California broadband plan is slow and soothing, particularly for monopoly model incumbents

Dorothy poppy field

In August, governor Gavin Newsom said all Californians should have, at the minimum, 100 Mbps broadband service. He didn’t say how that would happen, though. The job was delegated to the California Broadband Council, a talking shop dominated by state government information technology managers. The final draft (not the final-final version) was published last week. It’s long on high sounding words about the universal need for broadband service and the wonderfulness of the benefits it brings, but endorses a much slower standard than the governor called for and has little to say about how to achieve even that much.… More

Incumbent friendly broadband pork bill drops in California assembly

10 December 2020 by Steve Blum
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Pure pork 685

The fight over California’s broadband future resumed in Sacramento on Monday, with the battle line unchanged from August’s stalemate. As expected, senator Lena Gonzalez (D – Los Angeles) introduced senate bill 4, which sunsets the current, anaemic California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) program, and replaces it with a more robust broadband bond program aimed at local agencies. It reflects the compromise between Gonzalez, her fellow senators and the governor’s office in the closing days of the 2020 legislative session.… More