Category Archives: News

News articles about UTOPIA from around the country and around the world.

Egg on MY Face: UTOPIA is likely to ask for pledges after all

By | | , ,
11 Comments

A month ago, I laid into the UTA and Rep. Craig Frank for claiming that UTOPIA could call bond payments this year. As far as I knew, the financing plan would not allow for UTOPIA to call any pledges until next year when the first payment came due. Now it looks like I’m the red-faced one as UTOPIA has confirmed that it plans to ask cities to chip in this year.

Apparently UTOPIA was only able to secure a variable-rate bond as part of the refinancing deal and was unable to convert it into a fixed-rate one. That’s not surprising given that credit markets were running a bit dry, but it is unexpected since that little detail never seemed to come up. Barring a sudden large increase in subscriber revenue, this has left UTOPIA short anywhere from $50K to $300K a month because of increased interest rates. The article didn’t reveal if that is the only shortfall in bond payments or not, but they are covering operating costs.

I’m especially upset because UTOPIA didn’t tell me that I was wrong after I published my lambasting. And I ended up finding out this morning by reading the article in the DesNews instead of getting any kind of head’s up. The lack of information available to the public is bad enough, but leaving your loudest supporters hanging out to dry just won’t fly.

Congress wants to stop metered Internet, but it's putting effort into the wrong end of the problem

By | | ,
2 Comments

Rep. Eric Massa of New York today introduced a bill designed to put a stop to metered billing plans at large ISPs. The gist of it is that any ISP with more than 2 million customers must get FTC approval before doing any kind of consumption-based billing. Certainly companies like Time Warner and AT&T have gotten out of control with their miserly caps, but this is putting effort into the wrong end of the problem.

This proposal is just more of the same: highly restrictive regulation for the incumbents that gets constantly gamed and does nothing to promote better service provider choices. Given that the status quo of telecommunications regulation hasn’t ended up working so well, why on earth would we even entertain this idea? Lunacy is doing the same thing and expecting different results.

We should instead be focusing on how to increase competitive choices in the marketplace so that consumers have the option to pick their service provider. I’m confident that the only reason any service provider can get away with ridiculously low caps is because consumers can’t flee to another service. Once there’s some more competitive pressure, we’ll see those prices drop like a rock. In fact, markets with 4 service providers have prices that average about 25% less than markets with just two providers.

Let’s make sure our Congresscritters start focusing on the right part of the story. Competition is good. Regulation? Not so much.

Sale Fail: Provo Considering Contingencies for iProvo

By | | , ,
15 Comments

Found a nice little tidbit buried at the end of a story on Provo’s financial difficulties. Apparently the city is already preparing for the worst case scenario of getting the network back as Broadweave has depleted half of the reserve fund to make bond payments. Given that Broadweave is likely to lose a large chunk of reliable revenue from Traverse Mountain should they get booted out, my money is on the network being back in city hands by next year. Anyone want to give odds on this?

Qwest Thinking VDSL2, Could Be Too Little, Too Late

By | |
23 Comments

The biggest black eye in Qwest’s attempt to bring their broadband offerings into the 21st century has been the abysmal 896Kbps upload speeds, even when using ADSL2+ and FTTN. According to some insider posts at DSLReports, that may change. According to the tipster, Qwest is looking at VDSL2 with plans to bump the upload speeds to 5Mbps with a new top tier pushing 40Mbps/20Mbps. Even so, it’s not enough to catch up to UTOPIA or even Comcast.

The real question is if Qwest can afford any kind of widespread deployment. Since the company couldn’t unload its long-haul operations for anywhere near the asking price, Qwest is where it always has been: too deep in debt, too cash poor, and hemmoraging landline customers to VoIP, cable, and wireless carriers. They halted the current ADSL2+ installs citing that the winter weather was preventing them from continuing the build, but we all know it’s cash flow issues. Like a lot of analysts, I think Qwest is going to continue to wither until they find a cash-rich investor looking for a fixer-upper.

And if Qwest is more-or-less at a standstill, what are the odds of Comcast dropping DOCSIS 3.0 tiers in Utah? Pretty slim unless you live in Provo or a UTOPIA city where fiber is prodding them forward. It’s no secret that Comcast has, to date, focused network upgrades most heavily on areas where Verizon’s FIOS is the king of speed. As half of the duopoly crumbles, you can expect more of the same from Comcast: ho-hum speeds, mediocre pricing, and lackluster customer service (their Twitter damage control unit customer service team notwithstanding).

Utah Tops In Internet Adoption, But What About Speeds?

By | |
1 Comment

The Deseret News reported that Utah has the highest rate of Internet use of any state, topping out at 74.8% of homes. In a “well duh” moment, they attribute it to the young population and large concentration of tech companies. What was missing, however, is the full picture on how we’re doing speed-wise.

And that, friends, is a mixed bag. According to the results from SpeedTest.net, Utah doesn’t even crack the top 10 for download speeds. We do, however, place second when it comes to upload speeds, no doubt due to symmetrical connections available on the various fiber networks in our state. When you narrow in on our state, the best download and upload speeds come from Lindon and Orem, both cities with UTOPIA fiber. Provo comes in fourth on both lists with Broadweave/iProvo. Incumbents don’t fare so well. Qwest doesn’t crack either top 10 list and Comcast only makes the download list.

We should be demanding not just that Internet access be widespread, but that it be high-quality as well. The incumbents’ inability to deliver next-generation bandwidth is leaving us far behind the rest of the pack.

Open Fiber Network Hit Cedar City, But It's Missing a Lot

By | |
Leave a comment

Utah-based InterLinx Communications is open for business in Cedar City with a shiny all-fiber network open to any provider, but the devil is in the details. The article claims service will be available to all homes and businesses “in its boundaries”, but it’s not entirely clear what those boundaries are or what kind of installation costs will be associated with it. InterLinx received $1.6M from the city and state for their deployment, so it isn’t an entirely private affair either.

A glance of the provider list from their web page shows a bunch of commercial service providers. The one residential provider resells VoIP and Dish, so there are no true triple-play providers. I’m going to make a bet that they plan to serve primarily office parks and provide an alternative to Qwest’s wholesale transport with homes being an afterthought with high install fees. This isn’t as impressive as The Spectrum made it out to be. UTOPIA still has plenty of opportunity in the city.

Prime Time Communications Launches a New Company Blog

By | |
1 Comment

I just got the heads up from Prime Time Communications that they are now running a blog to report on issues related to the Mstar transition. In addition to a “mea culpa” over the video transition issues (including the loss of local channels and problems with the new STBs), they offer up hints that new pricing tiers will be available June 1. I imagine that will be to bring the pricing in line with the updated offerings from other providers. If you’re a Prime Time Communications/Mstar subscriber (or just want to keep tabs on what they’re up to), go check it out.

Integra Telecom Now Listed as a UTOPIA Provider

By | | , ,
Leave a comment

I was poking around UTOPIA’s website today and noticed that Integra Telecom is now listed as a commerical provider. This is an exciting development for UTOPIA as Integra measures its revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars and spans 11 states. Picking up a carrier-class provider of business services underscores the strength of UTOPIA’s network and could result in the migration of high-dollar accounts from large corporations. Good job on the pickup, guys!

The Need for Speed: UTOPIA's First 100Mbps Residential Customer Hooked Up in Layton

By | | , ,
14 Comments

Despite the hefty $147/mo price tag, someone in Layton has some serious bragging rights by becoming the first residential customer on UTOPIA to pick up 100Mbps service courtesey of FuzeCore. Nobody else in Utah offers those kinds of speeds in the home and UTOPIA plans to up the ante even further with planned 1Gbps service to residences (though I shudder to think how much it will cost). Can competitors Qwest and Comcast catch up? Survey says “not bloody likely”.

Prime Time Speaks on the STB Replacement

By | | ,
2 Comments

I had a conversation today with Bryon Wentzlaff of Prime Time Communications and he answered a few questions on the STB replacement in progress. By his figures, about 1800 boxes were replaced leading up to the termination of signals from Broadweave that occurred on Sunday. That was all done in the last two weeks just after Prime Time inked the final deal to purchase MSTAR.

He also said there are still around 900 boxes left to replace, most in student housing. Part of the problem is that they didn’t have enough boxes to complete all of the replacements, but those are supposed to arrive in the Wasatch Front tomorrow morning and a team of 30 installers will be replacing them as fast as they can over the next two weeks. I know that’s small consolation to those of you looking at a blank screen after months (or years) of video issues with MSTAR, but have some patience with them. Replacing 2700 boxes in a month is no small feat.