Category Archives: Website

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Campaign 2008: The Second Round of E-mails

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I've now sent e-mails to all candidates for Governor, State Senate and State House, though a surprising number of candidates either did not submit an e-mail address or submitted an e-mail address that's invalid! I'm planning on sending out snail-mail versions of the surveys to these candidates, but if you have an e-mail address for any of them (listed below), I'd appreciate being spared the cost of a stamp. After all, I'm doing all of this out-of-pocket.

As a side note, a few candidates have already submitted responses but they have been slow in coming thus far. You can read what I've gotten on the wiki.

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Campaign 2008: The First Round of E-mails

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I've just finished touching up the questions on the wiki and have sent the first round of e-mail questionnaires to federal candidates in Utah. Once I have one last e-mail address, I'll also fire off a copy to the candidates for governor. Hopefully we'll get some speedy responses and be able to start figuring out which candidates are good for broadband in The Beehive State.

Needless to say, it's a lot of work to pull all this together. It took me about an hour to build both pages and setup the e-mails for that relatively small group of candidates. Where I could really use some help is in building pages for the various candidates for county executive and legislative offices. If you've got some spare time (and a registered account), why not head on over to the Candidate Positions page and add in whatever you can? I sure would appreciate the help.

Campaign 2008: Finding UTOPIA-Friendly Candidates

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One of the biggest problems facing supporters of municipal broadband projects is a distinct lack of information on where a candidate stands. All too often, you'll only find out where they are after it's too late and we get an SB66 heaped upon us. To that end, I've decided that it's time that we know which candidates are UTOPIA-friendly and which ones are not.

On March 7, the candidate registration period for state and county offices opened up. It'll close on March 17. At that point, I'm going to send the following list of questions to each candidate and post their responses on the wiki.

  1. Do you generally support or oppose projects like UTOPIA and iProvo?
  2. What is the basis for your support or opposition?
  3. Is your support or opposition based on the general concept or specific implementations used in UTOPIA and/or iProvo?
  4. What is your position on the regulation of incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) such as Qwest?
  5. What is your position on the regulation of incumbent cable companies such as Comcast?
  6. What role, if any, should the state play in allegations of unfair business practices leveled at incumbent carriers such as Qwest and Comcast?
  7. What proposals or concepts do you support to bring better broadband access to rurals Utahns?
  8. What proposals or concepts do you support to improve average broadband speeds to be better competitive on an international basis?
  9. What proposals or concepts do you support to increase competitive options for Internet, television and telephone services?
  10. Do you have any other related comments you would like to add?

Each time I receive a response from a candidate, I'll post it on the wiki with a link from a post on the main page. As part of this, I'm also going to include some background information on each question to provide some neutral basis for the question. You'll be able to track all candidate positions from the wiki. Naturally, anyone that can contribute more information (such as offices up for grabs, candidates who are running, their voting history if they've held office before, etc.) would be very helpful.

UTOPIA on KUER's UtahNOW?

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An employee of UEN, Utah's education television network, is working to try and put together a pitch for KUER's UtahNOW public affairs program to talk about UTOPIA and has asked for our help on putting it together. Cruise on over to the open wiki article he's started to help flesh out the arguments so we can get some increased media exposure for the project. It's a bit of a harder sell to the programming directors since UTOPIA is a local solution to a national problem, but I'm sure some of you can contribute something to it.

UPDATE: The point is to sell them on it being a worthwhile story, not necessarily on the merits or demerits of the project.

And speaking of wikis, John Havey has been doing a great job at fleshing out WikTOPIA, our own wiki for tracking information on UTOPIA. If you've already registered an account, it's been approved and you can start adding to it at any time. The more of us that work on it, the better. 

Announcing the New FreeUTOPIA Wiki

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Part of the biggest problem with UTOPIA advocacy is a lack of coordinating basic information. To that end, I've setup a new wiki to track information about UTOPIA including the positions of legislators, which cities are considering service and, for the 2008 election cycle, where candidates stand on municipal broadband and other telecommunications issues.

Anyone can participate and add their knowledge. User registration and admin approval will be required before you can contribute in order to prevent spam and defacing. Why not go ahead and register an account so you can help build it up?

Telecom Summit in Provo on Monday December 3

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Details are sketchy, but I've been made aware that there's some kind of telecom summit this Monday where iProvo will be one of the items discussed. It's going to be from 3PM to 6PM at the Covey Center for the Arts in Provo. I understand that Provo City Councilman George Stewart will be in attendance. Thought I'd pass this along just in case it turns out to be something interesting.

As a side note (and totally unrelated), there's an election underway for the new Bloghive Advisory Board and I got nominated. If you know some of the other bloggers on the list and want to cast a ballot, I'd encourage you to do so (and, hey, vote for me while you're at it).

Switching E-mail Update Services

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Since launching the website, I've been using the Subscribe2 plugin to manage sending updates via e-mail to those of you not so big on RSS. Unfortunately, the plugin has been getting a bit buggy lately. For instance, yesterday it sent out three copies of the e-mail. (I get them too, so I share your annoyance.) I've also gotten at least one report that it won't properly process unsubscribe requests and AOL seems to think that any message coming from here is junk mail.

Given these problems and the great results I've gotten with my feeds, I've decided to switch to using FeedBurner's e-mail notification service. The old notification service is still in place and will remain there for about a week to give everyone a chance to make the switch. Make sure you remove yourself from the Subscribe2 list before adding yourself to the new FeedBurner list to avoid duplicate messages. Use the form below to manage your subscription.


 

Finances and Cherry-Picking: A Response for Rep. Steve Urquhart

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Before I left town for a jaunt to DC, Venice and Florence, I had a few questions posed to me by Rep. Steve Urquhart of St. George on my summary of the November 7 subcommittee hearing. It seems he has some concerns over the financial viability of the project and some perceived cherry-picking activities in private subdivisions and non-pledging cities. Simply trying to fully respond in the comments would not fully answer the questions posed and I think it's important that both get the time and attention they deserve. Here are the questions he posed:

(1) Can UTOPIA make it financially or will taxpayer money be used to bail it out? (Its best-possible cost/subscriber rate is north of $5,000. Companies don’t live to tell what happens in that territory; bankruptcy courts tell the story for them).

(2) Has UTOPIA departed from its very reason for being — ubiquitous service? (Yes. It originally declared that it existed to serve areas that cherry pickers wouldn’t. Now, though — as you note — it is doing the exact same thing as Qwest (cherry picking)).

For starters, I really appreciate that Rep. Urquhart participates so readily in open discussions. It helps move the political process forward and puts a human face on legislators who are often reduced to a handful of quotes in the major papers. Without that, we sometimes have a tendency to read too far between the lines and create caricatures of the people we should be working with instead of against.

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Announcing the New Free UTOPIA! Forums

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Taking a cue from a commenter's suggestion, I've setup a discussion forum for the site built on phpBB. It's still a work in progress, but you're welcome to start posting and registering accounts. Since I'm still working on it, it might go up and down periodically as I implement changes. To cut down on forum spam, I've already added support for Akismet and plan on adding httpBL support Real Soon Now™.

Why don't you go check it out? Leave any questions or suggestions there or in the comments.