UTOPIA Open House in Layton, March 17

According to a flyer that a friend of mine received, Layton Mayor Steve Curtis and UTOPIA will be holding an Open House Tuesday, March 17th 2009 from 11:00 AM to 1:30 PM.  Layton Mayor Steve Curtis and UTOPIA CEO Todd Marriott will be making brief comments at 11:00 AM.  This open house will be held at the “Woody” Woodland Park, 1505 North 25 East, in Layton Utah.

Update: Just got ahold of this flyer, and it says “Please join us in welcoming UTOPIA to Layton.  Come see the UTOPIA Mobile Command Center and enjoy a live demonstration of the incredible capabilities of the UTOPIA Network”.

Broadband Bytes

Here’s your broadband news:

  • Here’s an interesting post about a guy who regrets his decision of moving to an area where there is no broadband (rural southwestern Wisconsin).
  • A sparsely populated town of 350 in Wyoming is now a major English teaching hub, doing “outsourcing” in the opposite direction.  How did this happen?  The local telco coop that serves their area upgraded to fiber and now residents are doing business with people all over the world.
  • The new mantra in real estate? Location, location, broadband. From this AP Article: “In less than a decade, broadband has gone from a luxury to a must for many people, and for some of them, it’s started to influence their real-estate decisions. Homes that have broadband are winning out over more remote ones that don’t. Areas with better and faster broadband are becoming more desirable than ones with slower access.”
  • Akamai has released the 2008 3rd quarter report on the State of the Internet.  The U.S. is in 8th place in terms of speed, and just 26% of users have download over 5 Mpbs.  Upload speeds are far more dismal.
  • Another telecom expert says the U.S. “needs more broadband competition”.  We certainly aren’t going to get that in Utah with a Qwest and Comcast duopoly.  We need UTOPIA and it’s accompanying open access principles to succeed.

Finally, Jesse already talked about this in his post, but the city of Monticello is moving forward with their own fiber network despite the legal appeal from TDS Telecom.  The bond money has been locked in escrow by the courts, but they are moving ahead anyway with liquor store reserve funds.  I guess they consider broadband that important.

I think we are seeing a trend here: fast broadband is becoming vital to businesses and individuals.  It truly is becoming the “railroad” of this century.  In the last six months, I personally know of three businesses that chose to locate in Murray because of UTOPIA and at least two friends that moved to Layton in the hopes of eventually getting UTOPIA.  And can you believe I am in an area in west Ogden where neither Comcast nor DSL is available, it’s unbelievable!

Broadband Bytes: Monday Edition

There hasn’t been any news in the broadband world the last few weeks. Just kidding. Here are some “morsels” for you to chew on:

  • A local telco in Monticello, Minnesota (Bridgewater Telephone, child company of TDS Telecom) lost a suit against a city-built Fiber-to-the-Home network. (A project very similar to UTOPIA). The judge dismissed Bridgewater’s complaint of competition by a governmental organization. Apparently, the incumbent telco, Bridgewater, wouldn’t build a fiber network so the city had decided to bond and build their own. I thought this network was interesting because the goals of the network read a lot like the goals of UTOPIA:
    • choice of service provider
    • competitive rates
    • local service
    • local ownership
    • economic development
    • economic returns to the community

    There is a site like FreeUtopia that is covering this network: http://www.monticellofiber.com/

  • Some universities seem to be cutting back on POTS (plain old telephone) offerings to dorms because of lack of use.
  • Cox and Time Warner were fined for implementing SDV and knocking CableCARD customers offline without proper notification.
  • It also looks like BPL (Broadband over Power Lines) is dead. Manassas, Virginia where the flagship BPL network was deployed has been turned over to the city who will keep it around until about 2010. For all you amateur radio (PDF) operators out there this is good news.
  • Apple is rumored to be working on a networked TV. That’s going to require a lot of bandwidth. In addition to normal TV functions, you could stream any content from iTunes like downloaded movie rentals, TV episodes on demand, etc.
  • Business Week recently did an excellent piece called “The Digital Divide” that talks about just how important broadband is becoming in spurring business in areas that have it, and leaving those that don’t in the dust.
  • President Bush signed the Broadband Data Improvement Act into law on Oct. 10. The bill will provide for improved data on the status of broadband deployment in the United States by forcing the FCC to make a couple of major changes to the way it puts together broadband information. This includes yearly metrics for “second-generation” broadband that can support full motion HD video and more granularity to for reporting of broadband broken down by ZIP+4 instead of just ZIP (as it is now). The bill also authorizes a program of grants to support public/private public partnerships to stimulate broadband deployment and adoption at the state level. I’m interested to know what this would mean for projects like UTOPIA. Thoughts?

Broadband Bytes: Weekend Edition

  • Qwest announced key leadership changes in Sales and IT. The link includes some background about each of the new executives that have been chosen. I’m hoping the new leaders will realize the importance of bringing telecommunications into the 21st century by investing in infrastructure like Verizon has been doing and understand the increasing importance of upload speeds.
  • Recently, it has come to light that Comcast has been throttling bandwidth for various applications with little or no disclosure. In a 67 page order, the FCC has said that “Comcast has 30 days to fess up about P2P throttling”. On Wednesday, there were also reports that Comcast would slow traffic for heavy users, but today in the NYTimes Comcast claims that no final decisions have been made about managing network traffic.
  • Qwest and Comcast are battling it out here in Utah over property taxes and whether they should be assessed by the state or local tax entities. Qwest claims that Comcast isn’t being fairly taxed today.
  • Another city, Sacramento, is discontinuing their effort to bring free WiFi Internet to the city (joining San Francisco and others that have discontinued their service). But in other news, Houston just announced a new project that will to give free WiFi Internet access in some downtown areas using excess network capacity from their parking meters. There’s lots of talk about free WiFi, it’s almost as if people are starting to consider it an inalienable right.
  • More information on in-flight broadband. Looks like Jet Blue and others are working on it.
  • What about those new technologies that could be deployed over high speed networks like UTOPIA? Intel and Yahoo are going to try again to combine Internet and TV.
  • There is a looming problem on the Internet, IP addresses are running out. There is a finite number of addresses and experts keep telling us we are close to exhaustion. The solution is IPV6, but according to reports, it is failing to gain traction.
  • Internet traffic is on the rise and consumers are using more and more bandwidth:
    • “As cable and phone companies race to upgrade services or offer video for the first time, they’re doing it by installing equipment in boxes on lawns, easements and curbs all over American neighborhoods. Telecommunications rollouts have always been messy, but several towns and residents are fighting back…”
    • Some ISP’s have responded to increased bandwidth usage by some of their customers with announcements of new bandwidth caps.
    • P2P data is a big bandwidth user, apparently accounting for 40%-60% of all the traffic used on the Internet. Some researchers have a novel idea for cutting bandwidth usage. In a paper to be released next week, researchers found a way to lessen the load of P2P with an algorithm they dub “P4P”. Though the P4P article is scant on technical details, it involves finding shorter routes between users thereby making the traffic traverse fewer networks.
  • 100 Mbps Wireless Broadband in two years? Theoretically possible but color me skeptical that we’ll see this anytime in the next decade. I still can’t get 3G with T-Mobile.
  • An analyst at a major investment firm says that broadband competition is today as good as it is going to get and that there aren’t going to be any major disruptive technologies in broadband in the future. All the more reason UTOPIA is so important: it provides an open infrastructure that fosters provider competition.
  • Taxes and the Internet. Yuck. We already know Amazon has been fighting New York’s new effort to try to tax out-of-state Internet sales. They’re getting a new ally: Newegg announced today they will no longer collect taxes for New York. The effects of this case could be profound because both congress and other states are trying to find ways to tax Internet sales as well. Haven’t they read the studies that show that 50% of consumers would buy less online if charged sales tax? Of course in Utah, we’re already supposed to voluntarily report online purchases on our tax returns if we didn’t pay tax on them (use tax), so anything we buy on Amazon or Newegg would get taxed.
  • Speaking of politics, this article has an interesting look at the Internet policy in the 2008 Democratic platform. I couldn’t find any info yet about the 2008 Republican platform (it hasn’t been released yet). In 2004, the Republican platform stated: “Broadband provides Americans with high-speed Internet access connections that improve the nation’s economic productivity and offer life-enhancing applications, such as distance learning, remote medical diagnostics, and the ability to work from home more effectively…Broadband technology will enhance our nation’s economic competitiveness and will improve education and health care for all Americans.” It’s nice to see that both major parties acknowledge the importance of broadband for the future of this country.

We’ll see you at the Layton U-CAN meeting on Saturday at Noon at the Davis Library.

Broadband Bytes: Weekend Edition

  • Could things get ugly at Qwest? They still have not reached a labor agreement with the Communications Workers of America. Those 20,000 workers could begin a strike as early as Sunday (tomorrow), the day their existing contract expires.
  • “The U.S. may be winning world speed records in swimming at the Olympics, but not in average Internet speeds. According to a new report, the country that invented the Internet has now sunk to 15th worldwide in the percentage of the population subscribing to broadband.” This is a great AP News article that summarizes the state of broadband today in America and compares it with other countries. In other parts of the country, like Oklahoma, they are significantly behind. According to this article, Oklahoma ranks below most other states in broadband, which is a worry for officials. “Infrastructure and connection is so important to economic development…Many future industries will be knowledge-based.”
  • Could fiber optic networks get even more efficient in the future? New technological innovations suggest that by slowing down light, we can speed up the Internet.
  • The FCC has a proposal to build a national, free, wireless broadband network that nearly everyone could access. It is inching forward despite controversy and worries by T-Mobile and others about interference. They are seeking feedback on this plan. I would like to point out though that this will never replace the interference-free, low-latency, high-bandwidth connections that are possible with fiber optic networks.
  • We are in a political season, and broadband has now become an issue for politicians. One politician in Maine (Rep Tom Allen) declared in his race that “Affordable, accessible broadband is essential to our state’s economy,” placing it in importance next to other issues like health care and energy. In Ohio, a local congressman (Rep Zach Space) announced that he secured an agreement to allow a new telemedecine network to provide consumer high-speed service.
  • In the presidential race, net neutrality and other broadband issues have become points of contrast:
    • John McCain’s position: “John McCain does not believe in prescriptive regulation like “net-neutrality,” but rather he believes that an open marketplace with a variety of consumer choices is the best deterrent against unfair practices. John McCain has always believed the government’s role must be rooted in protecting consumers.”
    • Barack Obama’s position: “So here’s my view. We can’t have a situation in which the corporate duopoly dictates the future of the internet and that’s why I’m supporting what is called net neutrality.”
    • John McCain has put forward an excellent bill in the Senate called the Community Broadband Act of 2005, which Barack Obama has not yet signed on to. Interestingly, this bill is supported by EDUCAUSE and more than 40 education and trade associations, public interest groups, etc. This bill would protect the ability of local governments to provide Internet services
      to their communities. Jonathan Karras and I have talked about EDUCAUSE before. Though Obama hasn’t signed on to this bill, he has stated that “Every American should have the highest speed broadband access—no matter where you live, or how much money you have. We’ll connect schools, libraries, and hospitals. And we’ll take on special interests to unleash the power of wireless spectrum for our safety and connectivity.”
  • Many cities haven’t been as successful as they hoped in building various municipal broadband network, primary wireless networks. The first of these was Philidelphia. “Philadelphia’s goal to cover 135 square miles with a cloud of Internet connectivity was ambitious. But the need was undeniable. High-speed Internet access was fast becoming an economic, educational, and social necessity.” This article has an in-depth look at a lot of municipal networks around the country, but no mention of UTOPIA or IProvo.

Update: Qwest reached a tentative agreement with the labor unions.

Rumor: New UTOPIA Providers

I had an interesting conversation recently with the director of operations at a company that is one of the big players in the telecommunications industry in Utah and this individual confirmed that they were working with UTOPIA to begin to sell their retail telecom service with a UTOPIA transport. When asked when they would start providing service, this individual noted that they wanted to first be confident that UTOPIA would be reliable. It seems that they are doing testing and there’s even some infrastructure already being put in place. This is very exciting news.

If UTOPIA proves successful, I imagine that there will be a lot of service providers that will use UTOPIA as their transport in the cities where it is available instead of Qwest’s aging copper infrastructure. Ultimately, it will put pressure on Qwest to improve their infrastructure even in non-UTOPIA cities or “risk” having UTOPIA go in there as well. As we move into the future, companies and individuals are realizing that speed matters with telecommunications. Qwest has made some commitments to improve infrastructure with fiber-to-the-node; but while that offers improved download speeds, so far there haven’t been any pushes to significantly improve upload speeds which are becoming critical. Hopefully UTOPIA’s success will change that even for the cities it doesn’t service by pushing incumbents to invest in their infrastructure.