A very common refrain I'll hear when it comes to UTOPIA and other municipal fiber efforts is "let the market decide!" On the surface, it sounds like a good idea: let private competitors enter the area and give the incumbent providers a whatfor. Where they consistently fail, however, is in delivering a plan that works to achieve these ends.
Comcast recently posted an 80% increase in quarterly revenue on strong growth of triple-play services and reduced customer churn. This might also have something to do with jacking up my basic digital TV service by about $6 a month. The article also makes no mention of the bad PR they've gotten from cutting off Internet users who "use too much bandwidth" without telling them how much is "too much" or how much they've been using. Rumor has it that if you call in and threaten to cancel or downgrade services, they'll actually give you a big discount, sometimes as much as 25%. Still, I'd be much happier lowering my rates by switching to UTOPIA and saving about $30 a month.
(See full article here. Hat tip to The Consumerist for information on making Comcast give you a discount. More on Comcast shutting off high-bandwidth users found here.)
According to a survey by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the US has a laggard rate of broadband adoption, we pay too much for it, and we're giving up a ton of economic benefits by not having it. From a high of #4 in 2001, we've dropped to #15 out of 30 industrialized nations and pay over 10 times as much per megabit as other countries in the survey. The need for next-generation broadband is now, and I doubt we can depend on the incumbents to give it to us.
(See full study here.)
They've just posted a heap of criticism for the iProvo project and don't mind taking a few swipes at UTOPIA either. Most of this diatribe is little more than declaring things to be fact with zero citation and I've been taking them to task on it. Why don't you go on over and join the fray?
(Utah Taxpayer: iProvo, the rest of the story)
About once every month or two, The Heartland Institute releases yet another paper lambasting municipal telecommunications networks. This month proves no different with more claims that municipal broadband efforts are financial black holes and renewing the call for market-based solutions. The problems with these reports lies in their blatant manipulation of the facts and complete and total ignorance of why there has been a renewed push for municipal networks in the first place.
At a meeting of wired communities, Gov. John Huntsman had ample praise for the job done by UTOPIA in building out its fiber network. Officials from several foreign countries were in attendance as well as Paul Morris, UTOPIA's executive director. Hey Governor: how about some love for those of us living in the county that can't get service? You already know how to get the legislature to give you what you want (like all-day kindergarten).
(See full article here.)
A sign of a booming broadband business with both iProvo and UTOPIA, MSTAR has moved to a larger facility in Orem to meet growing demand for services. As the only triple-play provider on both networks offering voice, video and data, they're bound to grow into (or out of) that new office as UTOPIA moves into more of the Phase I and II cities and completes the build-out. Comcast and Qwest, I hope you're worried.
(See full press release here.)
The FTTH Council is pushing for a national standard of 100Mbps broadband for all American households by 2015. This would place us behind other countries (like Singapore, which plans to have 1Gbps by then), but it would be a major step forward in getting true broadband adopted nationwide.
(See press release (PDF) here.)
