public policy

Pai gets the call as weed-whacker-in-chief

24 January 2017 by Steve Blum
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Mainstream, of a sort.

Ajit Pai is the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, as predicted. An explicit announcement hasn’t been released – at least not as of earlier this morning – but Pai posted a thank you note and his colleagues have offered official congratulations, so take it as a given.

The appointment appears to be permanent. The FCC’s website has an historical listing of commissioners and chairs, and Pai is designated as “chairman”, while Mignon Clyburn, who held down the job while Tom Wheeler was awaiting confirmation in 2013, is listed as “acting chairwoman”.… More

Jumped or pushed, Wheeler falls down the memory hole

22 January 2017 by Steve Blum
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It seems the finger was loaded.

Friday was a holiday for federal employees in the Washington, DC area, but even so, someone was busy updating the Federal Communications Commission’s website. Tom Wheeler, the former chairman of the FCC, is now an unperson, “vaporised” and “effectively erased from existence”, as the Ministry of Truth would describe it. If the Ministry of Truth was actually in the business of describing anything.

As of today, the commission’s leadership page lists only three commissioners – Mignon Clyburn, Michael O’Rielly and caudillo-in-waiting Ajit Pai – and makes no mention of a chair, past, present or future.… More

Trump broadband policy boots up slowly

21 January 2017 by Steve Blum
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The first day of Donald Trump’s presidency wasn’t the blockbuster Day One he promised during the campaign. D-Day is Monday in his reckoning. That’s when he says he’ll start pounding the beach with the heavy guns of executive orders, although the door is open for weekend maneuvers and he took a few ranging shots immediately after taking the oath of office.

Following a custom established by Ronald Reagan, Trump sat down in the President’s Room in the U.S.… More

CPUC takes on "last remaining natural monopoly" of pole, conduit ownership

20 January 2017 by Steve Blum
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Energy.

The California Public Utilities Commission will focus on a particular kind of utility in the coming year. President Michael Picker delivered what amounts to a state-of-the-CPUC address at yesterday’s meeting, the first of the year and the first with the two newest commissioners – Martha Guzman Aceves and Clifford Rechtschaffen – on board and voting.

Picker spoke at length about new energy and environmental initiatives and, particularly, about “an emerging role in building the infrastructure to drive greenhouse gas emissions down in the California economy”.… More

Brown, Newsom clash over merits of obstruction

18 January 2017 by Steve Blum
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Zorro drew his sword. Paladin went for his gun. TJ Hooker whipped out his stick. When in peril, Californian heroes find salvation in a sure and deadly weapon. In our finest tradition, lieutenant governor Gavin Newsom faced the looming threat of Donald Trump’s wall, shouted not in my backyard and brandished the ultimate equaliser: the California Environmental Quality Act. According to the Los Angeles Times…

“There’s something called CEQA in California — NEPA at the federal level,” Newsom said.

… More

Local agencies get more time to ponder FCC's wireless weed whacker

17 January 2017 by Steve Blum
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There’s more time to chime in on whether the Federal Communications Commission should consider further preemption of local authority over cell sites and other wireless facilities. Last month, the FCC moved forward on a request to do so made by Mobilitie, a wireless infrastructure company that has pushed the boundaries of ethics, if not legality, and the English language in its aggressive pursuit of permission to, among other things, plant towers in public right of ways.… More

Zero chance of FCC zero rating opinion mattering

13 January 2017 by Steve Blum
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Just leave it in the in-box.

AT&T’s and Verizon’s practices of offering video programming and then giving subscribers free – zero rated – bandwidth to watch it “present significant risks to consumers and competition” according to a report prepared by Federal Communications Commission staff and destined for a quick trip to the recycling bin. Zero rating wasn’t explicitly banned by the commission’s 2015 decision to classify broadband as a common carrier service, but it wasn’t given a clean bill of health either.… More

Political, energy talent point to new direction for CPUC

11 January 2017 by Steve Blum
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The California Public Utilities Commission begins 2017 lopsided with energy experts, and bereft of significant prior experience in the telecommunications sector. The governor’s two new appointees to the commission – Martha Guzman Aceves and Cliff Rechtschaffen – have, to one degree or another, spent their careers working on energy and environmental issues, as have two of the three current commissioners, Carla Peterman and president Michael Picker. Aceves and Rechtschaffen have one other thing in common with Picker: all three were top political aides to Brown, with energy portfolios.… More

Republican congressmen plan their own kind of telecoms policy activism

10 January 2017 by Steve Blum
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“Over the last several years, what we’ve seen has been lot of reaction in congress, reacting to things. What I think we’re going to see now more is planning”, said Bob Latta, a republican representative from Ohio, who holds a key telecoms committee portfolio in Washington, D.C. He was on a four-congressman panel at CES, talking about the reconfigured Federal Communications Commission. It will begin the Trump administration with a republican majority and, Latta expects, commissioner Ajit Pai installed as chairman.… More

Spend on broadband not crumbling concrete, says California congressman

9 January 2017 by Steve Blum
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Issa on home turf.

Representative Darrell Issa (R – San Diego) embraced Donald Trump’s plan to pump a lot of federal money into infrastructure during a CES panel discussion in Las Vegas this weekend, and broadband is at the top of his shopping list. If the federal government is going to spend a trillion dollars again, Issa thinks it should be forward looking projects that get funded, and not repair jobs left over from the last century.… More