public policy

CenturyLink puts the joint back into its venture with Level 3

7 August 2017 by Steve Blum
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Someone at CenturyLink – or maybe Level 3 Communications – finally inhaled deeply, exhaled fully and chanted California’s national mantra: go with the flow, go with the flow. In its latest filing with the California Public Utilities Commission, CenturyLink finally admitted that the September deadline for closing its deal to buy Level 3 that it’s been puffing and huffing about, I’m sorry, huffing and puffing about isn’t a deadline at all.

Since the purchase agreement was announced last October, CenturyLink has been trying to jam it through the necessary regulatory reviews by wailing about a phoney, self-imposed deadline and falsely claiming that the deal won’t hurt competition in what passes for a broadband market in California.… More

Bitcoin's disruption is the healthy and rewarding result of a free market

6 August 2017 by Steve Blum
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Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are different from other software and standards-based platforms. There are no governing authorities or dominant players or established industry groups. That’s deliberate. The whole point is to create a way of exchanging value that’s not centrally regulated by governments or private organisations. But that means a super-majority of the millions of individual users have to accept and adopt software updates, or else there’s the risk that Bitcoin will splinter into different versions with different values.… More

FCC is finally playing with a full deck

4 August 2017 by Steve Blum
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It was bipartisanship, of a sort, when the U.S. senate confirmed Jessica Rosenworcel and Brendan Carr as FCC commissioners yesterday. Senate democrats wanted to score some points and republicans were in a mood to let them do it – never underestimate the motivational power of an imminent summer vacation.

It was the product of complicated – and completely typical – Beltway horse trading. The bottom line, though, is that the Federal Communications Commission is back up to its full strength of five members with three republicans and two democrats – the privilege of the majority goes to the party that has a president in the white house.… More

More wireless broadband spectrum auctions proposed in U.S. senate

3 August 2017 by Steve Blum
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A second bill aimed at freeing up more wireless spectrum for broadband service is floating in the U.S. senate. Tagged the Airwaves act, it would set deadlines for the Federal Communications Commission to auction off several bands and other federal agencies to give up ownership of several more. It would also set aside 10% of the auction proceeds for wireless broadband infrastructure in poorly served rural areas.

It was introduced earlier this week by a bipartisan pair of senators – Maggie Hassan (D – New Hampshire) and Cory Gardner (R – Colorado) – and immediately praised by wireless industry lobbyists and FCC commissioners alike.… More

Federal court says cable and telcos can pay the same rate for pole access

2 August 2017 by Steve Blum
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Federal law does not require telephone companies to be treated differently from cable companies, when it comes to attaching cables to utility poles. That’s the ruling of a federal appeals court (h/t to Omar Masry at the City and County of San Francisco for the pointer). It rejected a challenge from electric utilities to a 2015 decision by the Federal Communications Commission that equalised the standard charge for utility pole access, and trimmed back an irrelevant distinction.… More

$20 million still available for California broadband subsidies

1 August 2017 by Steve Blum
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There’s about $20 million, plus or minus, left for broadband infrastructure grants in the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), against pending proposals totalling $5.7 million. That’s without taking into account a possible top-up that’s under consideration in the California legislature, but which might also make spending it on anything other than minimal upgrades by Frontier Communications or AT&T virtually impossible.

Over the years, the California legislature has pumped $315 million into the kitty, with $270 million of that allocated to construction subsidies for broadband systems – middle and last mile – in areas that are either completely unserved or lack service at a minimum of 6 Mbps download and 1.5 Mbps upload speeds.… More

CenturyLink tones down deadline threat to CPUC

31 July 2017 by Steve Blum
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Okay, maybe not high noon. But can we say twelve-ish?

When CenturyLink and Level 3 Communications signed their marriage license, they set an 11 month time limit to take their vows. That’s common enough in major transactions – setting closing dates makes it easier to structure financial packages and it keeps everyone focused on getting it done. But blowing past such deadlines is not uncommon either, and coming to agreement on extensions is a relatively straightforward process, if the companies involved still want to make it happen.… More

Cable tightens the screws on California public housing broadband

27 July 2017 by Steve Blum
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The California cable industry continues to gain ground in its perverse, and oxymoronic, fight to fence off public housing communities from government subsidies. Last year, cable industry lobbyists convinced a biddable senator to slip a big perk into a bill extending the life of a program that pays for broadband facilities – mostly equipment that’s used to provide free (and slow) WiFi access – in public housing. It was language that limited grants to only “unserved” properties, where residents aren’t offered market rate broadband service at all.… More

CenturyLink defends Level 3 deal with Trumpian flourish

26 July 2017 by Steve Blum
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They could have just tweeted it.

Sean Spicer has a new gig, ghostwriting legal briefs for CenturyLink. There’s no other way to read CenturyLink’s latest filing with the California Public Utilities Commission. It’s a whingeing, self-contradictory and occasionally bitter reply to the California Emerging Technology Fund’s (CETF) continued opposition to CenturyLink’s proposed purchase of Level 3 Communications.

CETF’s objections weren’t particularly on point – they were more concerned with spending CenturyLink’s money than maintaining a competitive fiber market in California – so it’s no surprise that the rebuttal skids and spins like a Lada sedan in a Moscow ice storm.… More

AT&T paints false fiber picture with official service reports

25 July 2017 by Steve Blum
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Fiber claims but copper service levels.

There’s something odd about the broadband availability data that AT&T submits to the California Public Utilities Commission. While doing research for the Broadband Infrastructure Assessment and Action Plan I recently completed for the City of West Sacramento (and from which this blog post liberally borrows), I noticed that AT&T claims to provide fiber-to-the-premise service (FTTP), and only FTTP service, in 31 West Sacramento census blocks, which represents 6% of AT&T’s service area.… More