Posts Tagged: utilities

Comcast-Time Warner merger: Dramatic impact on California

Comcast company trucks await assignments. (Photo: Associated Press, Gene Puskar)

by CONNOR GRUBAUGH posted 07.03.2014

A national merger between communications giants Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable could lead to an unprecedented consolidation of California cable and broadband markets. The pending $45 billion merger would grant Comcast — already the state’s No. 1 cable provider — a greater share of the California market, stretching from northern California and San Francisco Bay area and Sacramento region, down the Central Valley through the Los Angeles basin, east to the Nevada and Arizona lines and southeast to the Mexico border.

Brown, lawmakers hunt parking spot for Tesla

World headquarters of Tesla Motors in Palo Alto. (Photo: Katherine Welles)

by CONNOR GRUBAUGH posted 06.10.2014

California lawmakers, who have fallen head over heels for Tesla Motors, once again are wooing their fickle sweetheart. Gov. Jerry Brown and two state senators – one a Republican, the other a Democrat — are working to entice Tesla to build its newest manufacturing facility in California, instead of going outside the state. It’s the latest in a long string of efforts in Sacramento that so far have managed to keep Tesla in the Golden State.

In what consumer advocates describe as a blow to the public, the state Public Utilities Commission has decided to not update California’s 28-year-old rules dealing with cell phone privacy. The commission said there are no existing privacy concerns related to cell phone use and that a review process of any possible existing privacy threats is unnecessary.

A former military prosecutor, a Democrat, and a conservative San Diego-area, a Republican, are jointly authoring legislation that would bar the state — and private companies that do business with the state, including utilities — from helping the NSA collect so-called “metadata” or electronic data on Californians without a warrant.

Assemblymember Steven Bradford claims that AB 1407 is needed to improve California’s LifeLine program (“PUC’s dithering hurts those who depend on basic phone service,” Capitol Weekly, July 29). According to Mr. Bradford, the California Public Utilities Commission has taken too long to revise the program, and AB 1407 will give LifeLine customers more choices while

When Governor Jerry Brown delivered his State of the State address last week, he pointed to renewable energy policy as one of the Legislature’s great accomplishments of the last few years.

The Governor is right. Solar energy is one of California’s biggest success stories. Homes, schools and businesses are going solar in record numbers. The