CPUC Reveals NTIA Suggested Changes to BEAD Plan Vol. 1
The California Public Utilities Commission released NTIA curing instructions for volume one of California’s initial proposal for the broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program. The CPUC gave parties until Thursday at 5 p.m. PST to comment on the Tuesday…
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notice in docket R.23-02-016. The record for volume one will stand submitted at the same time and date, said Administrative Law Judge Thomas Glegola. “A proposed decision may be issued anytime thereafter.” The CPUC attached NTIA’s curing instructions from Feb. 6 and March 8, plus the CPUC Feb. 23 response and a Jan. 13 letter to the FCC about the state’s challenge to the national broadband map. In California’s cured volume one, the CPUC added information from the FCC’s Jan. 6 broadband report showing that “advertised or claimed DSL speeds rarely meet or exceed actual speeds delivered to customers,” the agency said. That and other “sources of objective data provide ample evidentiary basis to substantiate” a CPUC modification to NTIA’s model that presumes “locations for which providers have claimed to deliver speeds only slightly above the ‘unserved’ threshold, up to [30 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload], are actually receiving speeds below the ‘unserved’ threshold of 25/3 Mbps,” the commission said. “This modification is consistent with the CPUC’s and NTIA’s longstanding efforts to phase out legacy copper network infrastructure, and it does not seek to modify in any way the unserved threshold established in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.”