Author Archives: Jesse

Broadband Bytes for 2009-09-26

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Provo Approves Veracity Proposal

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As I predicted yesterday, Provo’s Municipal Council signed off on the proposal from Veracity to merge with Broadweave and float some of the bond payment for 10 years. (I also totally called Steve Turley voting against the proposal.) I’m not surprised at all given the political climate surrounding the network. Iin a worst-case scenario where Veracity gives the network back, Provo will have had more time to come up with a Plan B and the willingness to execute it.

Want to read more? The Daily Herald and Deseret News both have their articles up.

Provo's Decision Tonight

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Tonight, Provo’s Municipal Council will likely make a decision on the proposal from Veracity to float part of the bond payment for upwards of 10 years. I’m not going to delude myself or any of you: the meeting and vote is mere formality. The Council will, amidst some grumbling, approve the proposal. Steve Turley will vote against it knowing it will pass so if something goes wrong later, he can wash his hands of any responsibility. (Prudent politics, Steve, but how about owning something for a change?) Given the options that have been presented by the mayor, I don’t know that the municipal council is being given much of a choice.

Yes, there are options. Provo could take the network back with many different avenues for running it differently. That said, there exists no political willpower or stomach for doing so. If Provo doesn’t have its heart into running the network, it will be at least as badly mismanaged as it was before if not worse. They’re still in “run and hide” mode, willing to accept any moderately reasonable deal to keep the thing away from the city.

Several companies have expressed to me an interest in participating in an RFP process for the network. Provided that such an RFP process leaves enough time for companies to submit applications and the city to review them before having to make a “do or die” decision regarding Broadweave, it should be encouraged and acted upon to make sure that the Council is truly evaluating all of the possibilities before them. There’s nothing to lose by asking for more options.

Even with options other than approving the sale, I don’t think the council is going to consider them. Veracity has thrown Provo a decent pitch with a decent chance of success and this Council has already shown a tendency to vote with the mayor. (Despite their recent pushback, I doubt there will be any serious resistance.) Unless another party comes along with a better concrete proposal, it would appear that the best choice is what the council was going to do anyway. How’s that for the world’s most tepid and lame endorsement?

Broadband Bytes for 2009-09-19

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Broadband Bytes for 2009-09-12

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Broadband Stimulus Applicants Revealed

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As of a couple of days ago, applicants for broadband stimulus funds are now listed on the NTIA’s website. Utah has a number of applicants including the University of Utah, The Utah Transit Authority, and, not surprisingly, UTOPIA.

Several rural ILECs have also gotten into the game including Emery Telecom and Manti Tele Communications. Emery is apparently looking to deploy FTTP to beef up their triple-play offerings and replace their existing HFC CATV network. The finished product would be active Ethernet like iProvo and UTOPIA with up to 1Gbps at each address served. A separate request would use FTTN and wireless to reach more remote areas. Manti, meanwhile, is looking to use WiMax to reach more remote areas that currently do not have broadband service. Both of these projects are good news for Utahns.

Ogden City has also made an application to provide broadband access to government services and underserved residents. There is also an application for what appears to be a city-wide WiFi network. Given their reluctance to join UTOPIA, it’s rather surprising that they have done an about-face on city-provided services. My best guess is that they were holding out for someone else to pay for it.

So what about UTOPIA? They made three separate applications totaling around $54M. The only thing available is a general overview, but the requests appear to be targeted at Orem, Murray, Midvale, West Valley City, Layton, and Centerville. One of them hints at using a special assessment area (SAA) to triple the impact of at least $10.5M of the money applied for. Depending on how fast NTIA can review and approve applications, we may soon know if there will be more money for UTOPIA construction in the near term.

With applicants asking for 7 times what’s available in the first round, it will be interesting to see who makes the cut.

Layton Languishing: No New UTOPIA Construction for 1-2 Years

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I received word from a reader that an engineer with Layton City has indicated that new UTOPIA construction in the city will be on hold for at least a year, possibly as long as two years. That’s right, up to two years without the men in work boots, that’s is going to retard progress. The existing fiber will be served, but new installs will now entirely depend on either developers or members of a special assessment area to foot the bill. The city blames the slow economy and lack of federal funding for the halt in construction. Given that the first tranches of broadband stimulus funding from the feds is meant for rural and underserved areas, I wouldn’t count on any federal assistance to get things moving anytime soon.

(h/t: Dan Langford)

Broadband Bytes for 2009-09-05

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Hacked! (Or, Why it's really REALLY important to keep WordPress up to date)

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I noticed some rather, er, strange behavior when I had comments e-mailed to me this morning, specifically that some odd code was being appended to the end of permalinks in WordPress. It took all of about 5 seconds to realize that my install of WordPress had been compromised. I’ve since updated to the latest version of WordPress and removed the offending code snippets, so things should be back to normal. Thankfully, they didn’t gain access to the admin panel or appear to have modified any posts or comments. Apparently Apache and PHP are configured properly so that these injection attacks result in a big bucket of fail for the attackers.

Moral of the story? Keep WordPress up to date.

Veracity Customers as Collateral: Where's the Skin in the Game?

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The Salt Lake Tribune wrote up an article on Tuesday’s decision to delay the vote on accepting Veracity’s offer and it brings up interesting points on how the loan from the Energy Department’s reserves will be secured. The plan is to have existing customer accounts and any new accounts on the network act as collateral as well as Veracity’s customers on iProvo. Veracity, however, is not required to include any customers not on iProvo included in that total.

I think this raises important questions about how much skin Veracity has in this game. If Provo ended up having to seize the collateral after a default, what can they do with it? They’re legally barred from selling the services to those customers and the customers themselves will have little value of their own without the network. In that scenario, the network would be quite distressed and wouldn’t be able to fetch the same sale price as it had before. It would also be hard to convince another provider to buy the customer list.

I also have a problem with the appearance that Veracity has structured a deal that insulates them from almost all risk. If there’s nothing contractually stopping them from doing so, they could switch their customers back from iProvo to Qwest transport just before defaulting and lose nothing in the deal. If that is the case, Veracity has nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I think Veracity is a great company providing great services, but my inner skeptic says that this needs additional scrutiny. I’d feel a lot more comfortable with this proposal if I felt that they had more risk involved.