With low take rates, political spats and pesky introductory discount rates, Earthlink posted a $30M loss for Q1 blamed on a shrinking dial-up business and expensive WiFi rollouts. With just 2,000 regular subscribers, a handful of government contracts and the upcoming auction of the lucrative 700MHz spectrum by the FCC,… Continue reading
Provo Mayor Lewis Billings rolled out a new city budget where iProvo funding takes center stage. The city plans to loan an additional $1M to the project to cover bond payments while seeking additional service providers and pushing additional commercial accounts. Signing up businesses for iProvo service will be critical… Continue reading
It's earnings report season, and it looks like the short-term thinking of investors has been ruling the day with telcos. Verizon has watched earnings tumble as they make significant investments in their FIOS system while Qwest tripled their profits by building a whole lot of nothing and cutting retirement benefits…. Continue reading
Maybe they're too busy catering to the high end. They just dropped a press release touting a new fiber network in some luxury condos in California. I suppose the "little people" don't hold much interest when there's not phat sacks full of cash money involved. (See press release here.)
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… Continue reading
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… Continue reading
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… Continue reading
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… Continue reading
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… Continue reading
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… Continue reading