Category Archives: Cheers

Verizon shook the industry with a move to 20Mbps synchronous connections. UTOPIA rocked it further by allowing providers to ramp up to 50Mbps. Now the entire cable industry has gone nuts trying to ramp up speeds in short order during Q4.

Insight Communications and Cox Communications have each decided to jump to 20Mbps downloads, albeit in limited markets and to a limited number of subscribers. Charter is rumored to be working on a 16Mbps/2Mbps tier coming Real Soon Now(TM). Charter is making their jump by using a technology called SDV that works in a fashion similar to AT&T's U-Verse. Instead of sending all television channels down the pipe at a time, it only sends the channels being actively watched. This helps conserve major bandwidth for more channels and faster speeds. Cox, meanwhile, is doing a lot more than just using SDV. They've also added a big slice of bandwidth to their transceivers and are planning to build their own backbone using some of Level 3 Communications' dark fiber.

This doesn't mean that Verizon is standing still. They've found a way to reliably send 100Gbps over a single strand of fiber and are talking about jumping to 200Mbps for their existing FIOS customers. (They're also rumored to be looking at forcing people onto FIOS to be able to get rid of their old copper/DSL infrastructure. Boo.)

In all of this, though, you're not likely to get what you think you're paying for. That clever "up to" phrase means you could experience congestion at any point from your neighborhood node to the exchange points on the cable company's carrier. Also don't forget that allowing you to use anywhere from 20-200Mbps without a cap can get real expensive for your ISP. Make sure you keep a close eye on those contracts to watch for limitations and caps.

The FCC is expected to hand down some new rules on Wednesday to ban exclusive provider contracts in apartments, condos and other multi-unit dwellings. This is a reaction to cable rates that have jumped 93% in the last decade. FCC Chair Kevin Martin noted that cable rates often drop 30% or more when a second provider enters a market, proof positive that monopolies are bad for consumers.

Not only is this great news for those residents, it's also great news for UTOPIA. Part of their problems with expansion have been centered around complexes locked into these contracts who are unwilling to allow installation while the contracts are still in effect. With a ban on such arrangements, UTOPIA would be free to expand at a much faster rate.

The rumor mill at DSL Reports says that UTOPIA residential connections will be beefed up to 50Mbps in both directions. That means downloads at least 7 times faster than cable or DSL and uploads over 60 times faster. The price? Still $40 a month as always. Even though the speeds are being upped, you still have a 100GB per month cap on transfer. Obviously no ISP is going to stay in business if they give you a truly all-you-can-eat experience with bandwidth greater than a DS3. There's no word on where commercial connections are going, but I'm expecting somewhere in the 100Mbps range.

So where's the bottleneck now? Probably in the crappy router sitting on your desktop. Most home products from Linksys, D-Link, Netgear and other manufacturers only have a 10Mbps port for the WAN connection. Most of the ones with a 100Mbps WAN can barely muster 14-15Mbps through the port. Your options are to either upgrade to a high-end router (models with a 1Gbps port sustaining 250Mbps can run $200 or more) or build your own Linux-based router. I'll write up some more later so you'll have some idea where to go when your hardware fails to keep up with your connection.

After what seems like an eternity of telcos and cablecos not understanding that we like to send as well as receive data at blazing speeds, Verizon decided to launch a 20Mbps symmetrical connection for home users. The real shocker? The price tag, a paltry $65 a month, shockingly low for an incumbent offering these speeds. But hold up there, cowboy; only select residents in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut will be able to get the service right now.

Analysts are predicting that this move might put pressure on cable companies to start competing on the upload side of things as well. Most DSL and cable modem connections download about 10-20 times faster than they'll upload, a big gap that forced the FCC to make "broadband" 200K in both directions and "high-speed" 200K in one direction only. I'm hoping that maybe Comcast or Qwest will give us a bit more than the lousy 768K we currently have to suffer with lest Verizon decide to "outgrow" its current territory.

There's all kinds of good news on the municipal fiber front. First up is the fiber optic system built in Burlington, Vermont. The system currently serves about 2,000 of the city's 39,000 residents and is expected to provide up to 20% of the city's general fund when the bond debt is retired in 15 years. So what's their secret sauce? They built out the network for use by city government first, then expanded the service to residents living near the initial backbone. The project is projected to have positive cash flow by 2009.

Ashland, Oregon had to learn things the hard way. After piling up a solid $4M in debt from their retail service, the city converted the network into a UTOPIA-style wholesale network that has netted the city about $350K in profits. It's not enough to pay down all of the previous losses, but it's certainly going to cover the payments on the debt and has introduced a lot of new telecommunications providers to the city. Because of Ashland's success, Edmonds, Washington is looking at building their own wholesale fiber optic network to serve the Seattle suburb.

Meanwhile, most muni WiFi continues to perform poorly and bleed money like a compulsive gambler at Harrah's. According to Slate, the problem is a mixture of bad technology and unrealistic expectations by cities. St. Cloud, Florida is one of the few exceptions because the small town treats it not like a revenue source but as a public infrastructure. They have a 77% participation rate from residents. Of course, part of this could be solved with municipal WiMax deployments, especially if big players like Sprint reverse course and leave that particular market.

Have you been sweating the phase-out of analog TV signals that starts in just 17 little months? If you're a cable subscriber, you can breathe easier for a few extra years. The FCC has mandated that cable companies continue to support analog TV sets for at least three years after the transition from analog signals to digital signals. For cable companies, this means either piping an extra analog channel on their already crowded coax or hooking up users of older TVs with converter boxes. In either case, cable companies will probably protest much louder as the DTV deadline approaches.

The city council in Washington City has voted to become a non-pledging member of UTOPIA, the first city to do so since the moratorium on new members expired in July. The council was split on the decision and Qwest was, as usual, present to protest membership. City manager Roger Carter said the city could consider becoming a pledging member at a future date should the city want to accelerate construction. As a non-pledging member, Washington City would not see network construction until at least 2012 when UTOPIA goes revenue-positive though there are several other non-pledging cities ahead of them.

iProvo finally surpassed the 10,000 subscriber mark amid some big plans for the network. According to the Daily Herald, the city is currently negotiating to bring in up to three more service providers and possibly hire DynamicCity (now PacketFront) to help manage the network and improve its financials. The new service providers petitioning to join include Emery Telcom, FiberNet and Utah's own Xmission.

We also learn from the article that the county attorney is looking at filing criminal charges against HomeNet principals for their forged letter of credit. The city only found out it was a fake when they tried to redeem it in 2005 to cover money owed to the city. The FBI was approached but declined to take the case citing the relatively small size of the scam. Provo City Councilman George Stewart took the opportunity to grandstand on the matter claiming that the issue should have been discussed privately with the Council. Call me crazy, but I don't recall Mr. Stewart being a detective by trade.