Author Archives: Jesse

More Details on UTOPIA's Build Progress

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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UTOPIA Unveils the new Financial Model

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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

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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

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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) 

Could iProvo Be Up For Grabs?

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The word on the street is that some recent closed-door meetings with Provo Mayor Lewis Billings and members of the Provo City Council could mean that iProvo is about ready for some big changes. Right now we've got nothing more than speculation, but the Deseret Morning News points to an obvious possibility: Provo could be getting ready to put a For Sale sign on the money-losing network.

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Big Broadband Means Big Economic Gains

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You know that old saying that you have to spend money to make money? It seems like that's where our national broadband policy has come to. With slow average speeds and high per-megabit prices, EDUCASE, an association of college IT managers, says that it could run up to $100B to fix our national infrastructure or about half of what we already paid the telcos to do. (h/t: Jonathan Karras) So what's the payoff? How about $134B in new jobs and decreased travel and medical costs? That 34% return isn't too shabby. Also consider that if all eligible federal employees took advantage of telecommuting options, they'd save $13.9B in travel costs.

It also couldn't be more pressing. Live in a rural area? Even if broadband is available, you probably can't afford it (nevermind what industry shills are saying.) Live in an area with broadband to spare? Be prepared to pay a lot more for it. Cable and phone companies are also inconsistent when it comes to upgrades. Some companies (like Qwest and now Embarq) seem to be unconcerned with enhancing speeds or they simply can't deliver. Others are building the infrastructure, but pricing still remains high and the networks may or may not support next-generation speeds from end-to-end.

We're also projected to stay behind. By 2012, a scant 10% of homes will have access to speeds of 10Mbps or higher. While FIOS and U-Verse can pass that many homes, AT&T shows little initiative to fix the last-mile copper bottlenecks on their FTTN U-Verse network (consider that Qwest can deliver 7Mbps on their aging and decrepit network) and FTTH has had limited deployment, leaving the US in eighth place.

Not all states are going to take it lying down. California formed a task force to figure out what to do and determined that public investment should be a component of whatever other solutions they decide to run with. Vermonters are forming a UTOPIA-style consortium to bring fiber to all of their residents. (h/t: Dirk van der Woude) Indiana dropped the hammer on monopolies and now competing providers are springing up like wildflowers in May, forcing prices down and service quality up.

A scary step backwards, however, is coming from our northern neighbors in Canada. The Great White North has spanked the US consistently on average speeds and broadband adoption, yet the Canadian government is talking about dropping the line-sharing requirements that have lead to a robust competitive environment. Scarily enough, this is following the steps that have gotten us into this mess in the first place.

What's obvious is that what we're currently doing isn't working and that efforts to correct course aren't coming from the federal level. Even many states can't seem to come up with a coherent broadband policy that increases competition, improves speeds and lowers pricing. If efforts like the one in Vermont show us anything, it's that solutions to broadband issues need to be local and not be inhibited by interference from state and federal legislators. Make sure those legislators hear from you that they need to let us solve the problems that they helped create.

Campaign 2008: Finding UTOPIA-Friendly Candidates

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One of the biggest problems facing supporters of municipal broadband projects is a distinct lack of information on where a candidate stands. All too often, you'll only find out where they are after it's too late and we get an SB66 heaped upon us. To that end, I've decided that it's time that we know which candidates are UTOPIA-friendly and which ones are not.

On March 7, the candidate registration period for state and county offices opened up. It'll close on March 17. At that point, I'm going to send the following list of questions to each candidate and post their responses on the wiki.

  1. Do you generally support or oppose projects like UTOPIA and iProvo?
  2. What is the basis for your support or opposition?
  3. Is your support or opposition based on the general concept or specific implementations used in UTOPIA and/or iProvo?
  4. What is your position on the regulation of incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) such as Qwest?
  5. What is your position on the regulation of incumbent cable companies such as Comcast?
  6. What role, if any, should the state play in allegations of unfair business practices leveled at incumbent carriers such as Qwest and Comcast?
  7. What proposals or concepts do you support to bring better broadband access to rurals Utahns?
  8. What proposals or concepts do you support to improve average broadband speeds to be better competitive on an international basis?
  9. What proposals or concepts do you support to increase competitive options for Internet, television and telephone services?
  10. Do you have any other related comments you would like to add?

Each time I receive a response from a candidate, I'll post it on the wiki with a link from a post on the main page. As part of this, I'm also going to include some background information on each question to provide some neutral basis for the question. You'll be able to track all candidate positions from the wiki. Naturally, anyone that can contribute more information (such as offices up for grabs, candidates who are running, their voting history if they've held office before, etc.) would be very helpful.