Wed 21 May 2008
Is American Fork Nearing a Deal to Sell AFCNet?
Posted by Jesse under Rumors
Remember the reports back in September that American Fork was negotiating the sale of their municipal broadband network to Surpha of Orem? According to a post at LocalCommentary.com, those negotiations are about to bear fruit. According to David Rodeback, Surpha has become an ISP on the network and has acquired customers from at least one of the other ISPs. He also noted that, as a user, the transition was seamless to him and resulted in a nice speed bump.
I don't know much about Surpha. They appear to be a publicly-traded company on the Frankfurt (!) stock exchange and haven't updated the news section of their website since 2006. Given that they've primarily been a provider of commercial services and have been pacing themselves with the purchase of AFCNet, I have better hopes for this deal than certain other "sale" proposals.
May 21st, 2008 at 3:05 pm
My brother has service through one of the providers on AF Connect and he likes it. Granted his primary online activity is WoW, but he had nothing but problems with related activities from his old Apartment complex so he was very pleased with his services when he bought his twin home in AF.
If I remember right they do FTTN and then Coax to the home. Something like SFCN. He get’s good speeds and I haven’t heard him complain about his services so they must be doing ok.
May 21st, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I’ve also heard that it’s FTTN, but with a CAT6 last mile. It won’t be as fast as fiber (unless some crazy cat figures out a way to deploy 10Gb Ethernet on it), but I imagine the 10Mbps synchronous speeds make most former Qwest and Comcast customers very, very happy.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Jesse,
If I wanted to post a subject on your website how would I go about that? I am interested in getting an update on the status of Dynamic City/Packet Front. They are still operational Right?
May 22nd, 2008 at 7:17 am
DynamicCity was purchased by PacketFront last year and most of the staff stayed on as PacketFront employees at the Lindon office. They’re still going strong and are involved in a number of projects around the country including in Palo Alto and Seattle (though both cities have been dragging their feet on making any decisions).
Probably the best place to ask free-form questions is the forum, linked at the top of the page. If it gives you problems with user registration (I’ve heard it’s been touchy in that regard), let me know.
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:04 am
I heard that they are only staffed by two or three people now. Is that true? If so what does that mean for Utopia? Can you give us an update? You seem to have the best visibility into what is going on with all aspects of the project.
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:53 am
I don't know the exact level of staffing for their office (I haven't been there since the purchase), but I don't think it's down to 2-3. UTOPIA is PacketFront's largest project in North America that I'm aware of and I know at least 4 people who work in those offices. PacketFront has a lot riding on the success of UTOPIA; some say the entire future of their North American operations hinges on this one. Given that kind of investment, they're not likely to shortchange on staff to make it work, though they are pushing to have UTOPIA play a more active role.
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:25 pm
I know that at least one guy from PacketFront has left however he’s going over to Utopianet to help them move things forward (chris hogan). I’m looking forward to working with him in pushing Utopia forward.
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:25 pm
My guess is that if UTOPIA isn’t bound by contract to Packetfront, they’ll just drop that relationship and do the network themselves. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them pick up the Packetfront employees that have been let go and those still on board to ramp up operations now that they have funding. The UTOPIA/Packetfront relationship doesn’t make much sense to me. It seems a little too much like asking a Ford dealer which brand of car you should buy.
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:34 pm
I don’t think that’s really an accurate description of the relationship. Packetfront’s primary business with UTOPIA is with business and technical consulting. They do make a platform for FTTH (which, based on the auto-provisioning features, looks awesome), but I don’t think that particular platform is being hawked to UTOPIA given how deep into the project they are.
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Does it make sense to create a different thread. Jesse, I would be interested in getting an update on the overall involvment of Packet Front and how integral they are to the success of this project.
May 22nd, 2008 at 4:03 pm
I double checked with my brother. They are using American Internet, which I can’t find a web page for. I checked the AFCNet page and it just showed a phone number.
I had him run some speed tests and to the XMission speedtest.net location he gets about 14Mbps / 6Mbps.