Once again, the Daily Herald completely misses the mark on UTOPIA

It’s pretty incredible that even now newspapers can’t get stories about UTOPIA right. The Daily Herald penned a recent op-ed that managed to skip or mangle so many facts that it’s no small wonder they came to the erroneous conclusions that they did. I have to take some time to dissect the many, many ways in which they fall into decades-old failing arguments and end up doing little more than parroting the kind of tripe the Utah Taxpayers Association has shoveled since the very beginning.

First, they start off with a few paragraphs talking about 5G wireless. Remember when everyone told us that 4G LTE deployments would eradicate the need for wired Internet service at all? Or that WiFi would do the same thing? Yet here we are, two decades after 802.11 was introduced in consumer devices and nearly a decade into LTE deployments and that’s nowhere near the case. 5G will be no different. It lives on short-range frequencies that require deploying a ton of infrastructure to support. And, surprise, a big part of that is fiber to each one of the access points.

Then they declare that bonding to finish construction puts Orem in deep financial trouble. Except, well, it doesn’t. Ever since the SAA/UIA model rolled in, every bond issued is guaranteed by subscribers. It won’t even get issued until the take rates are high enough to break even. The latest news about the UIA is that it even generates revenues in excess of the bond costs, a net positive. So, seriously, where is the downside when the worst case scenario is break even?

Oddly, they then launch into concerns about Orem’s needed infrastructure spending. But what is fiber if not infrastructure? Given past results, a new UIA bond would cover some of the original bond debt and free up more money to spend on other things including roads. It’s concern trolling at its finest.

There’s one of two possibilities for the sloppy fact-omitting editorial that the Daily Herald’s board pumped out: they either are ignorant of the facts or chose to deliberately ignore them. In either case, they have acted very irresponsibly by pushing a view that doesn’t jive with reality. Hopefully they’ll be open to getting educated and publishing a “mea culpa” response.

Learning the Wrong Lessons from iProvo and Google Fiber: A Rebuttal

I suppose this kind of response to the Google Fiber announcement was inevitable, just as it’s completely false assumptions are. The author gets a number of predictable things wrong.

[A]nd finally Provo will be out of the Telcom business.

No, it won’t. It’s still paying for the bond, it has to shell out another $1.7M to make it happen, and there’s a provision that they get the buy the network back for $1 should Google decide to pull up stakes. Granted, that may never happen, but to say that Provo has washed its hands of the matter is patently false.

[I]t’s not like there was some huge cache of potential customers waiting for join the Net.

That’s a really funny thing to say about a network with a 35% take in spite of having multiple failed private providers and mountains of negative press. Bear in mind that Verizon was thrilled to have a 18% take rate on FIOS after two years. If anything, many people were holding out while they were waiting for a less-tainted provider to be an option.

[F]iber is clearly not “future-proof” as claimed at the time.

And here’s where an inch of knowledge on telecom gets you into trouble when you try wading into the ocean. The fiber itself is fine. Most of the work is in digging trenches, attaching to poles, putting in conduit, and running the lines. The electronics, while vital, are a relatively small portion of the overall network. It’s also worth noting that the 100Mbps electronics put in place almost a decade ago are still providing a service that neither Comcast nor CenturyLink can match or beat. That’s some pretty good longevity on any network equipment.

It’s worth noting that Google is deploying 1Gbps electronics when 10Gbps, 40Gbps, even 100Gbps electronics exist. Would the author slam Google for being behind the curve over that, making the same dubious claims over “future-proof” networks? Of course not. Any network is designed to take advantage of the best you can get for the money now and plan for upgrades in the future. It’s become painfully obvious that neither incumbent has done a particularly good job of doing so.

[W]ireless networking has greatly increased its speed and range, and cellular data has moved from a novelty to a mainstay of most cell phone plans.

Again, Mr. Platt gets in trouble by talking about technical things without any technical knowledge. Wireless almost always depends on fiber backhaul. When you use microwave backhaul like Clearwire and Sprint, you end up introducing a lot of latency into the connection which renders it unsuitable for any real-time application. Wireless also hasn’t come anywhere near catching up to fiber in terms of speed. It’s just barely starting to get to a point where a wireless ISP can offer up 100Mbps speeds.

It’s also comical to cite cellular as an alternative when, again, the speeds can’t match wireline. Even the best LTE connection can barely muster a real-world speed on par with CenturyLink’s oh-so-hard-to-find top-tier ADSL2+ product. That’s only going to drop as more LTE devices get into the hands of consumers. Most of those cellular plans come replete with very low caps, high overage charges, or some kind of throttling or filtering which makes them completely unsuitable for business use and hardly an alternative for residential users.

In the long run, it’s still unclear whether and how long wired internet connections will be relevant.

I think the preceding two paragraphs lay this one to rest. If wireline was dying, why would Verizon have poured billions into it, to the chagrin of investors, especially when they own America’s largest cellular company? Why would Google be pursuing deals in various cities to promote fiber-to-the-home? Why is FTTH so explosively popular in Hong Kong, Seoul, and Tokyo? This is yet another point on which Mr. Platt falls on rhetoric as a substitute for knowledge and comes up lacking. While companies like CenturyLink who lack the will and/or ability to upgrade their wireline networks are dying a slow and painful death, that has everything to do with being a terribly run business, not the relevance of their industry.

Most importantly, Internet service is far outside the essential role of government.

This is a common refrain, and it often comes with a big dose of selective outrage. The telecom sector has been rife with government intervention and cronyism almost since its inception. AT&T was a legally-protected monopoly right up until they were broken up in 1984. The major players in the industry got huge tax breaks in the Telco Act of 1996, the price of which has surpassed $300B. Google, on whom Mr. Platt lavishes praise, has received massive tax and financial benefits from the local governments where they plan to do business. Where is the outrage here? Or is the outrage reserved for when public money isn’t being spent on private enterprise? Sir, your principles ring hollow.

[T]hank you Google for buying out network at the appropriate price of $1.

The over-simplification of what the deal actual is shows yet more layers of gross ignorance. The network had an assessed value of $25M, and much of that had to do with the negative perception created by a string of grossly incompetent private providers (HomeNet, Mstar, Broadweave). For an economics professor, he’s not doing such a great job at following the money.

But this is where Mr. Platt’s true motivation sneaks on out in all of its ugly glory:

Please, let your monthly utility bill stir thoughts about the proper role of government. If this reflection somehow prevents citizens and politicians alike from future misadventures into private enterprise, it just might be worth it.

Translation: I’m glad that you can suffer and the taxpayers can be thrown under the bus in order to prove my ideological points. I’d do it again in a moment.

This kind of attitude is far too prevalent in the discourse about both iProvo and UTOPIA. The idea that making the projects fail in order to make taxpayers suffer so that you can be vindicated on your prediction is abhorrent at best. If you see someone with this attitude trying to get into any kind of government position, you’d do best to run in the other direction. Fast.

It’s sad that there’s no shortage of people who are confident in their lack of knowledge, nor that they spend so much time trying to get their ill-informed opinions into print. Let’s just hope that they become footnotes in the debate rather than carrying any real gravitas.

Has American Fork fixed its broadband network woes? Hardly

Back on March 15, I filed a GRAMA request to get some more details on American Fork’s sale of AFCNet, their municipal broadband network, to a private party. The request was dutifully filled exactly 10 business days later on March 29. The documents revealed the terms of the sale, what was sold, and the payment history on the network. The following day, after years of silence about American Fork’s broadband, the Daily Herald publishes an article asserting that the city has managed to turn their city-owned broadband fortunes around. This, however, is an obvious snow job.

Continue reading

iProvo, the Media, and Fake News

Both the Salt Lake Tribune and Daily Herald have run articles about closed-door meetings between Provo Mayor John Curtis and members of the municipal council. These meetings included only a few council members at a time so as to avoid the requirement to hold open meetings. An e-mail from the mayor indicated that these meetings were to discuss a “plan B” for iProvo. There’s just one small problem: Veracity (or at least the C-level executive there I talked to) apparently had no idea the meetings had taken place until I called to find out what’s up.

I have a number of problems with this, not the least of which is the environment of fear, uncertainty, and doubt that this creates. You may recall that Provo had to have a number of meetings in the midst of Broadweave’s impending default to figure out what to do prior to the network being handed back to the city in worse shape than when it left. You may also recall that I had copious amounts of sharp criticism for Broadweave, all of which was based on the company history (or, more  precisely, the lack thereof), hearsay about the internal disfunction at the company, and confirmations that they had to continue to use a line of credit to continue making bond payments. In this case, Veracity is a company with a solid reputation, no reportable internal strife, and a healthy cash flow from other operations. In short, there is little evidence from that side that any kind of network trouble is in the works at all.

Unfortunately, the refusal to discuss the “plan” B and how likely or, in my belief, unlikely it may be in a public venue combined with a media tendency to puff up bad news (love you guys, but you do it way too much) has combined to create nothing more than a cloud of unfounded speculation and innuendo. While Broadweave was always tight-lipped about operations, Veracity has been very open with me and has pretty bluntly stated what they’re doing with the network: cross-subsidizing it while pursuing the only customers really left, the single-family homes. Given their strong presence in other markets, I don’t doubt their capability to do so. Selling millions of minutes of voice a month is much more stable than a thousand double-play customers in an insulated (and competition-free) housing development.

This kind of pessimistic journalism, while no doubt backed up by experience, is not new. UTOPIA regularly faces one-sided stories and unrebutted opinion pieces in all of the major dailies. The only paper that consistently seems to take their job of presenting all facts seriously has been The Davis County Clipper. This is simply unacceptable. There are a lot of people depending on the newspapers to get the story straight the first time, even if it means pushing back the deadlines so you can track down and talk to other sources.

(For the record, I actually agree with Royce Van Tassell on something: more open meetings are a Good Thing. I’ve been hounding UTOPIA for the better part of two years to toss more data out in the public. Provo shouldn’t resort to so much secrecy.)

Rally Fail: UTOPIA Hijacks Utah Taxpayers Association Event

The Utah “Taxpayers” Association thought it would get an upper hand with a BBQ in Orem just before the city council voted on a new construction bond. Unfortunately for them, the plan backfired when UTOPIA made a surprise appearance at the event with their “mobile command center” and started actually talking directly with the meeting attendees, many of whom had no opinion of UTOPIA yet and came to get more information. According to my sources, about half of the 250 or so attendees ended up registering their interest in UTOPIA services, a major coup for the network that upstaged their most vocal opponent.

Apparently what convinced a lot of the undecideds was the UTA’s refusal to disclose who pays their bills. That lack of transparency translated directly into looking like they have something to hide (hint: it’s Qwest and Comcast dollars) and left many looking at their fantastic claims skeptically. I’d like to say that there were some talking points to address, but an eyewitness account called it so much kool-aid drinking, a series of incomprehensible rants filled with insinuation, innuendo, insults, and no concrete addressable facts. In contrast, UTOPIA discussed their new business plan with individual residents and offered demonstrations of how well the service can work. Truth has power and it wasn’t on the UTA’s side.

In attendance were Rep. Mike Morley, UTA VP Royce Van Tassell, UTA President Sen. Howard Stephenson, Rep. Steve Sandstrom, and Sen. Margaret Dayton (who did not speak). UTOPIA openly challenged both Stephenson and Van Tassell to provide outside oversight of their plan, an offer which they declined to accept. Considering that the UTA regularly chides UTOPIA for mismanagement and secrecy, I would think they’d jump at the chance to look at things from the inside. If nothing else, they could fabricate some juicy new attacks from half-truths. This says a lot about the true motivations of the Utah “Taxpayers” Association. If they really wanted to keep an eye on UTOPIA for the benefit of all taxpayers, why would they turn this down?

Please, UTA, consider holding more of these events. As many as you want. You come out looking like fools and UTOPIA gains even more customers and mindshare. I’ll even volunteer for the dunk tank.

Also, see coverage from the Deseret News and Daily Herald. Bonus: I’ve got about a paragraph in the Herald article.

As a side note, I saw it reported that the connections on the new plan will be $50/mo plus service, but I don’t know if that’s accruate and haven’t gotten a reply to an e-mail I sent Monday seeking clarification. It’s also unclear how much a service provider tacks on top of that if that is the case, though it had better be well south of $20/mo for Internet. You’ll know more when I do.

Letter to the Editor: Utah Taypayers Association Lacks Credibility on UTOPIA

The following letter to the editor was submitted to the Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret News, Daily Herald, Ogden Standard-Examiner, and Davis County Clipper. It was published in the Clipper and an abbreviated version is currently slated to appear in the Tribune.

UPDATE: Here’s the letter published in the Tribune.

Whenever there is criticism leveled towards UTOPIA, you will usually find the Utah Taxpayers Association screaming the loudest. The irony is that they are one of the least-qualified to criticize UTOPIA or make any commentary on telecommunications policy.

Continue reading