Fiber in Rural Tennessee Comes Online
The rural town of Pulaski, TN has recently opened their FTTP network to all residents in the city. The network offers triple-play services for about $100 a month at a cost of a $17.9M bond to be paid off in 17 years. It'll be interesting to watch this project and see if it does much better than American Fork's network has done.
iProvo Booms While American Fork Looks for a New Buyer
iProvo is on-track to pass the 10,000 subscriber mark within the next few months, nearing in on their revised "break even" numbers of 12,000 to 14,000 subscribers. They're currently projecting that summer sales will be more brisk than their current 60 new accounts a week with the sales now aiming squarely at the many businesses in Provo that have yet to sign up for the network. Meanwhile, their neighbor to the north, American Fork, is looking for a new buyer of their floundering fiber system. Swedish company PacketFront couldn't make the deal happen so they're soliciting new bids.
I have to wonder why it is that American Fork doesn't work out some deal with UTOPIA.
(See full articles here and here.)
New Anti-Spam Measures
Due to the excessive amount of incoming spam in the last few days, I've turned on the Bad Behavior plugin to try and limit it. This might cause some legitimate access to be blocked, but I've not had any reports of problems on other blogs I've used it on. It seems most of them are trying to exploit trackbacks to accomplish this, so I might turn them off at a later date as an extra measure.
Palo Alto Rolling Out Fiber
After years of delays, Palo Alto's city council voted 5-1 in favor of building an FTTH system in their city. This has been in the works since 1999 and even had a small test system with a limited number of participants at one point. Dynamic City, the consulting company that build UTOPIA, made an offer to the city if they would foot the costs, but the city opted instead to go with 180 Connect who will bear the financial risks.
SB209 is Dead… For Now
In the final hours of the legislative session last night, the House chose to take no action on SB209 leading to its defeat and the prevention of statewide franchise agreements. You can bet, though, that this bill will probably be proposed again, potentially in a special session to be call later this year. Keep your eyes and ears open so that we don't let this one happen again.