ALERT: Qwest Lobbyist Eric Isom Running for Utah House District 15
I’ve just found out that Qwest government affairs lobbyist Eric Isom is a candidate for Utah State Respresentative in District 15. You may remember him from numerous city council and legislative hearings where he spoke in opposition to UTOPIA and would frequently pull legislators and city council members aside for one-on-one conversations. There are three other Republicans vying for the nomination in that district and several Democratic opponents. I can’t state clearly enough how disastrous it would be for municipal broadband projects in the state to have an unofficial mouthpiece of Qwest elected to a state office. Isom has said that he will either resign from Qwest or transfer to a non-lobbying position, but I doubt that it would diminish the influence that it would have on his votes or proposed legislation.
House District 15 encompasses the western half of Kaysville along with significant portions of Layton and Syracuse. If you live in this district, it is critical that you talk to state delegates and attend the state convention to oppose his run for office. Let’s make this fight a top priority for anyone supporting UTOPIA!
March 2010 Podcast is Scheduled
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.
ConnectedLyfe Officially Launches as a New Triple-Play Provider on UTOPIA
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.
BREAKING: Gov. Herbert Supports a Google Partnership with UTOPIA
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 Offering Virtual Desktop Service on UTOPIA
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.