Category Archives: News

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

Mstar Customers on iProvo Lose Phone Service Because Mstar Didn't Pay Their Bills

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In an unbelievable move, around 200 Mstar customers on iProvo have been without phone service since Friday after New Global Telecom, the VoIP provider that Mstar uses, cut them off. NGT claims that Mstar is behind on their payments for iProvo customers and that UTOPIA customers are not affected. John Hansen, Mstar's interim president, says the claims of non-payment are bunk and blames the problem on iProvo customer service staff.

Broadweave managed to do an emergency transition of most of the affected customers to their network but it is still struggling with the last 200 or so. Phone customers are still able to receive calls and place 911 calls, according to NGT. Customer experiences have been mixed with some reports that the customer service lines are busy and others saying that they've been able to get through. For some odd reason, Broadweave's PR consultant has stated that they're waiting for the affected customers to call them to get the issue sorted out instead of aggressively trying to contact those customers.

While this problem isn't Broadweave's creation, it's their baby now. Mstar doesn't have much incentive to make sure the transition is a smooth one and can easily put egg on Broadweave's face by dropping a problem in their lap that they don't quickly resolve. It makes you wonder how many customers will unbundle services even if it costs more money to do so.

NGT also claimed in their statements that Mstar would be selling off the phone customers on UTOPIA to another provider. Obviously, UTOPIA can't comment one way or the other and there's nothing from Mstar to confirm or deny that claim. Any insiders want to clarify this in the comments?

(Read more from the Daily Herald. h/t: Capt. Video and Thomas Perry for sending along the stories.)

The Need for Speed: Comcast, Verizon Start Boosting Bandwidth

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The race for the speed crown continues as Verizon rolls out 50Mbps/20Mbps service to all of its current FIOS customers. The super-fast tier of service comes at a price of around $150/month, not far off from what Qwest is charging for inferior 20Mbps/896Kbps DSL service. This also prepares Verizon for a fight to the death in the Lone Star State with AT&T's inferior U-Verse service where it plans to overbuild to 600,000 homes in the GTE territories it purchased. I'm sure Qwest is sweating as well; it also borders several Verizon markets and can't compete on speed either.

Comcast also made some speed announcements, bumping upload speeds on the 6Mbps and 8Mbps tiers to 1Mbps and 2Mbps respectively. I've independently speedtested this claim and found that I'm getting a solid 1.3Mbps of upload on my 6Mbps plan. While the plan is to roll out 50Mbps service in multiple markets after testing in the Minneapolis area, that will also come with all kinds of protocol-agnostic throttling and potentially a 250GB monthly transfer cap.

Despite all this increased speed, we're still doing terribly in broadband availability and adoption. OECD numbers show us slipping to 15th out of 30 with China stealing the crown from us for most fixed broadband connections. Caps and throttling are also going to prove highly unpopular as we approach a new variant of Moore's Law that shows IP traffic doubling every two years through at least 2012. Maybe its time for companies to respond to consumer demand for more bandwidth instead of trying to smother it with a pillow, you know?

Clearwire Promises Open Network; Is This the Mythical Third Pipe?

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Everyone was buzzing about the prospect of a wide-open network during the 700MHz auction (don't hold your breath on Verizon making good on it), but Clearwire is giving it to us now. The company, a joint venture with Sprint, Comcast, Time Warner and others, is promising open everything on its new WiMax network. Bring your own device? Check. Use any application? Check. Pick your own retailer? Check, and that's the real measure of the open network.

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Shakeup at Mstar: CEO and Chief Marketing Officer Part Ways With Company

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After several rounds of laying off the rank-and-file, it looks like executives are among those now leaving the company. Mstar CEO Ben Gould and Chief Marketing Officer Kirk Tanner are no longer with the company, reportedly having departed voluntarily. The word on the street, according to the Daily Herald, is that Gould got an offer to go elsewhere whereas Tanner's status is unknown. John Hansen of Chicago Venture Partners LP, Mstar's owner, has taken over in the interim and there aren't plans in the near future to hire a new chief marketing officer.

Given their performance problems on iProvo and the decimated customer base from the sale of iProvo, it's not surprising to hear that Mstar went through some more slashing. Their plan is to re-focus on building a customer base on UTOPIA, secure additional financing and pursue opportunities on other fiber optic networks around the country. Also of note is that Broadweave offered a settlement to Mstar to get them to drop their objections to the sale of iProvo.

The question now remains: can Mstar survive? Post your thoughts in the comments. 

Centerville Forming UTOPIA Oversight Committee

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Centerville is taking a proactive role in making sure UTOPIA's health stays under close watch by forming an advisory committee composed of both residents and city officials. The city council is currently accepting applications from residents who are interested in participating and the word on the street is that three will be chosen to help provide feedback on UTOPIA and participate in promotional efforts. If you're interested in serving on the committee, contact your city council member. If you don't get selected, there's still going to be plenty of opportunities through U-CAN. 

Time Warner Cable Starts Metering Internet Usage, Others to Follow Suit

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While we've known this was coming for a while now, Time Warner Cable has finally started a pilot to meter Internet usage complete with hefty overage fees. New customers in Beaumont, TX will have to put up with meager 40GB per month cap, enough for grandma and folks who do light surfing but entirely inadequate for consumers of online media, gamers, telecommuters and file-sharers. Don't want to pony up $55/mo for the highest tier of service? You could get a cap as low as 5GB per month. Overages will run $1 per GB while many retail hosting providers charge less than $0.50 for the same amount of transfer.

They aren't the only ones either. AT&T is considering caps starting this fall, Qwest already boots high-bandwidth users and even Verizon is keeping its options open for download caps on the speedy new FIOS network though it has no immediate plans to do so. Comcast has also been kicking around the idea of transfer caps (albeit at a generous 250GB per month) and has, for the time being, decided on a protocol-agnostic traffic-shaping policy during peak hours only. After months of being hammered for throttling primarily file-sharers, Comcast must be ready for a respite from angry users.

It seems like the age of all-you-can-eat Internet is rapidly drawing to a close as the financial realities of unrestrained data transfer start to roost with providers unwilling or unable to invest in next-generation infrastructure. Compare this with the emergence of competitive unlimited-use cellular voice plans from Verizon, Sprint and AT&T within weeks of each other and the proliferation of unlimited-use landlines from Vonage, Comcast and Cox. I guess everything old is new again.

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.)

Details of the Sale of AFCNet

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As usual, David Rodeback is on top of the AFCNet situation in American Fork. According to him, Surpha will buy AFCNet for $500,000 and make interest-only payments for the network with a goal to pay it off by the end of 2012. They'll lease fiber capacity from the city from American Fork to Orem (ostensibly to connect up to their POP) and become the big bad bill collector for ISPs behind on their payments to the city, keeping half of the money and putting the other half into the purchase price. The city isn't dumping the debt incurred as a part of network construction, but they also aren't ditching their fiber lines going to other cities.

Without more details about Surpha, I don't know if this particular owner-financed deal fares any better than Provo's current boondoggle. On the one hand, the purchase price is low and the financing is for just 3.5 years. Surpha also has a working relationship with the city as an ISP on the network. On the other hand, Surpha hasn't updated its website in almost 2 years, their stock price is in the sewer and there are rumors of investors who want blood. I'm approaching this one with cautious optimism.

Multimedia Edition: Mayor Becker on UTOPIA, Utah Taxes Now Conference on Muni Telecom

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Coming to you today is a two-fer of audio on UTOPIA.

First up is a conversation on KCPW's Midday Metro where Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker responds to a caller question on Salt Lake City's future with UTOPIA. He's definitely supportive of local decisions regarding the matter, though he's also cautious about joining because of the slow sign-ups and cost issues involved. His solution? Get the voters to speak up and say yea or nay. Listen to the full response here (MP3 Download). h/t: Paul Alexander who called in the question and sent me the MP3 response.

Second is a panel discussion on iProvo and UTOPIA at the Utah Taxes Now Conference with Utah Taxpayers Association President Sen. Howard Stephenson, Provo Mayor Lewis Billings and UTOPIA's new Executive Director Todd Marriott. Given that this is a UTA-sponsored event and the panel discussion was titled "The Collapse of Municipal Telecom in Utah", you've gotta know that the audience was probably stacked against both iProvo and UTOPIA. For those that have been listening to the discussion on municipal networks for a long time, you probably won't find a lot new in this discussion, but it's worth listening to anyway. The full conversation can be played from UtahPulse.com here (embedded audio). h/t: Utah Policy Daily who linked the audio of the conference.

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.)