Tag Archives: UTOPIA

Orem City Manager Jim Reams Passes Away

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Those of you who have been following UTOPIA for some time will recognize the name Jim Reams. As Orem’s City Manager and the city’s UTOPIA board member, he was instrumental in pushing the 2008 bonds forward and was gracious enough to arrange meeting space for myself and other UTOPIA supporters in Orem. Every interaction I had with him was unfailingly pleasant and he was an all-around good guy. I was saddened to learn this morning that he passed away last night of an apparent heart attack at just 53. Whoever takes his place has some mighty big shoes to fill.

You can read the articles at the Daily Herald, Deseret News, and Salt Lake Tribune.

iProvo, the Media, and Fake News

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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.)

What does the broadband stimulus mean for UTOPIA?

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Now that UTOPIA has $16.2M in federal funding, the question is what it’s going to do. The money itself is specifically to hook up “anchor institutions” such as schools, libraries, healthcare facilities, and government buildings. This money will be used to run fiber to over 400 buildings in Perry, Payson, Midvale, Murray, Centerville, Layton, Orem, and West Valley City. With those connections in the ground, it will be much less expensive to build out to nearby neighborhoods. That is, provided that your city joined the UIA and is willing to finance the cost of installations. A few cities are either in opposition to or on the fence about joining the UIA, so the fiber would stop at those anchor institutions. Time is limited to get them on the boat, so make sure you’re hounding them about joining.

And if you want to, go take a look at the original press release.

BREAKING: UTOPIA Scores $16.2M in Stimulus Funding

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The Obama Administration announced today a new round of broadband stimulus funding that includes $16.2M for UTOPIA. That money can go a really long way towards deploying more of the network in UTOPIA’s footprint and can, at the average install cost, cover around 5400 additional homes. UTOPIA plans to hold an event at the state capitol tomorrow at 10AM to explain the details.

Source: WhiteHouse.gov (warning: PDF)

h/t: Stimulating Broadband

It's not just XMission: Qwest hurting other providers too

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Salt Lake City Weekly just ran a story on Qwest’s attempts to limit competition and it looks like XMission isn’t alone. The CFO of Fibernet, Lee Livingston, says they have also experienced getting cut off from newer infrastructure and getting their customers poached. Tellingly, the Qwest PR flack tasked with responding refused to dispute the accuracy of the recorded phone call with their rep, instead trying a weak sauce accusation that it had been fabricated or altered. (Hey Qwest? That’s pretty much an admission of guilt and makes you look petty.) Fibernet used to complain to the FCC about these problems and gave up after they got no results.

The short of it is that the new era of competition that was supposed to be ushered in by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 flamed out almost as fast as it arrived. Incumbents have been actively thwarting wholesale customers to lock the market back up while claiming that they still have sufficient competition. Open networks like UTOPIA are the last chance to correct this market imbalance. And yes, it will be expensive and painful. Most mistakes are.

Steve Turley Blows Smoke on iProvo and UTOPIA

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Long-time readers of this blog (or those paying attention to iProvo) will recognize the name of Steve Turley. As a member of Provo’s municipal council, he’s been a consistent voice of opposition on all things iProvo since as far back as anyone can remember. You may even recall the recent series of articles in the Daily Herald bringing light to some shady-looking real estate deals and resulting lawsuits that he’s involved in. If you want to start iin the real estate industry I suggest using a commercial bridge loan to get financial help and get information to learn the business like this nick vertucci real estate academy review. I Today, he had an op-ed in the Deseret News calling on UTOPIA cities to follow Provo’s lead and dump their fiber network. Unfortunately, it would appear that Councilman Turley is about as knowledgeable as he appears ethical. Although there’s people that doesn’t have that much interest in the real estate, but actually just want to sell their house, for those people there we have business like needtosellmyhouse.com where we we buy houses from all nation and they can also just get help from sites like Flipping Junkie online, which is an easy way to sell or buy your house without doing all the work.

The biggest surprise is that Turley claimed the sale of iProvo is a success, this in spite of voting against both the sale to Broadweave and Veracity’s subsequent takeover of Broadweave. I have a hard time swallowing Turley’s characterization given that Broadweave spent sixteen months doing a terrible job at running the network (just like I said they would) before Veracity stepped in to save their hide. Even so, Provo had to loan out more money to Veracity to make the deal work. Veracity has done a superb job at turning around operations, but they have also had to cross-subsidize the network from their other operations and may continue to do so for several years. The reality is that this is the best the council could come up with since they did not have the stomach to do what was necessary to run the network successfully as a city department. It is absolutely absurd that Turley thinks he could vote against these outcomes and still be able to claim responsibility for them.

There’s also the wildly inaccurate claim that Provo solicited bids to buy the network. That’s absolutely and patently false. (I’d go so far as to call it utter bulls–t, much like the rest of his arguments.) The sale of the network came as a total surprise to the general public, service providers, industry watchers, and even the entire municipal council. The Mayor himself, the architect of the Broadweave deal, was adamant that a sale wasn’t on the table up until a couple of months before unveiling it. This was during the time that Billings and Broadweave were busy negotiating the terms of the deal. There was no clear RFP for bids, no public bidding process, and a very short period in which to review the terms of the deal. Does that sound like hanging a “For Sale” sign to you. I recommend Ball realty which is a pacific pines real estate agency on the gold coast, you can call them for assistance.

Turley has also wildly distorted the cost of building iProvo. Most of the main fiber optic rings were built many years before iProvo was even proposed. (I’d say planned, but I’m sure Mayor Billings knew what he was doing the whole time.) Those rings were paid for with federal grants so that the city could monitor traffic and improve air quality. That backbone certainly didn’t come cheap and should be included in the cost of expanding the network to include service to city residents. The $39M figure also does not include the shared cost of the video headend built jointly with UTOPIA. These items could easily add $10M or more to the total cost of the network, something that Turley has intentionally chosen to ignore.

Of course, these are just the factual problems with what he has written; I haven’t even made it to his faulty conclusions yet. Based on the “evidence” Steve Turley has presented, he thinks that UTOPIA cities should follow Provo’s lead and find a private company to buy the network. Unfortunately, that’s ignoring the marketable reality of the network. iProvo is a fully-built network covering an entire municipality. By the last publicly available figures, the network should have had little trouble being self-sufficient with some modest increases in take rates and small rate increases (not to mention better accounting practices). That makes it a very attractive target for acquisition, especially since the network was ready to roll.

UTOPIA, on the other hand, has patchy coverage and needs a lot of significant investment to cover its intended service areas. It’s main asset is the fiber running from Portland to Las Vegas, but even that isn’t valued at enough to pay off the current debts. UTOPIA cities, if they sold today, would still be making most of the payments and getting nothing in return for it. Provo, on the other hand, got someone else to assume the full debt load while walking away from it. Do these sound like similar situations to you? Me neither.

He also characterizes the new $60M bond proposal as additional system debt, just like the Utah “Taxpayers” Association has been doing. This, again, flies in the face of reality. The entirety of the $60M bond would be paid for by system subscribers, not the cities or UTOPIA. Claiming that signing on to this plan creates an additional burden systemwide is uninformed drivel.

In summation, Steve Turley knows about as much about municipal broadband now as he did two years ago. Unfortunately, that knowledge wouldn’t fill a thimble. Councilman, do us all a favor and go back to your home planet. Maybe they’ll be more accepting of your Reality Distortion Field.

Want the fastest broadband in Utah? Brigham City has you covered

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Ookla, the company responsible for running Speedtest.net, has recently released new results on the state of broadband speeds around the world and Brigham City has taken the top spot in Utah by a wide margin. Their average speed of 20.59Mbps handily bests second-place Pleasant Grove by almost 60%. Considering that over a third of the city accesses the Internet using a UTOPIA service provider, this doesn’t come as much of a surprise; almost all of the increase has been in the somewhat recent future. Neither is it surprising that two of the top three ISPs (as ranked by speed) are UTOPIA providers Xmission and Integra Telecom.

I think the moral of the story is crystal clear: if you want top-notch Internet service, get UTOPIA.

Payson Bunts, Delays Voting on Joining the UIA

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Unsurprisingly, Payson is hand-wringing over joining the new Utah Infrastruture Agency over financial concerns. On Wednesday, the city council opted to put off making a decision until August 4 as they worried openly both about the cost and how much say they would have in the new agency. Payson is about 30% connected and city leaders feel like if they don’t join, they won’t see any new construction.

And really, that’s true. The UTOPIA money well is empty and until the system is operating in the black, there will be nothing with which to build. The UIA is an attempt to solve this lack of capital while not putting the cities themselves on the hook for more money. Given the tone that Payson is using, it sounds to me like they either don’t understand the proposal before them or are operating purely on deer-in-headlights fear.

It’s not surprising to see that Payson’s city council members haven’t developed any new intestinal fortitude since they tucked tail and made a calculated vote against the new bond two years ago. I personally feel like they’re repeating the mistakes of American Fork, jumping in with a lot of initial enthusiasm and not having the wherewithal to see the vision through. Any elected official who operates with that kind of short-sighted eye towards instant gratification can’t be counted on in tough times. To be blunt, they’re cowards, afraid to do what is necessary and acting in shameless self-interest.

Grow a pair already, Payson. I’m sure you’re wearing thin on the rest of the cities too.

Bye Bye, Deadbeat Providers

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One of the more interesting parts of UTOPIA’s new plans via the Utah Infrastructure Agency (UIA) is to have cities start taking over billing operations directly. In the past, service providers operated all of the billing and then remitted payment to UTOPIA for the wholesale transport. That arrangement works well for most providers, but every now and again, you get an Mstar that racks up a huge debt to UTOPIA. While the step to diversify the video offerings so that no provider can hold triple-play over their head, it only gives UTOPIA a hammer to cut off the deadbeats, not a way to get their money. So, in an effort to make sure that UTOPIA always gets their cut and isn’t giving any provider a free loan, it looks like they’re going to consolidate billing into the UIA which will then disburse the money to both UTOPIA and the service providers.

I have some mixed feelings on this. Sure, it sucks when a crappy company like Mstar takes the network for a multi-million dollar ride. And it would suck if a company decided to not pay their bills for a month or two and leave UTOPIA holding the bag. I can certainly see how this improves the cash flow on their side. On the other side, billing is a way for providers to differentiate their customer service. I know a lot of people who have sworn off Qwest because their bill couldn’t ever come out quite right. I also wonder if providers will be hot on the idea of a third-party provider collecting the money and delaying the cash flow on their side. It also raises the issue of what happens when there’s non-payment by the customer. Instead of the provider having to pay UTOPIA anyway while they seek payment (or, more likely, shut off service), UTOPIA is left holding that bag. Granted, it’s a lot less than if a provider stops paying their bills, but it’s something worth thinking about.

In any event, this seems like an overall positive move with a few caveats. If nothing else, UTOPIA is working its tail off to try and protect itself from these kinds of financial problems.

Rally Fail: UTOPIA Hijacks Utah Taxpayers Association Event

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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.