Category: Regulatory
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FCC Completes Reverse Auction as Forward Auction Looms Large
Executive Summary: The FCC concluded the first round of its two-part spectrum incentive Auction 1000 on Wednesday, June 29, 2016. Broadcasters sold some or all of their spectrum usage rights in exchange for millions of dollars. It’s been called a “reverse auction” and formally as “Auction 1001” since spectrum was being relinquished rather than acquired. The “forward auction,” formally known…
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Google Spurring FTTH Deployment in the Former Valley of the Heart’s Delight
After seemingly bypassing the hometowns of many of its employees last January, Google Fiber reappeared this Fall in the cities of San Jose and Santa Clara. It may not be news they are seriously considering a Silicon Valley deployment (Mountain View, Sunnyvale and Palo Alto are slated for service), but the details of how they are…
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Property Assessed Broadband – A Bottoms Up Way to Build Community & Broadband
[12/6/19 Update – Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu and Google’s Derek Slater suggested a similar concept to what is suggested below in a 2008 white paper, Homes with Tails. The ironic thing is that I had referenced this paper in a comment I made to an April 2013 article I had written about Google Fiber.…
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2015 RTIME Round-Up – Cautious Optimism
“Economic development is at the heart of what we do,” said Dave Osborne of VTX, a rural broadband operator serving a large swath of south Texas. Osborne was part of a panel at NTCA’s 2015 RTIME that focused on how operators are using their broadband networks as a basis for new applications that are helping…
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Network Neutrality is Dead: Netflix deal with AT&T; VZ Throttling- FCC?
Netflix announced Tuesday that it had agreed to pay AT&T for a direct “peering” connection to AT&T’s network. The two companies arranged the deal this past May and have been working since then to connect their respective networks. AT&T had been pressing Netflix to pay for an upgraded connection between their networks since at least March…
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FCC Acts to Improve Rural Broadband Service with $100M Fund- Census Blocks Released
Roughly 10% of the U.S., mostly in remote rural areas, is eligible to take advantage of $100 million the Federal Communications Commission is allocating for improvements in rural broadband service. The project gets its money from the FCC’s $4.5 billion Connect America Fund. The commission is providing bidding incentives for proposals that exclusively serve tribal lands.…