Free 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.

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.

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.

Today on the steps of city hall in West Valley City, UTOPIA announced their intention to pursue an RFI with Google on their ambitious fiber-to-the-home project. Mayors of several of the cities spoke strongly in favor of the idea and provided examples of how UTOPIA fiber is already enriching their cities. Several also pointed out that Google plans to use a model almost exactly like UTOPIA which validates their plan.

Several private companies, including Thomas Arts, spoke strongly in favor of UTOPIA and the value it provided for their growing businesses. It was also announced that Connected Lyfe has joined the network as a new service provider, though it’s not entirely clear as to what services they plan to offer.

Google pretty much send the entire telecom world spinning by announcing today that it would like to build a 1Gbps fiber network to cover a footprint of between 50,000 and 500,000. More significantly, Google is requiring that the project be an open wholesale network with heavy municipal involvement. In fact, the Mountain View company has validated municipal open wholesale fiber optic networks as the preferred network of choice in the 21st Century, a fact I’m sure will not be lost on critics of such projects. (Yes, UTA, I’m telling you to grab a big, hot slice of humble pie and chow down.) Through March 26, Google will be accepting proposals and nominations from municipalities and interested residents for where they should build this network. This is your chance to get fiber in Utah for absolutely nothing courtesy of one of the largest tech companies in the world.

And really, we’re a perfect fit. Or, more precisely, UTOPIA is a perfect fit. It’s a municipal fiber project. It’s an open network. There’s already nine providers offering services right now. The backbone and NOC are done. The city has pole attachment rights and franchise agreements already in place. There’s middle-mile fiber all over the place. And, should the footprint be completed, it’s well within the size requirement that Google is looking for. UTOPIA is a shovel-ready project that could complete the build of the network within a year of Google getting involved while providing a significantly lower cost per home than many other communities. That’s a lot of bang for your buck.

Now this is the part where you come in. Google wants you, each of you, to nominate your community for this project. This is one of those cases where the prize is so great that nobody (and I mean nobody) who wants 1Gbps Internet access in their home can afford to not at least fire off a quick submission. Every one of you needs to do it. Your city needs to do it. Every one of your friends needs to do it, their friends need to do it, your family, your ward/congregation members, your neighbors, even that guy down the street that you don’t like because he doesn’t mow his lawn as often as he should. Google needs to hear from thousands of Utahns that this is still the place.

I’m asking each of you reading to right now make a personal commitment to tell at least 10 people you know to submit a nomination via Google’s fiber website and follow-up to make sure it gets done. Get each of them to commit to asking 10 more people to do the same. If all 175 FeedBurner subscribers do this, Google will have over 17,000 nominations from Utahns via this website alone. If all 1,000 unique visitors to this site do it between now and the deadline of March 26, they will have over 100,000 comments. Do you see the power of the snowball effect here?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said during his visit to the Utah Technology Council last October that we don’t retain technology companies we start because we lack high-speed broadband. Let’s take him and his company up on their generous offer to show them what we’re made of. Get it done and get it done right now.

Despite some recent controversy created by the UTA and saber-rattling by Qwest’s legal team, Brigham City has signed off on the UTOPIA SAA and cleared the way to start construction immediately. This will add 1,604 customers to the network and opens the way for additional customers to join the network at a later time. The network will cover the entire city and be available to every residence and business. No word yet on when the construction will be complete, but there is a rush to get it done before the ground freezes.

Peter Pratt at StimulatingBroadband.com tipped me off that Gov. Herbert has made his recommendations to NTIA and that all three of UTOPIA’s proposals are on the list. This could pump over $57M into the network at a time when capital for expansion is rather difficult to come by. The money could be ready to use as early as February. While this isn’t the final word on which projects will be approved, the NTIA is very likely to go along with the recommendations from the states. The feds didn’t give independent reviewers a lot of time to screen applications before sending them to the states.

The money will be set aside for rural and underserved areas of member cities, so expect to see the money flow into Lindon, Centerville, Payson, Brigham City, Perry, and any leftover portions of Tremonton first. Residents in these cities are very likely to see a sharply reduced cost for an SAA (most likely) or the return of the free install (quite unlikely). Overall, this will mean a big expansion of UTOPIA availability which can only help the bottom line. UTOPIA’s new management will likely have a targeted build plan meant to maximize new subscribers; previously, the building had been willy-nilly.

UTOPIA isn’t the only winner in Herbert’s recommendations. UEN and the UTA picked up endorsements as did several projects from the Navajo Nation. Emery Telecom also got the nod for its three proposals to bring FTTP to its service areas in rural Utah, no doubt to unify its separate CATV and phone systems as part of the upgrade. (Seriously, guys, kudos on being one of the few rural ILECs doing something so ambitious.) There’s also an application to build a community WiFi cloud in Washington County.

All in all, it’s good news for Utah’s broadband.

Residents of Brigham City, the wait is apparently over. UTOPIA is holding a groundbreaking ceremony on Saturday October 10th from 11AM to 2PM to close up registration for service and finalize construction timelines. The ceremony will be held in Pioneer Park at Forest St. and 600 W. If you’re interested in getting service via UTOPIA, this could be your final chance before the SAA closes and you have to pay the install cost upfront.

Several months ago, FuzeCore said it was looking into using UTOPIA lines in Tremonton to serve the neighboring town of Garfield Garland. Looks like as of 6 weeks ago, they started doing it over a 6-mile radius that includes the neighboring towns of Elwood, Collingston, Fielding, Bothwell, and Deweyville. (Seriously, I don’t know how I missed the press release and Google Alerts only just now picked it up.)

Per the conversation we had at that time, FuzeCore was planning on connection speeds upwards of 10Mbps up and down with VoIP service. The website shows that they’re advertising 8Mbps+, so this is in about the right range. The best competitor Frontier can do is 3Mbps DSL with no mention of their upstream speeds or if their onerous caps will be making a comeback.

Wireless backhaul is one of the markets that I’ve been hoping UTOPIA would chase since it can greatly extend the reach and revenues of the network. Hats off to FuzeCore for using their wireless expertise from Idaho to make it happen!

I was poking around UTOPIA’s website today and noticed that Integra Telecom is now listed as a commerical provider. This is an exciting development for UTOPIA as Integra measures its revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars and spans 11 states. Picking up a carrier-class provider of business services underscores the strength of UTOPIA’s network and could result in the migration of high-dollar accounts from large corporations. Good job on the pickup, guys!