Free UTOPIA!

The March 2010 podcast is scheduled for Friday March 12 from 4PM to 5PM. Our guest this month will be Ken Sutton of Brigham.net, one of the newest providers on UTOPIA. Listen in online, join the chat room, and feel free to call in at any time at (347) 838-8025.

Last month, I reported that ConnectedLyfe would be a new service provider on UTOPIA. Today, the press release is out to make that launch official. ConnectedLyfe has also updated their website with some details as to what they will be offering. It looks pretty run-of-the-mill as far as services and pricing, but this little tidbit stood out.

Now you’ll be able to access your TV from any device inside your home, or on the go through your PDA or iPhone.

So, if I’m reading this correctly, it sounds like ConnectedLyfe is bringing their own version of TV Everywhere to the game a la Comcast. Given that the channel line-up appears to be a little different from the white-boxed UTOPIA offerings, I’m also going to guess that they’re using their own video headend, especially since they seem to be pushing VOD as a key part of their package. It should be interesting to see if this start-up can throw down both with incumbents and the existing providers on the network.

In what is another positive piece of news for UTOPIA, Utah Governor Gary Herbert issued a letter today urging Google to partner with UTOPIA. In his remarks, he referred to UTOPIA as “a good candidate to partner with Google” and praised both “successfully pursued models of deployment” and their “sustainable and reliable model” which has made Utah “well-prepped ground”. This kind of unabashed support and endorsement will carry weight in state political circles and hopefully give Utah another point in the plus column as Google evaluates applications.

Haven’t given Google your pitch yet? Go do it now before the March 26 deadline.

Voonami shot out a press release today announcing that they are now offering virtual desktops over UTOPIA. Basically, you have a remote desktop session on one of their servers with all of your data and applications which can then be accessed with almost any client. This is the holy grail of cloud services and is only really feasible when you have a high-bandwidth connection on both ends. UTOPIA is a great platform for pushing these kinds of next-generation services and I’m always excited to see something outside of the normal voice/video/data offerings.

You heard it here first: UTOPIA has signed a deal with Telesphere to offer business voice and data services. Telesphere specializes in hosted PBX solutions, a nice differentiation between traditional SIP trunks or ATAs sold by most other providers, and has additional presence in Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Denver. These kinds of managed services are a great match for UTOPIA’s network and help to go beyond the standard triple-play.

I’ve also heard that over the coming months, UTOPIA will be announcing a number of other new providers and large partnerships, some of which will result in substantive revenue gains and extension of the reach of the network. When something happens, you’ll probably read it here first.

I’ve had several people now express concern over recent bankruptcy filings in other states by Prime Time Communications. More than a few people seem to be dedicated to fear-mongering that the entire company is about to fold. Unfortunately for the rumor mill, that’s entirely untrue. Here’s what’s really happening.

When a construction company starts a new housing development, the first thing they do is file a brand new LLC to isolate it from the rest of the company operations. This is to help prevent any liability from one project spilling over into other projects. In case one development fails miserably, the parent company can fold the single LLC without damaging the rest of the company. It’s pretty standard (and smart) practice.

Prime Time Communications does the same thing. When they contract to provide service to a new greenfield community, they isolate the operations into an LLC in case the housing project doesn’t quite pan out. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last two plus years, you know that the housing market is, uh, “underperforming” (read: it crashed). Naturally, some of the projects that Prime Time was working on were in that mix. Rather than continue to incur losses on housing projects that had failed, the parent company chose to fold those LLCs through the bankruptcy process. So far, this has had no effect on the parent company or on any of the unrelated LLCs, including the one that provides service on UTOPIA.

Now someone out there seems to have an agenda in mind to confuse the facts and omit some of these critical parts of the story. If it’s you, knock it off. FUD doesn’t help anyone.

Utah hasn’t been doing so well in receiving money under the broadband stimulus, but it looks like UEN just scored a winner. According to MuniWireless, UEN will get $13.4M under BTOP to run fiber to 130 elementary schools. So far, it doesn’t look like anyone else in Utah has gotten money under Round 1.

I’m very excited to announce a special deal for blog readers: admittance to NAB2010 for nothing at all. The National Association of Broadcasters holds an annual convention in Las Vegas to showcase all of the latest and greatest in content production and distribution for television and film. This year, they have an exhibit area on broadband as well as a conference exploring online content distribution. The free Exhibits Only pass (which is normally $150) includes access to the opening keynote and state of the industry address, info sessions, and the Content Theater and Destination Broadband Theater.

The convention runs from April 10-15 in Las Vegas, a relatively short drive from here. As a 14-year former resident of Sin City, let me tell you right now that if you want to go, you had better get a pass and a hotel reservation now. If you don’t, you’ll be staying in Mesquite or Primm and driving an hour each way. NAB is the biggest convention in the city and all of the nice hotels, not-so-nice hotels, and better dumpsters will be booked for the week.

So don’t delay: go register now with the code A913 to get your free pass today.

I noticed that the forum wasn’t working properly earlier today. Both the RSS feeds and permalinks were broken without notice. An attempted upgrade to a newer version of bbPress did not resolve it (and, in fact, made the problem worse). I’ll let you know when it’s working again.

Spanish Fork has let a few more details out about their new voice product in a recent article in the Deseret News. The service will be $14.95/mo and long distance will be billed at $0.04/min. Triple play bundles will run around $84/mo, better than most introductory offers from competitors. The city has contracted with Veracity to provide the service and plans to test with about 50 customers over the next month before a general rollout.

With all of the battering that municipal networks take in the media, it’s good to see some bright spots here and there.