Evaluating Qwest's "Price for Life" Program (hint: It Sucks)

By | | ,
13 Comments

I've noticed a few random web surfers coming by looking for information on Qwest's heavily-advertised "Price for Life" program for DSL and thought I should let them know what exactly they're getting into. On the surface, it seems like a great idea: you guarantee that your price won't increase for as long as you have DSL service. The reality, however, is filled with more loopholes than the US tax code, all designed to keep your price inflated and gouge you for additional fees.

So how much will you save? That all depends on how long you keep the service. Qwest offers the same price for the first year regardless of if you go for the "Price for Life" or not. What's the difference thereafter? A meager $6 a month or $72 until you can escape the $200 early termination fee.

And what exactly triggers this early termination fee? Aside from obvious things like disconnecting service, you'll also break the contract for altering service including changing your speed tier, changing your ISP or even moving. Considering that Qwest plans to roll out 20Mbps service within the year, it seems like a terrible idea to lock yourself into a speed for two years that will be obsolete before you complete the term of the contract. And why would Qwest charge you an ETF when you keep the line and only change the ISP, even if the ISP wasn't them to begin with? It's almost like Qwest wants to lock a bunch of their users into lower speeds to throttle bandwidth. Hmmm.

All in all, the program is a bunch of clever marketing with a whole lot of consumer-unfriendly gotchas. Do not want!

From the FUD Department: Qwest's Fiber Pipe Dreams

By | | ,
5 Comments

Get your Reality Distortion Fields ready: the Salt Lake Tribune reports that Qwest is planning on building fiber. Despite the catchy headline, it looks like this plan is a lot of smoke and no fire. Qwest plans to build a FTTN network capable of 20Mbps by the end of the year at a cost of $300M. Compare that to UTOPIA who can do 50Mbps right now at a cost 10% cheaper per household served.

This raises some great questions, chiefly how it is that UTOPIA can build a better network at a lower cost than one of the country's largest telecommunications companies. Qwest's cost per served household is somewhere in the range of $1500 while UTOPIA is doing it for $1350. When you figure out the cost per megabit per household, Qwest is spending nearly triple what UTOPIA is. If Qwest stockholders are expecting a decent return on investment, I've got some great investment opportunities in subprime mortgages for them. This is further proof that Qwest just doesn't get it.

Do or Die: iProvo May Be Cut Off By the City Council

By | |
4 Comments

According to a source familiar with Provo politics, the city council will not extend any further funding to iProvo from this year's budget to cover bond payments. The city's fiber optic network has been experiencing steady losses as revenues have failed to completely cover the bond payments. When combined with the failure to fill up to 4 high-level management positions within the agency and declining sales tax revenue growth as the economy cools down, the city council sees further investments in the network as a losing proposition.

Continue reading →

More Details on UTOPIA's Build Progress

By | | ,
8 Comments

A surprisingly accurate story from the Deseret Morning News (no, really) reveals further details on UTOPIA's current build progress. Here's a list of the current completion per city:

  • Lindon: 95-99%
  • Payson: 95-99%
  • Tremonton: 95-99%
  • Perry: 50%
  • Orem: 50%
  • Murrary: 50%
  • Midvale: 40%
  • Brigham City: 33%
  • Centerville: 25%
  • Layton: 15%
  • West Valley City: 15%

We also get some more critical details on the financial picture. With the current 7,000 subscribers, UTOPIA is currently covering operating costs. Given the two-year reprieve from bond payments under the new bonding plan, UTOPIA will have plenty of time to wrap up construction in the current Phase I and Phase II cities and boost subscriber numbers to the point where covering the debt service won't be an issue.

So how about the benefits already realized by UTOPIA users? Orem is saving $600,000 per year in telecommunications costs, a sizable chunk of the money they pledged for UTOPIA. Print Advantage of Lindon went from ferrying around large files on portable hard drives to having customers directly upload them over their shiny new 10Mbps connection, a connection that cost just 60% of what they paid for a T-1 line at about 1/7th of the speed. Laura Lewis, a member of the firm that handles UTOPIA's finances, downloads movies from iTunes 60 times faster than her friend in Sandy.

As more details come out, the future for UTOPIA looks bright indeed. Let's hope that the city councils in member cities see it the same way when voting on the rebonding. 

Centerville Leery of New UTOPIA Bonds

By | |
Leave a comment

At least one city council has cold feet about additional commitments for UTOPIA. City officials in Centerville are going to ask some hard questions leading up to the city council meeting on April 22 where the fate of the new bonds will be decided. As preparation for it, they'll be holding a workshop on April 15th at 5PM with UTOPIA to get answers as to why the additional bonding is necessary. Unsurprisingly, Qwest and Comcast have both planned to be in attendance.

I'd normally attend a meeting like this, but I'll be out of town on business that day. It will be vitally important that any UTOPIA supporters attend as well as  provide information to the city council and mayor about the delays in RUS funding that have precipitated this.

Read more from the Clipper.

More Details of the Changes at UTOPIA

By | |
1 Comment

If you live in Tremonton, Brigham City, Perry, Centerville or Layton, I have good news: UTOPIA plans to resume construction Real Soon Now(TM). So long as city councils approve the reconstruction of the loans, construction will begin in the northernmost cities this May with construction in Davis County to pick up again later this year. The deployments will be focused on building the fiber rings in each city and then building out into the neighborhoods to hook up homes and businesses. Going out to end users will now be driven by customer demand filtered through providers, essential for maximizing take rates.

So why the construction delays? Blame the USDA. They've been dragging their heels for some unknown reason and have failed to disburse the money from the approved RUS loan. The financial restructuring is so that UTOPIA can have the money to resume construction without having to wait for the money from the feds. Since they are contractually obligated to build out RUS cities right now and can't expend money from non-RUS cities to do it, the financing is absolutely required to move forward.

The Deseret Morning News wasted no time in ignoring these realities in a new boilerplate editorial rooting for the project's failure. The Utah Taxpayers Association also piled on in their most recent newsletter (warning: PDF). Neither of them acknowledged how UTOPIA has repeatedly has the rug pulled out from under them (Qwest lawsuit halting construction, utilities illegally blocking access to poles, delays in RUS funding) and yet has still managed to not call one red cent of pledged sales taxes, a feat that should be lauded instead of derided.

You can read more from the Davis County Clipper and Deseret Morning News.

Campaign 2008: The Second Round of E-mails

By | | ,
3 Comments

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.

Continue reading →

UTOPIA Unveils the new Financial Model

By | | ,
Leave a comment

After months of working with PacketFront, the company that acquired DynamicCity, UTOPIA has pulled back the curtain on their new plan and model. They plan to re-bond for a longer term (32 years instead of 20 years) with a lower interest rate, adding about $20M in cash to their reserves. This will also improve the cash flow since the bond payments will be lowered. In this environment of deflated interest rates, it made sense to lock in that lower rate.

The real challenge starts now: UTOPIA will have to convince the city councils of current pledging member cities to extend their sales tax guarantees that backed the original bonds. The upshot is that the amount of the guarantee will stay the same, but spread over a longer period. Provided this happens, the new bonding will be in place by mid-May so that construction can pick up again. If you live in a member city, it's absolutely critical that you write your mayor and city council to let them know that you support this change. Since the feds have presumably still not cut the checks on the RUS money they approved nearly two years ago, the funding infusion will be necessary to keep things moving.

Campaign 2008: The First Round of E-mails

By | | ,
Leave a comment

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.

Woods Cross City Council to Discuss UTOPIA Again

By | |
4 Comments

I've just gotten word that the Woods Cross City Council will be discussing UTOPIA membership once again at their next meeting tomorrow, Tuesday March 18th at 6:30PM. The City Council has been waiting for announcements concerning UTOPIA's new model before deciding on any action and hasn't heard anything from them since they took the issue up in late 2007. I'd encourage supporters of UTOPIA in Woods Cross to be at the meeting to provide input and see what happens.

(h/t: Tyler Shaw for forwarding the agenda to me)