Many cities are investing in Wi-Fi, said a study released Tuesday. The Wireless Broadband Alliance white paper by its Connected City Advisory Board said more than 75 percent of respondents, spanning 44 cities over 6 continents, plan to invest in Wi-Fi. Cities need to address the lack of expertise in developing and deploying citywide Wi-Fi, how to manage public expectations and user experience and the choice of technology to use, the board said. It was formed in July and is made up of chief information officers from cities such as Barcelona, Calgary, Dublin, Liverpool, Mexico City, New York, Singapore, San Francisco, San Jose and the governments of Delhi and the Philippines.
The nationwide public safety broadband network (NPSBN) could improve interoperability, capacity and reliability of public safety responses in states like Pennsylvania in cases of blizzards, gas explosions, riots, manhunts and hurricanes, a FirstNet blog post said Monday. Pennsylvania Statewide Interoperability Coordinator Mark Wrightstone earlier this year said the state's land mobile radio system, PA-StarNet -- which is used by more than two dozen agencies in Pennsylvania -- allows both voice and data traffic, uses 800 MHz trunked digital technology and services more than 25,000 subscriber devices, the post said. Wrightstone said that PA-StarNet has “extensive experience” with interoperable public safety communications, making it “ideally suited to coordinate Pennsylvania’s response to the federal FirstNet program and its mission to improve radio communications for first responders.”
The California Public Utilities Commission mobile testing project measuring broadband coverage and speeds, CalSpeed, was deemed a success by Rob Osborn, a CPUC analyst. The project has had more than 9,000 tests performed since it was launched two years ago, he said. The latest changes include the launch of an iPhone app planned for December, an interactive map that is updated daily and a streaming video scorecard, Osborn said.
A portion of money from universal service support should be invested in middle-mile infrastructure to be owned and operated by a neutral administrator, Alaska Communications Systems said an ex parte FCC filing posted Monday in docket 10-90. ACS responded to a joint letter filed in the docket by the Alaska Telecommunications Association (ATA) and member company General Communication Inc. (GCI). With populations ranging from a few dozen to a few hundred, it would be "simply impossible" to deliver to some Alaskan communities services that are at an affordable and reasonable rate and that are comparable to the already existing ones in more densely populated areas of the state, ACS said. The proposal from ATA and GCI is, at best, incomplete, ACS said. To close the broadband gap in the Alaskan bush, the FCC needs to take "bolder action" than just preserving the status quo support flows to eligible telecom carriers, ACS said. Whatever approach the FCC takes needs to relieve the shortage of available, affordable middle-mile options that don't exist in the Alaskan bush today, ACS said.
The ongoing battle over VoIP authority heated up between Charter Communications and the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission when Charter filed a complaint against the PUC in U.S. District Court in Minnesota. Charter said the PUC overstepped its authority by trying to impose the state regulations for traditional phone services on VoIP services. The case began in March 2013, when Charter transferred overnight 100,000 Minnesota customers to an affiliate, Charter Advanced Services, which provided VoIP phone service that wasn't certified by the PUC (see 1508210040). Minnesota Commissioner John Tuma previously said the biggest concern with the service switch was that Charter transferred customers, without notifying them, to an entity that doesn't have the certificate to run a phone service in the state and that the company is no longer paying Telecommunications Access Minnesota and Telephone Assistance Program fees (see 1509180059). Neither Charter nor the PUC commented Friday.
The count for Colorado municipalities voting on whether to opt out of the state broadband law (see 1507100053) has increased to 43, said a post from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance's Community Broadband Networks webpage Friday. The running tally has jumped over the past few weeks, but now includes 17 counties, 26 towns and at least three school districts, it said.
Google added Oklahoma City and Florida's Jacksonville and Tampa to its growing list of cities to explore for Google Fiber, said the company in a blog post Wednesday. The leaders of those cities will now have an option to work with Google on planning and studying the communities to see if Google Fiber is a possibility, it said. The process will look at factors that may affect construction, like local infrastructure and housing density, Google said.
The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission adopted pole attachment rules that take effect Jan. 1, said a WUTC order. It said the rules generally follow the ones put forth by the FCC, except WUTC didn't adopt the telecom rate formula, so all attachers will have the same rate formula. In the new rules, WUTC also forbids pole owners from denying access if the attacher is willing to compensate the owner for the costs to replace the existing pole with a taller pole, which is similar to FCC rules. The rules allow attachers to overlash without having a permit, but require an overlasher to provide 15 business days’ notice to the pole owner. A pole owner may refuse to allow the overlashing within 10 business days. The rules apply to wireless attachments to utility poles, as well. PCIA called changes "common sense rules governing attachments." PCIA, along with AT&T, asked that the UTC exempt CMRS companies from the definition of "owner" in the rule change. "For nearly two years, PCIA has been advocating for responsible and consistent pole attachments rules in Washington State," PCIA said in a statement Monday. “Friday’s rule implementation represents a vast improvement over the existing uncertainty surrounding pole attachment rulemaking.”
Communities looking for ways to connect residents to broadband need to be willing to think outside the box and do some "serious work" to build out a network, said municipal consultant Craig Settles, president of CJ Speaks, in a report sponsored by Corning and SiFi Networks. One of Settles' examples was Columbus, Ohio, which received Department of Transportation funding to replace traffic signals. The city used an almost $8 million grant from DOT to fund the project, contributing about only $750,000, to get a new traffic signal system that was built on the backbone of fiber cable and wireless technologies, the report said. The city can invite an ISP to use the city's fiber and offer broadband service to its residents, Settles said. He said other federal agencies that will fund broadband projects include the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Interior.
More than half of respondents to a survey on broadband in Washington County, New York, said they were dissatisfied, said a broadband and telecom report released last week. The survey was mailed to the 29,400 postal addresses in the county and saw replies from 2,856 households and businesses. Of those who responded, 20 percent said they had no option for broadband, the report said. The report was done by the Washington County Planning and Economic Development Department and partially funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Adirondack Gateway Council. The report compares expanding rural Internet to the rural electrification in the 1930s, saying expanding broadband is just as important as getting electricity to all residents. The survey found that 90 percent of the country's residents use Time Warner Cable (26 percent), satellite (22 percent), Verizon Wireless (11.7 percent), Verizon DSL (11.2 percent), Hudson Valley Wireless (5.2 percent) or dial-up (3.5 percent) for broadband.