG&E’s competitive dark fiber ambitions stall at CPUC

9 August 2018 by Steve Blum
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Update: PG&E filed a request with the CPUC, asking to withdraw its application to become a certified, competitive telecoms company. More tomorrow.

It’s been more than 15 months since Pacific Gas and Electric asked for permission to get into the dark fiber business in a big way. In April 2017, it asked the California Public Utilities Commission to certify it as a telecoms company, which would allow it to lease its surplus dark fiber to commercial customers.… More

California legislature considers utility fire liability changes

6 August 2018 by Steve Blum
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The fires ravaging California this morning are a stark reminder that last year’s horrific blazes were no fluke. They are the new normal. Figuring out how to live with this reality is the most pressing task in front of the California legislature when it reconvenes later today.

One of the many issues is who pays?

Under California law, if the cause involves an electric utility’s infrastructure, then it has to pay for the full cost of the damage, whether it was fully, or even truly, at fault.… More

CPUC and Frontier must put broadband upgrade cards on the table

3 August 2018 by Steve Blum
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When the California Public Utilities Commission allowed Frontier Communications to buy Verizon’s wireline systems in California, it imposed a long list of conditions, including commitments made as part of settlements reached with organisations that objected to the deal. Some of those obligations required Frontier to upgrade broadband service to more than 800,000 homes.

One of those organisations is the California Emerging Technology Fund, which is embroiled in a dispute with Frontier over nearly every aspect of that settlement.… More

Don’t confuse social services groups with ISP sales departments

2 August 2018 by Steve Blum
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It’s been a bad few weeks for so called broadband adoption programs in California. First, the shotgun marriage between Frontier Communications and the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) turned into a messy divorce, having only reached a tiny fraction of its “aspirational” target of 200,000 new broadband subscribers.

Then the California Public Utilities Commission launched an effort to recover $244,000 from a Los Angeles County adoption program, that was funded by a regional broadband consortia grant from the California Advanced Services Fund.… More

Zero understanding of dark fiber business means zero benefit to Californian consumers

31 July 2018 by Steve Blum
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Southern California Edison is driving home the point that rebating half of its dark fiber leasing revenue to electric customers would kill its ability to compete in the telecoms market. A draft decision by CPUC commissioner Clifford Rechtschaffen would replace a nearly 20 year old gross revenue sharing formula – 90% to SCE, 10% to electric customers – with a 50/50 split.

In closed door meetings with top California Public Utilities Commission staff, an SCE executive and an in-house lobbyist said, in effect, that Rechtschaffen doesn’t understand the dark fiber business…

Contrary to unsupported statements in [Rechtschaffen’s draft decision], a 50/50 gross revenue sharing mechanism would not provide sufficient return to justify shareholder investment.

… More

T-Mobile’s purchase of Sprint has to clear a Californian hurdle

27 July 2018 by Steve Blum
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T-Mobile, the third largest U.S. mobile carrier, needs the California Public Utilities Commission’s blessing to buy Sprint, the fourth largest. Sorta.

The Federal Communications Commission has jurisdiction over mobile carriers and is doing the heavy lifting in the regulatory review of the transaction. But Sprint has a subsidiary – Sprint Communications Company, or “Sprint Wireline” as it’s referred to – that sells services to business customers in California. As a result, the company has a certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN) granted by the CPUC, and needs its approval to transfer ownership to T-Mobile.… More

CPUC tags Frontier’s service as “chronic failure”, proposes to let it slap itself on the wrist

26 July 2018 by Steve Blum
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Frontier Communications failed to meet California phone service repair standards in 2017. It’s supposed to restore service within a certain amount of time 90% of the time in any given month, in every one of its Californian service territories. According to two draft resolutions on the table at the California Public Utilities Commission, two of Frontier’s three subsidiaries missed the mark every single month.

Of the 24 reports, the worst performance was 22% in January 2017, the best was 87% in December 2017.… More