public policy

Big telecom cash and influence buys three big wins in California legislature

16 September 2017 by Steve Blum
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The California legislature slipped past its midnight deadline last night, and kept working, or not, for a couple hours into the morning. From a broadband perspective, it didn’t make much difference. Assembly bill 375 never made it to a floor vote in the senate, let alone to the necessary final vote in the assembly.

As a result, California will not enact Internet privacy rules that were axed earlier this year by congressional republicans and the Trump administration.… More

California broadband subsidy giveaway heads to governor's desk

15 September 2017 by Steve Blum
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By a vote of 62 to 6, the California assembly approved assembly bill 1665 this evening. The bill lowers California minimum broadband standard to 6 Mbps down/1 Mbps up, reinstates a tax on phone bills and sends the money into the California Advanced Services Fund, under rules that lock out independent projects and create a fast lane for funding slow speed service from incumbent telcos.

Big telecom money sets up clean sweep of broadband bills in Sacramento

15 September 2017 by Steve Blum
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One key broadband bill is on its way to governor Brown’s desk, another is likely to follow and a third is heading for oblivion. That result will be a trifecta for telephone and cable companies who came to the table with deep pockets full of campaign cash and even longer arms to hand it out.

Senate bill 649 won narrow, bipartisan approval in the senate yesterday. The tally was 22 yes votes – 21 were needed – with 10 noes and 8 abstentions.… More

Californian ISP privacy rules wounded, but still twitching

14 September 2017 by Steve Blum
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One last try at baking Internet privacy rules into California law is underway. Assembly bill 375 was amended on Tuesday, just ahead of a new 72-hour deadline for posting the final version of proposed legislation – the California legislature’s current session clocks out tomorrow night.

Arguably, the changes are an improvement. Specific security and disclosure requirements were cut out, along with references to telephone service, with the result that the bill focuses on the core issue: what can Internet service providers do with information about and provided by their customers?… More

California senate votes to pay $300 million for slower broadband

13 September 2017 by Steve Blum
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Assembly bill 1665 was approved by the California senate this afternoon on a lopsided vote. The initial count was 32 in favor and 2 against, but the roll was left open for a while, so the final numbers could be different. The no votes came from Mike McGuire (D – Healdsburg) and Janet Nguyen (R – Garden Grove).

The bill will drop California’s minimum speed standard to 6 Mbps down/1 Mbps up, and allocate $300 million in construction subsidies under rules that all but guarantee the money will go to AT&T and Frontier Communications.… More

U.S. mobile show reboots with international scope and brains. Mostly

13 September 2017 by Steve Blum
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Rebranding and a return to San Francisco has reversed CTIA’s slide into trade show oblivion. Now known as the Mobile World Congress Americas and run by GSMA, the outfit that puts on the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February, the show is drawing a more international crowd and a better class of speakers. Or at least speakers that are living up to MWC’s standards.

The first keynote yesterday featured Carlos Slim Domit, the chairman of America Movil, which is the largest mobile telecoms company in Latin America, and the fourth largest in the world.… More

More telco perks added to $300 million broadband subsidy bill as California senate vote nears

11 September 2017 by Steve Blum
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Incumbent telephone and cable companies convinced their friends in the California legislature to add another slab of pork to a broadband subsidy bill, as the senate prepares to vote on it. Assembly bill 1665 started out as a telco-centric bill, and subsequent amendments, including the the ones added on Friday, have made it even more one-sided – in most areas of the state, it will be impossible for independent broadband projects to qualify for support from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF).… More

San Francisco broadband law gains independent ISP access to hundreds of buildings

10 September 2017 by Steve Blum
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A San Francisco municipal ordinance that gives tenants of multi-unit buildings the right to get broadband service from any qualified provider of their choosing has had a dramatic impact on the market, at least according to CALTEL, a lobbying group for independent telecoms companies in California. In comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission, CALTEL says San Francisco’s ordinance has opened doors for Sonic.net, California’s largest independent ISP…

Sonic now reports that the ordinance has been instrumental in assisting it to gain access to approximately 300 multi-tenant buildings in San Francisco.

… More

Feds ready to tell California DMV to drop self-driving car rules

9 September 2017 by Steve Blum
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The U.S. congress isn’t completely gridlocked, at least not where self-driving cars are concerned. This week, the U.S. house of representatives passed a bill – with a whopping bipartisan majority – that would put the federal transportation department in charge of setting standards for autonomous vehicles, and determining whether or not any particular design is safe to operate on open roads, anywhere in the country. If it makes it into law – it still has to be approved by the U.S.… More

CenturyLink-Level 3 deal moving ahead in California, but not until October

8 September 2017 by Steve Blum
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CenturyLink will be allowed to buy Level 3 Communications, under the terms of a settlement reached in June with some of the organisations that challenged the deal, if the California Public Utilities Commission endorses a proposed decision posted this morning by a CPUC administrative law judge.

If the usual process is followed, commissioners will make the final decision at their 12 October 2017 meeting, or a later meeting if there’s significant disagreement amongst them.… More