COVID-19 forced next year's SXSW to go virtual March 16-20, but organizers are working with municipal and public health authorities in Austin to stage an in-person event sometime in 2021, they said Thursday. “This has been such a year of change and we, like the entire world, are reshaping our perspective on how we connect,” said CEO Roland Swenson. “Regardless of platform, we will continue to bring together the brightest minds from creative industries.” Austin pulled the plug on last March's show (see 2003060047).
SpaceX's Starlink broadband satellite constellation, if a viable alternative to traditional providers, should drive down pricing, BroadbandNow reported Wednesday. Broadband pricing is typically 15% lower for people living in an area with at least three providers vs. those with one, and 40% less in cities with high competition. Introduction of a new broadband competitor drives the average lowest price down in a ZIP code by close to $2.41 monthly, and that might be higher for Starlink's effect. Competition also results in offers of higher speeds.
Oregon's Public Utility Commission voted 3-0 for a formal rulemaking to adopt state USF changes implementing an Oregon law (SB-603) requiring VoIP and wireless contribution to state USF (see 2009020005). Commissioners agreed with staff’s recommendation at a teleconference Tuesday.
The California Advanced Services Fund surcharge may nearly double to 1.019% from 0.56% starting Dec. 1. The California Public Utilities Commission plans to vote on the proposal at its Oct. 22 meeting, the agency said Friday. The change would be effective until Dec. 30, 2022, or when further revised by the CPUC. Comments are due Oct. 12. The legislature failed to pass a CASF bill this session that could have provided additional broadband infrastructure money to the dwindling fund (see 2008310034). That disappointed Commissioner Martha Guzman Aceves, who tells us CASF needs more funding (see 2009180038). The agency is working on how to make current funding last until the next legislative session, she said. COVID-19 made it “tricky” to finalize many bills, including the Senate-passed SB-1130 that would have emphasized fiber, she said. “You want to be building for sustainability.”
Universal Administrative Service Co. is opening a second 2020 filing window Sept. 21 to Oct. 16 to allow schools in the E-rate program to request funding to buy more bandwidth to meet added on-campus connectivity demands due to the pandemic, without having to go through a new competitive bidding process, says the FCC in Monday's Federal Register. The order was approved last week (see 2009160036).
The Mississippi Public Service Commission got information from AT&T responsive to the agency’s subpoena about what happened with more than $283 million in Connect America Fund support to expand broadband to 133,000 Mississippi locations (see 2009100059), PSC Chairman Brandon Presley said Friday. “We’re continuing our investigation” and will share findings with Universal Service Administrative Co., Presley told us. The PSC is still finding addresses where the company claims it provides service yet denies customers’ requests for installation, he said. Mississippi law and PSC rules "protect against the public disclosure of competitively-sensitive information, including the number of customers we serve," an AT&T spokesperson said. "We have informed the commission that we will provide the requested information subject to those safeguards."
The FCC fully considered the California Public Utilities Commission’s request to delay its rollout of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I (see 2001140028) but decided not to grant it because "it presented no concrete plan on the way forward,” Chairman Ajit Pai said in letters to Rep. Anna Eshoo and three other California Democratic members of the House Communications Subcommittee, released Friday. Eshoo and Communications Vice Chair Doris Matsui, Tony Cardenas and Jerry McNerney wrote Pai in January seeking an explanation of the FCC’s rejection of the delay. The CPUC “offered no budget, no methodology for determining where subsidies would be directed, no criteria for provider eligibility, no timeline for distribution of funding and deployment, no auction design -- in short, no partnership for the FCC to join,” Pai said. “Their suggestion, if accommodated, would cause significant delay and confusion in the entire program, as the Commission created separate mechanisms and state-specific rules for each state, instead of connecting millions of unserved Americans to broadband networks as quickly as possible. It would cause still further delay to ensure that each state's unique proposed [RDOF] mechanism for awarding support operated consistently with the Commission's decision to allocate support using market-based mechanisms.”
The West Virginia Public Service Commission agreed with Frontier Communications the state's Broadband Council shouldn’t be allowed to intervene in the carrier’s bankruptcy proceeding (see 2009090055). Public interest in voice quality is “adequately represented,” and the council's bringing up broadband expansion would “unduly broaden” the case, said Wednesday's order in case 20-0400-T-PC. The PSC allowed Communications Workers of America and the West Virginia Consumer Advocate Division to participate. An in-person hearing is Oct. 28 at 9:30 a.m. in Charleston.
The FCC Task Force for Reviewing the Connectivity and Technology Needs of Precision Agriculture in the U.S. scheduled its fourth meeting, virtually, Oct. 28, starting at 9:30 a.m. EDT, says Friday's Federal Register.
The FCC will open a second funding year 2020 filing window to allow schools to request additional E-rate funding, citing increased bandwidth needs because of remote learning during COVID-19. The window opens when a notice is posted in the Federal Register and closes Oct. 16. “As the school year begins, many school districts are relying on remote learning, either in whole or in part,” the FCC said Wednesday: “This heightened reliance on remote learning, as well as social distancing in schools providing in-person instruction, has dramatically increased demand on school networks, creating an urgent need for additional on-campus bandwidth.”