1. Background
On December 20, 2007, the Commission approved Decision (D.) 07-12-054 which established the two-year California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) program to provide matching funds of up to 40% of the total project costs for the deployment of broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas in California. Resolution (Res.) T-17143 approved on June 12, 2008, adopted application requirements, scoring criteria for the award of the funds, and a prescribed timeline for other filings and notifications. This same Resolution directed interested applicants seeking funding for unserved and underserved projects, to file their project proposals and funding requests beginning July 24, 2008.
On July 9, 2009 the Commission issued D.09-07-020, which established new schedules and plans for the filing, review, and approval of an additional round of broadband project requests. While retaining the CASF 40% matching grant process, D.09-07-020 modified the CASF grant program to provide a secondary source of funds by extending 10% matching funds to applicants that provided 10% and received 80% of the project cost from the federal government's Recovery Act.
Following issuance of D.09-07-020, on July 17, 2009, CVB submitted a project proposal for the unserved and underserved areas of the Central Valley region including but not limited to CBGs 060190039004, 060190039005, 060190041001, and 060190082002 covering parts of Fresno County and of the communities of San Joaquin and Tranquility. CVB`s project proposed to deploy a fixed wireless network using two unregulated (WiFi)2 frequencies and one licensed (WiMAX)3 frequency that will deliver high speed internet services at speeds of up to 20 mbps download and up to 6 mbps upload to seven counties, 98,136 unserved households, and 43,960 underserved households covering an area of 13,375 square miles.
On August 14, 2009, Audeamus also submitted a project proposal for the unserved and underserved areas in the communities of San Joaquin and Tranquility, and a portion of the West Fresno County. This project covered CBGs 060190039004, 060190039005, 060190041001, and 060190082002. Although there were competing CASF proposals covering the same area, Communications Division staff (staff) could not evaluate both applications using the CASF scoring criteria because Audeamus opted to wait for the Recovery Act's application results before providing staff with the information necessary to compare both requests on a consistent basis. Staff proceeded to complete its analysis of CVB's CASF proposal.
Consequently, staff recommended and the Commission adopted contingent CASF funding for the CVB in the amount of $7,893,700 in Res. T- 17245, effective January 21, 2010. The CASF funding was contingent upon CVB getting Recovery Act funding approved.
2 Wireless Fidelity
3 Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access
