In the hills of West Sonoma County, a fire can crest a ridge faster than an evacuation order can reach you. In our Hacienda Firewise Council, we practice phone trees, walk our escape routes and keep go-bags by the door. Every one of those plans assumes something none of us control: that when the power fails and the smoke rolls in, there will still be a signal.
Out here, that’s already a gamble. As leaders of ten Lower Russian River Firewise Communities wrote to Governor Newsom on October 21, our rural communications infrastructure is “already sketchy.”
By November 2, the governor must decide whether to accept California’s $1.42 billion federal broadband award with a provision called Condition 50 attached. If it comes down to signing or saying no, he should say no.
California learned the hard way why these protections matter. In 2018, Santa Clara County firefighters drove north to help fight the Mendocino Complex Fire. Their mobile command vehicle ran on a Verizon data plan. In the middle of the fire, Verizon slowed that connection to about one two-hundredth of its normal speed, the county’s fire chief later said in a sworn statement. Full speed came back only after the department upgraded to a plan that cost more than twice as much. California responded with a 2019 law that prohibits wireless carriers from throttling first responders during emergencies.
Another lesson learned from failure: From 2017 to 2019, storms, wildfires and days-long utility shutoffs repeatedly knocked out cell service. During the October 2019 shutoffs, more than half of Marin County’s cell sites and about a quarter of Sonoma County’s went down. A Cotati family told KQED their emergency alerts came through only sporadically, and they couldn’t open the links. The CPUC responded by requiring phone and internet companies in high fire-threat areas to keep 72 hours of backup power at their equipment, and to keep enough service running that you can still dial 911, get alerts and look up evacuation information online when the grid goes dark.
These protections work only if carriers know someone will enforce them. CPUC inspections in 2021 and 2022 found 62 of 89 sites in high fire-threat areas without the required backup power; after engineers’ visits, carriers fixed 28. In 2023, engineers visited 67 wireless sites; 35 didn’t have the required 72 hours of backup power. By the CPUC’s October 2024 report, carriers had fixed just four. AT&T hadn’t fixed any of its 11, and Verizon’s five, which had no backup power at all, had not improved.
Last year, the CPUC opened a proceeding to strengthen the backup-power rules and decide how to enforce them. The carriers are fighting both. When the proceeding opened, Verizon called the effort “a solution in search of a problem,” according to Communications Daily; this summer, AT&T told the CPUC the current system “adequately ensures compliance.”
Condition 50 would hand the carriers a powerful new way to resist. By signing the award, California would agree not to enforce a broad range of its broadband protections against the companies that get the money, including Comcast, AT&T and Verizon/Frontier and their cell networks, for an estimated 14 years. The no-throttling law is clearly covered; the condition names throttling outright. So is the requirement that carriers keep basic web access available during disasters and power outages. Carriers will argue the backup-power rules are covered too.
Condition 50 wouldn’t erase these protections. The trouble starts the first time California tries to enforce one. Say a carrier slows a fire crew’s connection during a fire next summer, or leaves the backup power at a cell site above the Russian River unrepaired. When the CPUC steps in, the carrier can point to its own BEAD contract with the state, which would contain the same non-enforcement promise, and argue that California gave up the right to enforce the protection.
Meanwhile, every enforcement puts the state’s BEAD award at risk. the federal agency that runs the BEAD program releases the money in stages, decides for itself what the condition’s vague language covers, and can stop paying if it concludes California is enforcing a covered protection. Once the agreement is signed, overturning that decision in court would be an uphill fight.
In a disaster, there is no time to argue about whether a rule applies. A court ruling months or years later does nothing for a family that never got an evacuation alert or a fire crew that lost its connection mid-fire. As a federal appeals court recognized, when internet access is blocked or throttled during a public-safety emergency, the harm is irreparable: “People could be injured or die.”
Knowing all that, regulators may not even try to enforce covered protections. Few will put the state’s broadband money at risk over one tower’s generator, and few want to spend years in court against the country’s largest carriers. As eight law professors warned the governor last week, the likelier result is that enforcement stops. The carriers will know it, and the pressure that got generators fixed will fade.
California has a better option. It can go to court before November 2 and ask a judge to strike Condition 50 from the award. The professors say the state has a strong case, but only if it sues before signing. If California won’t sue, it should turn the award down.
Rejecting the funding would mean about 270,000 homes and businesses, many in rural places like the Lower Russian River, wait longer for good internet. That’s a real loss. But signing the award wouldn’t lock in those connections either: The money arrives in installments and could be cut off the first time California enforces a covered rule. It would keep coming only as long as the rules went unenforced.
It seems almost silly to have to say this, but the Governor has an obligation to protect Californians. It’s clear that the Trump Administration is choosing to protect corporate profits rather than citizen safety. Governor Newsom should not be a party to such a corrupt bargain.
The Firewise leaders asked the governor not to sign, to fight in court, and not to take the money until the condition is fixed. I agree with them. Communities like Hacienda can clear brush, pack go-bags and check on our neighbors. We can’t keep a cell tower running through a blackout. That’s what these protections are for, and California shouldn’t sign them away.
Phil Grosse is a member of the Hacienda Firewise Council and has served as President of the Hacienda Improvement Association during each of the last five decades. He has been visiting the Russian River for over 75 years. He resides in Petaluma.