e-rate

U.S. house democrats propose $50 monthly broadband subsidy for low income homes, AT&T and Comcast will be happy to take it

14 May 2020 by Steve Blum
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With covid–19 pandemic lockdowns continuing in most states, albeit with gradual loosening underway, democrats in the house of representatives in Washington, D.C. want to pump $5.5 billion into broadband access subsidies to ensure that people and institutions can remain connected to the online resources they will be depending on, likely for months to come. It’s one of the opening shots in the negotiations over what might be a second stimulus bill in the trillion dollar range to keep the U.S.… More

With new money and gear now committed, California might close student connectivity gap. If

23 April 2020 by Steve Blum
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Home schooling

More money and in-kind donations are on the way from companies, foundations and the California Public Utilities Commission to close the divide between school kids who can get online and stay in school, and those who can’t. According to a press release from governor Gavin Newsom’s office, when previous announcements are added in, a total of $42 million has been pledged, along with 100,000 mobile network-enabled hotspots, 24,000 tablets and 13,000 Chromebooks.

Using the same guesstimated back-of-the-envelope and egregiously rounded math I used earlier this week, that will just about take care of the 200,000 or so Californian kids that the state education department says need a laptop or tablet and an Internet connection to do their school work.… More

The $2 trillion covid-19 stimulus bill is not a broadband bill, but it helps. A little

27 March 2020 by Steve Blum
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Salinas windmill cell site

Update, 27 March 2020: president Trump signed the bill, it’s a done deal.

Update, 27 March 2020: the U.S. house of representatives approved the bill, it now goes to president Trump.

A vote on the $2 trillion federal covid–19 stimulus bill is expected in the U.S. house of representatives later today, and president Trump says he’ll sign it immediately. I also found the full text of the bill, as published by the U.S. senate’s appropriations committee.… More

Federal covid-19 stimulus package doesn’t seem to stimulate broadband, much

26 March 2020 by Steve Blum
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Frontier verizon pole santa barbara county 10oct2015

Even by Washington, D.C. standards, $2 trillion is a lot of money. By those same standards, though, $325 million isn’t much and that appears to be the extent of direct broadband assistance in the $2 trillion covid–19 “stimulus” bill approved by the U.S. senate late last night. If there’s indirect broadband help, it’s buried in the bill’s yet-to-be-published text.

According to a summary obtained by Bloomberg Law yesterday, the bill adds $100 million to a broadband infrastructure program run by the federal agriculture department’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS), as well as $200 million to the Federal Communications Commission’s telehealth subsidy kitty and $25 million for a telehealth and distance learning program, also managed by RUS.… More

School bus WiFi and take home mobile hotspots for students funding in proposed California bill

8 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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Jet school bus2

A placeholder bill that originally targeted the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) – the state’s primary broadband infrastructure subsidy program – was gutted, amended and turned into a subsidy program for after school Internet access for elementary and high school students. Assembly bill 1409 is carried by assemblyman Ed Chau (D – Los Angeles), who made a tech policy name for himself last year when he authored California’s new online privacy law.

As originally submitted, AB 1409 made what amounted to an inconsequential typographic change to the law that rewrote the CASF program in 2017.… More

Subsidising AT&T fiber to boost bandwidth for schools could be a net loss for rural areas

9 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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More federal subsidies for fiber build outs and connections for schools in rural areas, as FCC chair Tom Wheeler has suggested in a recent speech is a fine idea as far as it goes. But unless the money is used to create infrastructure that’s available on a competitive basis to all users – residents, businesses and local governments, as well as schools – the net result could be more expensive and less capable access for people in rural areas.… More

FCC's E-rate program trading up to WiFi and a gig

7 July 2014 by Steve Blum
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By Jim Warner
Network engineer, U.C. Santa Cruz
Chair, Central Coast Broadband Consortium technical expert group

This is arguably a badly timed note about an FCC proposal due for decision on Friday, July 11. Any opportunity to comment – and have your comments count – ended months ago.

A year ago the commission put out a Notice of Proposed Rule Making that reviewed this history of changes to the E-rate program that provides about $2.3B/yr subsidies to educational uses of telecommunications services:

Click here for the NPRM

The big headline – when the rules come out – is that the FCC will be shifting the E-rate program to make Wi-Fi service ubiquitous in the nation’s schools.… More