State PUC deregulates voice phone rates

The California Public Utilities Commission announced it is deregulating what telcos can charge for voice services while reserving the right to intervene to halt market conduct abuses or anticompetitive behavior. Rates for basic residential service will remain frozen until Jan. 1, 2009, the CPUC said.

Click here for CPUC news release.
Click here for Los Angeles Times story.

County supe Santiago reports on 8/21 meeting with AT&T

Here’s a news release issued Thursday evening by El Dorado County Fifth District Supervisor Norma Santiago reporting on a meeting she had earlier this week with AT&T regarding expanding DSL service in the Tahoe Basin. Motivating Santiago’s meeting with Ma Bell is an ongoing petition drive being run by South Lake Tahoe’s Patti Handal, who Santiago reports has collected nearly 500 signatures from 215 households imploring AT&T to expand DSL to those still stuck with sluggish circa 1993 dial up Internet access.

I applaud Santiago for her interest in this vital infrastructure issue for El Dorado County and urge her colleagues on the Board of Supervisors to share in her well-placed concerns since the county’s telecommunications problems are by no means limited to South Lake Tahoe. Unfortunately, it appears AT&T is continuing the same song and dance that it has for years on the county’s West Slope — which like Tahoe suffers from a creaky old copper cable system running out of good pair that barely provides adequate voice service and features massive broadband black holes.

Since the copper cable plant’s so dilapidated it can barely support voice and certainly won’t support more sensitive DSL signals, the reality is AT&T is looking at having to replace much of its aged infrastructure with fiber optic cable in order to ensure reliability of voice service and to offer advanced services such as broadband Internet access and potentially IPTV (Internet Protocol Television). That’s a big expenditure that probably won’t get past the bean counters in San Antonio anytime soon, particularly as AT&T absorbs the costs of its mergers in the past year with SBC Communications and Bellsouth. So not surprisingly, AT&T is telling Santiago what we’ve heard before on the West Slope from company representatives: We’ll look into it and see if it’s in the budget and get back to you. I call it the San Antonio (where AT&T is headquartered) shuffle.

Given the circumstances, Santiago and Handal are wise to court alternative providers including the cable company that serves the Tahoe Basin, Charter Communications — over which the county has direct influence since it grants franchises to cable companies — and to continue to gather signatures from residents and business owners to make the case to these providers that there’s plenty of market demand. The cable providers such as Charter and Comcast on the West Slope have a real opportunity to lock down market share as Ma Bell naps while digesting her recent acquisitions. They can offer a triple threat of high speed Internet, television programming and digital voice all over the same wire line connection in a bundled deal. Comcast has said it plans to begin rolling out digital voice service in Northern California early next year. Verizon, which is committed to abandoning obsolete copper cable in favor of fiber optic, has the right idea. Santiago and Handal should also be talking to Verizon about expanding beyond cellular service in El Dorado County and installing fiber-based landline services while AT&T sleeps in San Antonio.

The full news release issued by Supervisor Santiago along with contact information for Handal’s Tahoe Basin petition drive:

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For information, contact

Supervisor Norma Santiago, (530) 409-9615

On Monday, August 21^st, El Dorado County Supervisor Norma Santiago held a meeting with AT&T representatives to further discuss prospects of obtaining high speed internet service throughout various areas within district five of El Dorado County. Santiago indicated that the discussions were very positive thanks in large part to a DSL Campaign headed by Mountain View Estates resident and veterinarian, Patti Handal. Handal had successfully collected nearly 500 signatures representing 215 households throughout South Lake Tahoe. “In my previous discussions with AT&T, I strongly expressed that there was a great interest for DSL not only for the public benefit but also as a tool for economic development. Now, thanks to Patti, I was able to provide the evidence,” Santiago said. Regarding the ongoing success of the DLS campaign and its implications, Handal states, “High speed internet access is no longer a luxury but part of everyday life in today's world. Through the campaign it has become very apparent how the availability of DSL would enhance the quality of so many people's lives and provide economic opportunities for our town.”

So what are the next steps? Specific information requested by AT&T (addresses and telephone numbers) from the petitions and e-mails received will be compiled and given to AT&T so that company representatives may begin a planning and cost analysis for AT&T construction budget submission. Budget decisions will be made early next year; however, even if the proposal was successful, residents would not be notified until 30 days prior to the actual completion of the project. This is due to a FCC regulation that prohibits announcing upcoming upgrades or changes provided by the utility that may create an unfair competitive advantage. In spite of this, Santiago remains confident indicating that she still sees DSL coming to the region within the next 18 to 24 months. Santiago further states that she is taking other steps to make this market attractive not only to AT&T but also to other potential carriers including Charter Communications. Discussions with Charter Communications are currently being arranged. In the meantime, Handal strongly encourages that proponents of DSL continue to send in their petitions. “The more households we have on record, the stronger our argument,” Santiago said.

Requests for petitions can be made by phone at: 530-314-9127 or by email at: BrutHilda@aol.com. Petitions can be returned by mail to: DSL Campaign; P.O. Box 17087; South Lake Tahoe, CA 96151. Or they can be faxed to: 530-577-2817.

State franchise legislation won't benefit El Dorado County

While ostensibly designed to speed the deployment of bundled advanced digital telecommunications and television programming services, it’s highly unlikely the proposed Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act of 2006 will hasten the availability of such services in El Dorado County.

AB 2987, which awaits approval by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, proposes to accomplish that by preempting the authority of local governments to negotiate video franchise agreements such as El Dorado County’s existing franchise agreements with cable providers Comcast and Charter. Driving the legislation is the big telcos, AT&T and Verizon, who want to offer wire line-based TV programming just like the cable companies under their own franchise deals. The telcos say it would take too long to effectively compete with the established cable providers if they must comply with current law that requires them to negotiate their own video franchise agreements with local governments. Giving the state Public Utilities Commission sole franchising authority would provide one stop shopping, cutting through local government red tape and afford them a level competitive playing field with cable providers, they argue.

If El Dorado County’s current telco, AT&T, could do what AB 2987 proposes, does that mean county residents and businesses could expect to see Ma Bell’s existing aged and obsolete copper cable system that marginally supports plain old telephone service be rapidly replaced with a fiber optic-based system to usher in a brave new post-AB 2987 digital world? Not at all. The bill allows big telcos like AT&T to serve only 50 percent of their service areas within five years of getting a state franchise. In practical terms, that means El Dorado County residents and businesses located within an existing broadband black hole would remain there with no hope of escape.

Nor would the bill help expand cable services in the county since it leaves intact existing county franchise agreements like the flawed agreement between El Dorado County and Comcast that's based on an urban grid model that leaves large pockets of county residences cut off from service.

Notwithstanding the measure's lip service to the notion that all Californians should have access to advanced telecommunications services, AB 2987 simply preserves and protects the status quo just as state residents, frustrated with the lack of broadband access, increasingly pressure local governments to take action as they have recently in El Dorado County's fifth supervisorial district.

The urban geographical bias of AB 2987 that neglects Californians living outside urban areas is evident in other provisions of the bill that prohibit discrimination against customers based on socio-economic status and ethnicity in determining where to offer advanced services. In non-urban areas like El Dorado County, those criteria are largely irrelevant as the county’s digital divide bears no relationship whatsoever to the socio economic or ethnic status of its residents.

EarthLink profits from broadband black holes

The New York Times (registration required) reports ISP EarthLink is transitioning into a telecommunications company and is sitting on piles of cash generated by high margin dial up services to finance the shift in strategy. EarthLink made and still is making buckets of money off the massive broadband black holes that exist in the service areas of the big telcos and cable companies.

EarthLink's current broadband strategy is based on leasing lines from telcos and cables. It is running into difficulty getting lines from the cable companies. And it won't be able to access telcos' fiber optic lines since a federal appeals court ruled this week telcos don't have to share their fiber with ISPs like EarthLink.

It would be richly ironic if EarthLink did an end around around the cable companies and telcos with the gobs of money it makes in dial up thanks to the slow as molasses speed at which the telcos and cable companies upgrade their networks and invested in its own proprietary fiber optic system.

PG&E talks with BPL provider short out over money

El Dorado County's electric utility provider, PG&E, confirmed it has had discussions with Maryland-based Current Communications, a provider of Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) services. However, a PG&E spokesman said that while the investor owned utility is interested in an alliance with a BPL provider, the talks have snagged over money.

Current Communications, which has attracted some $100 million in investment capital from Goldman Sachs, the Hearst Corporation and Google, wants PG&E to share in some of the start up costs to deploy BPL over its electric distribution system. No deal, PG&E told Current Communications.

Google is reportedly keenly interested in pursuing BPL as an alternative to relying on telcos like AT&T to carry the large amounts of data it sends over the Internet -- an understandable strategy given AT&T's suggestions that big media companies like Google pay access fees to use its system.

The San Francisco Chronicle story also provides a good account of AT&T's short-lived interest in BPL in 2004.

US Court of Appeals: Telcos can keep proprietary fiber optic to themselves

The U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled the big regional "baby bell" telephone companies -- of which El Dorado County's provider AT&T is among the largest -- don't have to share their proprietary fiber optic cable infrastructure with other providers such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs.)

ISP Earthlink went to court to challenge the exclusivity rule, adopted in 2004 by the Federal Communications Commission. The telcos say they need to limit access to providers of competitive services in order to protect their investment in the next generation wire line technology.

Story by Reuters via Yahoo News.

Local governments build fiber networks

Local governments lacking faith that private sector providers are able or willing to serve their citizens' telecom needs are building their own fiber optic networks, according to this AP story.