Author Archives: Jesse

Confirmed: American Fork is Selling AFCNet

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It looks like American Fork is going to discuss the sale of AFCNet this Tuesday the 27th at their normal city council meeting. (See City Council Agenda, item 17, PDF.) There's very spare details as to what the purchase price is or if Surpha is still indeed the buyer, so it'd be worth it for any American Fork residents to go on down and check this one out.

Personally, I think unloading it is in American Fork's best interests. With an FTTN structure, it's not up to the task of delivering fiber-like speeds and the city has shown little interest in properly investing in the network's future. It would have made sense for them to join UTOPIA and spread the costs of the NOC and wholesale operations with other cities, but the council seems to have gotten distracted from doing anything useful with the network.

(h/t: David Rodeback, again, for pointing this out.)

Open Thread: PacketFront's Relationship to UTOPIA

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Per reader request, I'm opening up a thread to discuss the relationship between PacketFront and UTOPIA.

Some background: Last year, PacketFront purchased DynamicCity, the project management group for UTOPIA. DC also did consulting on projects in Arizona and Palo Alto, CA. PacketFront is a Swedish company that draws on a considerable amount of industry experience from that country's construction of an open-access fiber optic network. As part of the purchase, the Lindon office has been maintained in its current location.

My understanding of PacketFront's relationship to UTOPIA is that they assumed the contract for project management from DynamicCity and have continued in that role with Chris Hogan, VP of Marketing, being the most public figure. A search on LinkedIn shows at least 12 PacketFront employees in the Intermountain West, some of whom I recognize as former employees of DynamicCity.

Questions? Comments? Rude noises? I'd also invite any employees of PacketFront to chime in to provide any additional details or clarification. 

Broadweave Plans to Replace the Portals for iProvo's Telephony Woes

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Broadweave announced their plan to fix the frequent issues with phone service on iProvo, pointing to deficiencies in the portals provided by World Wide Packets. Their message? An ultimatum to Ciena, the new parent company of World Wide Packets, to fix the firmware in 90 days or they'll start replacing the hardware. The reason? They claim the current portals don't properly support SIP.

Given that portals run about $300 a pop and Provo has 10,250 csutomers, that works up to just shy of $3.1M just on new portals. That doesn't even include the cost of labor to replace and troubleshoot. Seems a bit excessive when a $50 terminal adapter would probably fit the bill just as well. After all, I have yet to hear that anyone using Vonage is having issues with telephony over iProvo.

Broadweave seems to have some trouble spending lavishly on features that a company its size simply can't afford, like their supposed carrier-grade phone switches. Also remember that they plan to spend around $1.8M upgrading set-top boxes for MPEG-4 PLUS the costs for a new head-end to support the encoding. Can anyone else smell dot-com style crash-and-burn in the distance?

Is American Fork Nearing a Deal to Sell AFCNet?

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Remember the reports back in September that American Fork was negotiating the sale of their municipal broadband network to Surpha of Orem? According to a post at LocalCommentary.com, those negotiations are about to bear fruit. According to David Rodeback, Surpha has become an ISP on the network and has acquired customers from at least one of the other ISPs. He also noted that, as a user, the transition was seamless to him and resulted in a nice speed bump.

I don't know much about Surpha. They appear to be a publicly-traded company on the Frankfurt (!) stock exchange and haven't updated the news section of their website since 2006. Given that they've primarily been a provider of commercial services and have been pacing themselves with the purchase of AFCNet, I have better hopes for this deal than certain other "sale" proposals.

Broadweave's Double-Talk on Equipment Ownership

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Broadweave has repeatedly hammered on the existing providers on iProvo for not owning their own phone-switching equipment. According to their statements, the breakdown in call quality and reliability comes from iProvo, the retailer and the outsourced voice provider all pointing fingers at each other. It's funny, then to hear that Broadweave currently outsources its video operations in Sienna Hills to a company called Avail Media. I wonder what happens when video problems pop up for the 20 or so customers down there?

This means that Broadweave truly has zero experience operating a video head-end or delivering a video product on their own. How will they do so for the 6,000 or so existing video customers on iProvo? The odds are certainly against them. 

Is Broadweave Dumping Most of the Veracity Customers?

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A quote from Saturday's Daily Herald seems to indicate that this is the case:

"Broadweave has a CLEC or Competitive Local Exchange Carrier relationship with Qwest, and will therefore not be a service provider on Qwest's network," [Broadweave CEO Steve Christensen] said.

This seems fishy on a few levels. About 85-90% of Veracity's customer base exists outside of iProvo and UTOPIA. This is primarily in selling voice and data services over Qwest's network, the bread and butter of the company's revenues. It doesn't make sense to shed a significant portion of Veracity's customer base as part of this acquisition, yet that seems to be exactly what Broadweave intends to do.

The statement on being a CLEC also doesn't seem to make sense. Veracity has been a CLEC for a very long time using Qwest's network. How is it that Broadweave being a CLEC would preclude it from using Qwest's network? After all, MSTAR, Veracity and XMission have used Qwest's infrastructure while participating on iProvo or UTOPIA.

This also raises a lot of concerns with Veracity's employee base. Their experience is primarily with business clients, yet we're seeing that Broadweave will dump most of those clients in favor of a largely residential mix. It remains to be seen if they can successfully pull off this transition, but I highly doubt it. 

Broadweave's Double-Talk on Open Networks

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Broadweave has repeatedly insisted that the only way for iProvo to work is if it becomes a closed network with one provider operating both the retail and wholesale operations. Perhaps, then, they can explain why it is that they agreed to "provide access to alternate service providers for a fee" as part of their utility easement in the Sienna Hills subdivision near Washington City? (See SITLA Meeting Minutes of October 6, 2005, pg. 7) If such an arrangement were not economically viable, wouldn't Broadweave have walked away? It's a tacit admission that open networks can work financially.

It's also telling that as a part of their easement in Washington County, Broadweave also wanted to be awarded automatic contracts to develop telecommunications systems throughout the School & Institutional Trust Lands Administration's future projects. The board was rightfully spooked by this implication and voted against granting such a restriction. (See SITLA Meeting Minutes of October 20, 2005, pg. 25)

Meta: Spam Karma Ate Some Comments

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If you've left a comment over the last few days that didn't appear on the site, that problem should be fixed now. Spam Karma decided to go "nom, nom, nom" when too many comments were posted over a short period or time. I've adjusted it to be much less sensitive to rapid-fire comments and recovered ones that didn't look like duplicates of existing comments. I've also turned on an option to let you redeem yourself through a CAPTCHA should your score still get a bit too low. If you still notice comments not appearing, please let me know so I can recover them and adjust Spam Karma's sensitivity.

Broadweave's HR Problem

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In their report to the city, CCG noted that there were a significant number of HR issues leading to the deteriorating customer service situation at iProvo. They noted that "almost universally the telecom employees dislike or distrust the retailers" and observed that telecom employees were also at each others throats on a regular basis and to resolve it would "require management directive". Certainly neither retailers or their customers were served by this rivalry both within the NOC and towards retailers.

So how then is it possible that Broadweave plans to take these same people who caused this problem, the telecom employees, and force them to work both with each other and employees from a retailer, Veracity, without significant operational headaches? It seems to be that the old rivalries with each other and this retailer will continue to manifest themselves, likely moreso since, according to my sources, a majority of iProvo's employees are strongly opposed to this sale.

It's especially concerning since we hear a lot about the executive team and almost nothing about the management team; we have absolutely no idea how long Broadweave will be dysfunctional as it deals with these HR problems. During that time, customers and reputation will be lost, the latter of which takes significant time to regain. I do not think a company so young and small has the experience to successfully handle this kind of integration; even giants like HP and Sprint have failed at this task.

Broadweave Did Not Exist Prior to 2003, Website Claims First Contract in 1999

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I received a response from the Utah Division of Corporations regarding the original filing for Broadweave Networks and Lucy, they've got some 'splaining to do. According to the original filing, the company did not file articles of incorporation until June 4, 2003. (See original document.) Their website, however, indicates that the company obtained their first contract in 1999. (Link to website, screenshot in case they change it.) How can a company that doesn't exist have functioning contracts?

It's amazing that Provo's brand of "due diligence" doesn't disclose these kinds of irregularities.