Category Archives: Jeers

Bad news.

Headend Brawl: UTOPIA and Provo at Odds on Shared Assets

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As the clock ticks down on a contract between UTOPIA and Provo for a shared video headend, the fight over who owes who money is starting to heat up. I’ve had a lot of anonymous tipsters relating details and rumors over some strong disagreements regarding compensating UTOPIA for their portion of the headend, a subject that appears to be strongly muddied by unclear contracts with Broadweave.

I’m no lawyer, but from looking at the headend agreement, it appears that Provo sold UTOPIA’s interest in both the VOD and Wildvine servers to Broadweave as a part of the sale of iProvo and used UTOPIA’s unused exercise of the right of first refusal as consent to do so. If that is the case, UTOPIA would naturally like to be paid for their share of that asset; it just isn’t clear who should cut the check, City of Provo or Broadweave. Given that the total is rumored to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range, I can imagine that all parties involved are taking a strong stance on their respective positions.

The Daily Herald reported that both Kevin Garlick of Provo and Todd Marriott of UTOPIA are confident they can work something out, though I’ve heard that the problem in all of this is Broadweave CEO Steve Christensen who refuses to reach any kind of agreement. It looks like the headend agreement with Broadweave was signed in August of 2007 and I don’t think UTOPIA was involved in that discussion. This is coming back to bite Provo since they decided to make a lot of assumptions instead of talking it through with their partner.

Given the price tag and the tight financial situations with Provo, UTOPIA and Broadweave, I’m anticipating that this disagreement will get ugly if none of the sides plans to budge. Here’s to hoping they work out some kind of equitable solution instead of ended up in an “all sides lose” expensive legal action.

Mstar Gone? UTOPIA Removes Them From the List of Providers

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Frequent commenter Capt. Video pointed out that UTOPIA’s website no longer shows Mstar as a provider on the network, but there doesn’t appear to be any replacement for them. This means that no current providers offer video service. Mstar’s website, however, has not been similarly updated and still shows them as a provider. Anyone know what’s going on? Are current Mstar customers still getting service?

Sticker Shock: Telecom Service Prices Rising All Over

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Cox is doing it. So is Comcast. In fact, prices are rising all over the telecom industry as stock prices plummet and subscribers prove fickle (as AT&T found out with a loss of 3.9M landline customers so far this year). Many of them are also ramping up higher-speed tiers and premium services to pad the bottom line.

Unfortunately, prices are likely to continue to rise in our current anti-competitive telecommunications market. Byzantine phone regulations are used to block new voice carriers, the programming cartel consistently flexes its muscle to increase wholesale television rates and data providers continue to increase markup even as the wholesale rate of bandwidth drops to new lows. DSLReports lambasts the lack of competition in a scatching editorial that details why telecom has the lowest consumer satisfaction ratings of any industry in the nation. As we continue to support duopolies and exclusive providers via HOAs, the problem is only going to get worse.

The Need for Speed: Comcast Plans to Up Speeds, Qwest Putting FTTN on Ice

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As a sure sign that the souring economy is causing broadband issues, Qwest is planning to ramp down deployment of their FTTN-based ASDL2+ service. While one of their supplies cites the coming winter weather as the reason for the slow-down, but analysts are reading between the lines that plunging landline subscriptions paired with a slowing economy means rough rides ahead for telcos. AT&T is also seeing some effects of slowing subscriber demand. It’s good news for ISPs, though: the wholesale price of bandwidth continues to drop and consumers are more willing to drop cable TV than high-speed Internet, especially as Comcast continues to raise rates.

Meanwhile, details of Comcast’s new DOCSIS 3.0 deployments is coming to light and, while good news for current subscribers or those switching from DSL, it’s hardly competitive with offerings from UTOPIA. In addition to a 50Mbps/5Mbps tier at $150/mo, Comcast plans to upgrade current subscribers to 12Mbps/2Mbps at $42.95/mo and offer a 22Mbps/5Mbps tier at $62.95/mo to compete with a similar offering from Verizon. Compare that to a 15Mbps/15Mbps plan at $40/mo or 50Mbps/50Mbps for $55/mo from either MSTAR or XMission. Just be thankful you aren’t a SureWest customer. They charge around $192/mo for a 50Mbps connection.

Broadweave's Business License Issues Continue

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Remember how Broadweave was operating without a business license in any city it did business in? It seems that despite having gotten licensed to do business in South Jordan and Provo, they still can’t get their ducks in a row in Washington City. Company lawyer Jay Cobb said that Broadweave through they had the matter taken care of yet when I spoke to the city recorder in May, she claimed that Washington City had been trying for months to get Broadweave to take care of its business licensing issues without any success. I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised at a lawyer who bends the truth.

I did a bit of checking on my own and found that that Broadweave still continues to operate in Lehi without a proper business license. I guess they’re too busy in Provo not fixing the program guide and not adding new VOD options to take care of that.

Mayor Spins as Rumors Fly: Just What is Going on With iProvo?

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The Deseret News recently ran an article on iProvo in which Mayor Billings claimed that iProvo is seeing a major turnaround under Broadweave’s direction. Certainly there are areas that have been improved drastically, live support being the most notable. Unfortunately, this improvement in response time has been at the cost of frequent outages with the TV programming guide, a 3-4 hour outage this morning for all Internet users and a lack of general notification as to what the heck exactly is going on.

Mstar is reportedly still receiving payments for customers they sold to Broadweave. Bills have arrived from Broadweave without explanation as to who this bill was from and their purchase of the network. Rates were scheduled to increase, but not notification was sent as to how existing plans will be migrated. This is top-notch management? There’s just two weeks for Sorenson to complete their review of the financing without so much as a peep as to how that’s going.

Amidst all this are many disturbing rumors floating around. CEO Steve Christensen is reportedly having to pay employee salaries out his own pocket. It’s also alleged that Broadweave is using trucks with city plates to do business in Provo. We’ve also witnessed the departure of all iProvo NOC techs and a significant amount of the rest of the staff, a major loss of expertise that cannot be easily compensated for. With the lack of basic notifications and the “silent running” attitude, it’s no wonder that rumors like this continue to persist.

Sounds like Broadweave needs to reconsider who’s doing their PR. Anyone out there willing to fill in the gaps?

Mstar Customers on iProvo Lose Access to E-mail With No Warning

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As further evidence that the transition of iProvo’s Mstar customers to Broadweave is filled with potholes, I’ve heard that Mstar abruptly shut down customer e-mail addresses without any warning or notification from either Mstar or Broadweave, the company who bought those customers. Combine that with a total lack of notification on billing changes (Mstar is reportedly still getting payments from customers they no longer service) and it appears that the highly-touted customer service Broadweave promised has ended up a dud.

I guess George Stewart picked a good time to leave the city council, now didn’t he?

Frontier Guarantees Mass Migration to UTOPIA in Tremonton with New 5GB Monthly Cap

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Frontier Communications, the incumbent phone carrier in Tremonton, has decided to give UTOPIA a helping hand by implementing a 5GB monthly cap on all of their DSL customers to drive them into the arms of a competitor. By comparison, the lowest cap available from a UTOPIA provider is 20 times that at 100GB per month. When the service starts rolling out in September and October, I’m sure that UTOPIA will see a good number of signups from angry customers who don’t appreciate per-byte billing.

One of two possibilities exists: they arrogantly think they’re so much better that nobody will switch or don’t see how boneheaded a move this is. Either way, it highlights the need for a bit of competition in the marketplace.

Mstar Down to a Single Engineer?

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We've all known that the situation at Mstar was dire, but who would have guessed it was this bad? Mstar is reportedly down to a single network engineer to handle all of their operations and technical support issues. The anonymous poster also claims that most of the customer service reps aren't trained to do any kind of basic troubleshooting, leaving that responsibility up to him to tackle. It sounds like the turmoil continues.

h/t: Dirk van der Woude

iProvo Sale Approved

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By a slim 4-3 margin, Provo's Municipal Council approved the sale of iProvo to Broadweave with Sherrie Hall Everett, Steve Turley and Cindy Clark voting against the deal. Now the ball is in Broadweave's court: perform or your name is mud. This puts Provo citizens in a tough bind. If Broadweave fails to meet its financial obligations (which I very much anticipate), the city and its residents get back a network with no providers and may have to pay to buy back the video head-end and any upgrades done. On the flip side, a lack of municipal ownership means citizens aren't as invested in the success of iProvo.

Best of luck to you Broadweave, but few of us regular Joes think you can do it.

(Read more from the Deseret News and Tribune.)