Broadband coming for Camino's Rancho del Sol?

One of El Dorado County's many broadband black holes may be gone by early next year. That's according to Dan Gallagher, chair of the Rancho del Sol maintenance committee. Dan tells me AT&T has been installing and testing equipment to bring the community of 160 homes located off Snows Road in Camino that has been stuck with dial up Internet access into the digital age.

Earlier this year, Ma Bell promised to offer a number of broadband options to the county by the end of the year. As this blog exclusively reported, DSL was made available to parts of Grizzly Flat this past summer. Dan's report is encouraging because it's further evidence of concrete action from AT&T following years of unkept promises and more recently, AT&T's direct mail promos suggesting that El Doradans instead turn to ill-favored satellite-based Internet access.

If you are seeing indications that AT&T upgrading its infrastructure in your El Dorado County neighborhood or have recently obtained broadband access that wasn't previously available, please email with the details.

AT&T's Homezone misadventure

This has turkey written all over it right out of the box. The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that AT&T is unveiling a new service that bundles satellite TV from Dish Network with AT&T's DSL service. The idea of the so-called Homezone service is to allow subscribers to send movies, TV shows and music downloaded from the Internet to their TVs. It's supposedly to allow AT&T to better compete with the cable providers. It sounds too jury-rigged and complex to ultimately succeed and gain customer acceptance.

Rather than embark on such misadventures, AT&T should stick to the knitting of telecommunications. Ma Bell should concentrate on upgrading her long neglected wireline infrastructure in places like El Dorado County where AT&T is the incumbent telecom provider. There is plenty of work to do to ensure the delivery of reliable phone service and to eliminate the many broadband black holes that exist in the county. Homezone is a distraction and a misguided diversion of resources.

Schwarzenegger issues executive order to expand broadband access

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has issued an executive order to expand broadband access in the Golden State. Schwarzenegger's Press Office says the order, Twenty-First Century Government: Expanding Broadband Access and Usage in California, is to "clear the government red tape for building broadband networks" and "ensure all government agencies are using the best technologies to serve the people." The order also creates a broadband task force to "identify and eliminate obstacles to making broadband internet access ubiquitous in the state." The governor sees broadband as a "great equalizer" when it's accessible to all Californians, an administration source tells me.

Schwarzenegger says expanding broadband access will ensure California's high tech leadership, promote economic growth and enhance government operations through telemedicine for healthcare, distance learning for education, and better coordination of public safety.

While not specifically mentioned in Schwarzenegger's order, expanding broadband in California would also promote telecommuting. That would reduce automobile trips on California's overcrowded and deteriorated freeways and roads as well as fuel usage and environmental pollution.

Broadband becoming an essential utility

Here's a story on some research that illustrates the urgency for rapid deployment of robust broadband Internet in El Dorado County and elsewhere as Americans and Canadians have come to regard broadband as essential as basic telephone service.

The research also found that 85 percent of all broadband household segments are interested in receiving multiple telecommunication services over their broadband connections.

"Blue" California most likely to benefit from AB 2987

There's an interesting political angle to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's recent approval of AB 2987, the Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act of 2006, that hasn't been picked up by the mainstream media.

Readers of this blog should be familiar with this legislation that takes effect next year and puts the California Public Utilities Commission in charge of issuing franchises to cable companies and telcos. For the major players such as Comcast and AT&T, the legislation requires the companies to upgrade their networks to provide video services and broadband Internet for only half or less of their service areas by Jan. 1, 2012.

Most likely, residents and businesses located in more densely populated coastal urban areas -- which also tend to lean Democratic and hence are dubbed "Blue" California -- will be in this group. Less densely populated inland areas -- Republican leaning "Red" California -- are likely to be given low priority by the cable and telco providers and left on the wrong side of the digital divide.

Schwarzenegger may have been attempting to make nice with legislative Democrats in this election year by approving AB 2987, championed by Democratic speaker Fabian Nunez. But he left his political base in GOP Red California hung out to dry while Blue California is likely to be first in line for advanced telecommunications and video services.

Big telcos see shift from DSL to fiber

Telecommunications Industry News reports big telcos such as AT&T and Verizon anticipate a movement away from copper-based Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) broadband service and toward fiber optic-based infrastructure, citing a similar trend in heavily fibered East Asia.

El Dorado County's incumbent telco, AT&T, hasn't responded to multiple requests for comment on industry reports that Ma Bell has ceased deployment of all new copper cable DSL infrastructure in AT&T's 13-state service area to focus exclusively on fiber installations.