In October, Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislative bill AB414, the Digital Equity Bill of Rights. This is an interesting law that guarantees that Californians have the right to:
- Broadband that is sufficient and reliable and that can support basic digital needs like distance learning, telehealth, and remote working.
- Ubiquitous broadband that is available everywhere in the State, including rural areas, tribal lands, and all low-income neighborhoods. The legislation requires public investments in broadband to connect entire communities and address digital redlining.
- Affordable rates with broadband plans work for all Californians, regardless of geographic location or household income.
- Access to opportunities to develop the needed digital skills.
- Reliable broadband that ensures access to emergency services and functional emergency alert systems.
- Broadband that provides access to educational opportunities, new job opportunities, and health care to improve the overall quality of life.
- Broadband that supports economic prosperity by supporting all workers and employers, businesses and entrepreneurs, start-ups and enterprises, including agriculture.
- Broadband that attracts capital investment to ensure that California attracts its fair share of global capital investment to support and enhance economic prosperity.
- Broadband that supports innovation and research by connecting all research institutions.
- Broadband that empowers and enables participation in democracy.
The legislation also explicitly prohibits ISPs from offering products across a broadband network that are intended to circumvent any of these principles.
That’s quite a list of requirements that now carry the weight of law – the list embodies just about everybody’s ideas of the benefits of broadband.
The big question for sweeping legislation of this scope is how the law translates into practical changes. I can think of several immediate consequences. First, any broadband grants or subsidies created by the State must be aimed at furthering these goals. The chances are that grants probably already did this to some extent, but after the passage of this law, the intent of grants will have to be more focused and specific.
More subtly, this legislation is a directive to the California Public Service Commission on how it should regulate broadband. Over time this will create some interesting regulatory battles as the CPUC tries to influence or force ISPs to adhere to these principles.
The historical framework for telecom regulation has been that the federal government can preempt states by claiming direct regulatory authority over an issue. However, States have always been free to tackle regulations that are not explicitly claimed by the federal government. We saw this in action when California implemented its own version of net neutrality after the Ajit Pai FCC decided to kill federal net neutrality.
This new legislation provides cover for the CPUC to consider creating regulations for a range of issues, such as prohibiting redlining, requiring affordable rates, mandating workable emergency alert systems, and the many other possible regulations that might be created under this new and broad umbrella. This law does not directly create any regulations, but it provides a framework for California regulators to tackle issues that they might have been cautious about tackling.
However, this legislation comes at about the same time as the FCC is likely going to consider new federal regulations for at least a few of the same issues. As the FCC does that, it probably supersedes anything the State will do – and I suspect that California won’t have any issue with federal regulations that cover the same issues.
Of course, it’s always possible that this kind of law won’t result in much change, but the history of California regulation would suggest that won’t happen. I have to imagine that State regulators and policymakers have been busy this fall figuring out how to turn this legislation into actionable regulations.
So in other words, another California law that “makes everything perfect, again”. After all the other laws failed to do that. If we’re gonna dream in this state (I was born and raised in CA and run a Wisp here) let’s just make a law that everyone is a billionaire and is required to be nice to everyone and we all get 100 acres of land, no more no less. And oh yeah everyone needs a Walmart no more than 15 minutes away but it needs to be painted to look like a mountain so it’s not ugly… sorry, these huge sweeping laws are such a joke. Just feel good stuff to make the shallow minded people adore the politicians. I’ll tell you what would make 100x more difference than all these laws together. Get 90% of the people that are making these laws out of their office into the mud outside trying to actually make a broadband connection go all the way to grandma’s house that is 5 miles from the nearest road, a road that is so full of potholes we have junk suspensions before 100k miles. As a company we have spent our own dime for a decade and earned great respect in our small slice of this pitiful state by doing exactly that. No gov funding, no laws that “requires” us to make it work, just plain old hard working work ethics. Somebody pop their utopian bubble before it actually grows big enough to lift them off the ground.
It’s California’s tendancy to take the fact that some regulation is required for long term prosperity in any industry and thing ‘more regulation must be better’.
What’s interesting to me is that if you just added “government money spent must” to each of these lines then it looks like a pretty good list. Without that though it looks like overreaching regulation that is likely to hurt all but the largest providers that will then fail to deliver half of the list and therefore ultimately hurt most of the people that need better service the most.
Well my comment was probably just an irrational rant but I get so sick of all the back patting and cheery faces talking about all the good things that are getting done and comparing that to the miserable state of existence that is reality. Somehow our grandads built roads out of nothing through this area and we can’t even keep them repaired now.
I agree wholeheartedly. It seems to be not politically correct to say that some locations are just not worth the public money required to build out to. I consider myself “progressive” but I am not an idiot (these terms are always compromising – I could be conservative/libertarian on some subjects). If someone wants to live in the middle of nowhere that is a choice but the public should not be required to fund that choice.
I would say this differently.
I would say that some locations should not be disproportionally allocated funds. There aren’t that many locations that an lightly incentivised provider couldn’t build 25-50Mbps services to. But throwing many thens of thousands per subscriber to get fiber to their farm on that gravel road 25 miles from the nearest outpost of civilizations seems a bit insane.
The tech is available, it’s just been a bit cost prohibitive in the face of overbuilds. There are TVWS products that can get 10-25Mbps service out to incredible distances and non-line of site. But those products have fallen flat in the face of the government paying someone to overbuild.
At some point, your choice of how far from civilication you live as to be a factor. There’s should be very little push from the government to get 1G fiber to Timbuktu.