Three matching broadband grants totaling nearly $27.8 million were approved by California’s Public Utilities Commission. California Advanced Services Fund grants to California Valley Broadband, Broadband Associates International and Verizon will underwrite projects in the Central Valley, on the northern coast and in the state’s northeast. Two are conditional on the sponsors’ getting NTIA grants for most of the project costs. Besides creating jobs, the projects will “indicate how California and the federal government, working together and using stimulus funds, can greatly benefit our communities,” commission President Michael Peevey said. “Moving to quickly approve funding allows California to take advantage of federal stimulus funds.” He said the state stands to receive as much as $225.3 million in NTIA broadband money. The valley project proposes to build a wireless network for Fresno, Madera, Merced, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Solano and Stanislaus counties. Of a total cost approaching $79 million, the state grant will cover 10 percent, if the NTIA awards 80 percent of the total. The project envisions Wi-Fi and WiMAX delivering services including VoIP at speeds reaching 20 Mbps down and 6 up. The network could reach nearly 41,000 unserved households and more than 36,000 underserved households, the commission said. The project would create about 560 jobs, stimulate growth and improve Central Valley life, it said. California Valley Broadband, a consortium of Moreno Trenching, Mika Telecom Group and MT2 Telecom, formed in May 2009 to develop the project. The Northeastern California Broadband Project, by Broadband Associates International, would install 640 miles of fiber from an existing company backbone at State Highway 299. The service area would be about 6,000 square miles and would connect schools, colleges, health centers, businesses and residents in Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Lake, Lassen, Modoc, Nevada, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Tehama and Yuba counties. To get the state’s 10 percent portion, which comes to slightly more than $18 million, Broadband Associates must land an 80 percent NTIA grant slightly exceeding $163.1 million. The project would connect 11 county offices of education, 599 K-12 schools, five community colleges and the California State University at Chico, along with libraries, health centers, businesses and residents, the commission said. The sponsor’s partners on the project are Level 3 Communications and the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California’s California Research and Education Network. Verizon’s Sea Ranch Project would install new fiber in unserved and underserved portions of a 20-square-mile area in the Sea Ranch, Cazadero and Timber Cove areas on Sonoma County’s northern coast. The project, which will serve about 232 households in a community where the asking prices of homes for sale on one website run $519,000 to $1.7 million., envisions speeds of 7 Mbps download and 0.768 Mbps upload. No NTIA money is involved. The state’s 40 percent contribution is slightly more than $1.8 million.
The FCC asked a series of questions about the future of the media and news industries, in a public notice released Thursday. The goal is to produce a report about the media’s future that will help the commission make policy in a variety of pending proceedings, such as media ownership, broadband, open Internet and kids’ media issues, the notice said. “With this crucial initiative, the FCC commits to fully understanding the fundamental changes underway in the media marketplace and examining what impact such changes may have for Commission policies, while vigorously protecting the First Amendment,” Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a news release. Commissioner Michael Copps praised the initiative, but Commissioner Meredith Baker seemed skeptical of federal government involvement in news.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said the commission has heard from his Haitian counterpart, Mont?igne Marcelin, the Director General of Conatel. That agency’s building was destroyed, two staff members died and several are injured, Genachowski said in a written statement Sunday. Telcos are continuing to provide “essential communications for Haitians and the disaster relief efforts, and their ongoing operational challenges such as access to fuel and security,” he said. The FCC will continue with its contributions under the guidance of other federal agencies.
The National Broadband Plan will be a “broad” document taking on a wide number of issues, Bruce Gottlieb, a senior advisor to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, said at an Federal Communications Bar Association lunch Thursday. It’s unclear whether commissioners will actually vote on the plan when it’s finalized and ready for presentation to Congress in March, he told the lunch, featuring the eighth-floor legal advisors.
With a deadline next week on the latest inquiry on special access prices, a Sprint Nextel executive said Tuesday the FCC appears ready to address the company’s long standing complaints. Sprint is also asking the FCC to act quickly to reallocate spectrum bands totaling 100 MHz, which the company believes could be addressed well ahead of eventual decisions about broadcast spectrum or spectrum in federal government hands.
Federal appeals judges Tuesday upheld the FCC’s authority to maintain a rate-cap system regulating ISP-bound dial-up traffic. In a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Judge Stephen Williams said the court “found no legal error in the FCC’s analysis.”
FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell expressed disappointment that the agency is asking for more time to develop the National Broadband Plan before submitting it to Congress, as expected (CD Jan 7 p1). Commissioner Meredith Baker also said she was concerned. Chairman Julius Genachowski called key members of Congress and others at the commission late Tuesday saying the FCC needed another month to complete the plan, which has been the major focus of his chairmanship. A senior Genachowski aide said more time also is needed so commissioners and lawmakers could be fully briefed.
The FCC received at least nine proposals from companies to build and operate a TV white-spaces database. Google made headlines Monday night when it announced its proposal. But Neustar, Spectrum Bridge, Comsearch, Key Bridge, WSdb, KB Enterprises along with LS telcom, Telcordia Technologies, and Frequency Finder with Mountain Tower also offered, in filings posted Tuesday on the FCC website, to set up databases.
Whether FCC commissioners will actually vote on the National Broadband Plan when it’s presented to them at a Feb. 11 meeting remains unclear, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said Tuesday. He made the comment during the taping of an episode of C-SPAN’s The Communicators to be telecast Saturday. McDowell said he remains skeptical of any need for revised net neutrality rules, an expected focus of the commission in the early months of the year.
TORONTO -- Frustrating the efforts of Canadian media regulators, TV broadcasters and pay TV providers remain as far apart as ever on the idea of cable and satellite operators paying carriage fees for over-the-air stations to support local Canadian programming. As a result, the issue will likely now be decided by the federal government, rather than the industries themselves.