Palo Alto Rolling Out Fiber

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After years of delays, Palo Alto's city council voted 5-1 in favor of building an FTTH system in their city. This has been in the works since 1999 and even had a small test system with a limited number of participants at one point. Dynamic City, the consulting company that build UTOPIA, made an offer to the city if they would foot the costs, but the city opted instead to go with 180 Connect who will bear the financial risks.

(See full article.)

SB209 is Dead… For Now

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In the final hours of the legislative session last night, the House chose to take no action on SB209 leading to its defeat and the prevention of statewide franchise agreements. You can bet, though, that this bill will probably be proposed again, potentially in a special session to be call later this year. Keep your eyes and ears open so that we don't let this one happen again.

San Francisco Experiencing Buyer's Remorse?

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It seems that San Francisco is re-thinking the idea of a partnership with Google and Earthlink to provide the city with a WiFi network. The city has cited that while WiFi is quick and cheap, it's not truly competitive with a fiber-optic network and signals might not penetrate buildings in low-income neighborhoods, one of the main selling points of WiFi. The model sounds all too familiar: build a network and act as a wholesaler to multiple private service providers.

Part of the reconsideration has to do with the fast-track way that WiFi was ramrodded through. Studies show that not all options were considered when selecting a system and there's a lot of concern that the deal would amount to little more than an extra monopoly in the city. Good thing the city it starting to back off on this one.

(See articles here, here and here. 

Stop Statewide Franchising!

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Senate Bill 209 has passed committee and will be going before the whole of the Senate for a vote. This bill would allow state-wide franchising of telecommunications services and would destroy universal access. During a breakfast sponsored by the Utah Technology Council this morning, Both House Speaker Greg Curtis and Senate President John Valentine acknowledged that it would allow new entrants to the market to cherry-pick only the most profitable areas to serve. This cannot be allowed to come to pass.

I urge you to contact your legislators as soon as possible and urge them to oppose passage of this bill.

MSTAR Ranked Better than Qwest

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A poll by Utah Valley Magazine is in, and MSTAR, one of the providers on both UTOPIA and iProvo, beat our Qwest for second-best Internet provider in Utah County. They also came very close to edging out Comcast for first place. This is significant since MSTAR only has service in 7% of surveyed households compared to virtually all households in the cases of both Comcast and Qwest. Could this be a big reason why these two are running scared over municipal fiber projects?

(See press release.)

Tennessee Fiber Spurs Economic Growth

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The tiny town of Jackson, TN (pop: 60,000) has become a new hub for tech companies after rolling out its own municipal fiber project. These companies are doing everything from remote data backups to software hosting using the high-speed network built by the city's power agency. With these kinds of high-speed connections, area businesses don't have to maintain as much of their own IT infrastructure, instead accessing applications over the network. Businesses in Jackson's IT industry and looking to use the high-speed connections to spread across the country. Truly a world-class data network is essential for attracting cutting-edge businesses.

(See full article.) 

Fiber Battle in Wilson NC Heating Up

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Time Warner showed it wasn't afraid to flex some muscle at a recent public hearing in Wilson, NC concerning their planned deployment of a fiber optic network. Predictably, they pulled out the tired "taxpayer money" and "competing with private enterprise" lines like so many broken records. The city rightly demonstrated that the fiber system isn't even a comparable product since it's leaps and bounds beyond what the incumbent is offering. This is going to be one of the fiber battles to watch, just like the fight in Batavia, IL.

(See full articles here and here.)

Verizon Can't Make Up Its Mind on Fiber

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As much as Verizon likes to hype its FIOS service, it seems to be very non-committal as to who exactly it's going to serve. It recently spun off its landline operations in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine to Fairpoint Communications, a company with no plans to continue the FTTH network started by Verizon. In the meantime, the telecom giant is hyping projects in Washington state and New York City. This smells a lot like cherry-picking to me, and with its unquenchable thirst for state-wide franchise agreements, you can bet it's only downhill from here.

(See full articles here, here and here.)

Study Shows Benefits of Public Owning Infrastructure

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A study by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance argues that public ownership of telecommunications infrastructure is a major boon to taxpayers and municipalities. Among the benefits are increased competition, improved local revenues, lower end-user prices, true Net Neutrality, universal access, and economic development. It seems the only losers are the incumbents who've been used to gouging us while shutting out competition. No tears shed there.

(See full article.)

Qwest Biding Its Time on Fiber

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Don't count on Qwest to roll out universal fiber services anytime soon. Qwest has decided to take its time with FTTH projects, preferring to only roll them out to popular master planned developments as opposed to wide-spread deployment. Given that they've only recently solicited bids for a major fiber project, I'd say that most or all of the original UTOPIA cities will be built out before Qwest has fiber anywhere but the Daybreak community in South Jordan. I guess they're not serious about competing internationally or providing us with the high-speed services we demand.

The big irony here is that Qwest got towns like South Jordan and Sandy to not join UTOPIA because they promised next-generation services in those towns Real Soon Now(TM). I guess we can chalk up a few more broken promises from this RBOC.

(See full article.)