Next Broadband Council Meeting on Thur. Dec. 8

The next meeting of the California Broadband Council is scheduled for Thursday, December 8 at the State Capitol building in Sacramento. Please visit the Broadband Council website for details.

40 Desktop PCs Delivered to Sutter Middle School in Sacramento

Today, the Broadband Council's Surplus Computers Working Group attended a milestone event at Sutter Middle School in Sacramento with the delivery of 40 desktop PCs. The computers were provided free of charge by the California Prison Industries Authority, which has a youth program that provides training on computer repair and refurbishing. This is the second school to receive refurbished computers through the Council's working group.

Unserved Broadband is Largely a Southern California Problem

Sitting in California Broadband Council meetings and Broadband Consortia conferences, one would think the problem of broadband availability is largely a Northern Californian problem, because these are the residents who are most vocal, but when you look at the numbers provided by the California Public Utilities Commission, it turns there more unserved households in Southern California than Northern California. Which county leads in the number of unserved households? San Bernardino with 15,408. Who comes in second with 10,663? Kern County. Which counties come in third and fourth with 8,522 and 8,352, San Diego and Riverside respectively. It appears the problem of unserved households is a bigger problem in Southern California than Northern California.

CPUC Releases Mobile Broadband App for iPhones

We have some exciting news for iPhone and iPad users. The CPUC's iPhone app, CalBroadband, is now available on the iPhone app store. Download it today. By using this app, you can locate broadband providers in your community, for fixed service, mobile service and satellite. You can also compare and contrast cell phone provider speed claims with CPUC estimates of cell phone speeds. CalBroadband has two choices for accessing broadband data.

First, you can just pin a point on the map to access our data or you can enter in a street address. The app's map also tracks your current location, which you can also click on to look up broadband service.

Unlike our android speed test app, this iPhone app does not conduct broadband speed tests. We are hoping to release an iPhone app that does this test some time next year.

Next Council meeting August 12

Broadband lovers please come to  sweltering Sacramento this August 12 for the latest meeting of state broadband leaders. We will be discussing recycling computers, installing wireless equipment on public buildings, enhancing computer literacy and broadband adoption.

Monday, August 12, 2013
1:00-3:00 pm
Legislative Office Building (“LOB”)
1020 N  Street, Room 100
Sacramento

Materials from Aug. 14 meeting available on the CBC web site

http://broadbandcouncil.ca.gov/home.aspx

Drive Testing To Begin On May 7

In what is a first for California, we're excited to kick off our mobile broadband drive testing campaign across the state. We will be testing internet speeds (TCP upload and download), latency, and jitter and packet loss (on UDP). And, unlike many mobile speed tests, we will be examining performance differences between backhaul servers on East vs. West coasts.

We have over a thousand locations where we plan to test both mobile phone and data card performance for the four major carriers: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. We'll keep you posted on our progress as we embark on this adventure across California.

Follow our progress on our drive testing blog at:

http://calbroadbanddrivetest.blogspot.com/