Category Archives: News

While WiFi gets lots of press in the US, fiber seems to be making big splashes abroad. Countries like Lithuania, Slovenia and Norway are rolling out FTTH networks with speeds up to 1Gbps while Asia's FTTH base in Japan, Korea and Singapore is growing at a brisk pace. The number of worldwide broadband subscribers is expected to double in the next 5 years with fiber solutions comprising over 10% of those connections. Old-school pokey DSL, a technology that leverages antiquated copper networks, is expected to still be the world-wide dominator though mainly in under-developed countries that can't invest in new fiber networks.

Currently, the demand for high-speed fiber is rapidly making DSL and cable modems the new dial-up, leaving them in the dust in terms of speed, responsiveness and uptime. Users of Verizon's FIOS usually can't find anything but praise for the service and every UTOPIA and iProvo subscriber I've met is pleased as punch. Users of DSL and cable, however, usually have nothing but complaints about low speeds, poor service and unexplained outages. Them's the breaks of copper.

(See full articles here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Plagued by poor signal strength, low subscriber numbers and generally botched installs, municipal WiFi is looking like the monorail of the 21st century. Most subscribers complain that not only do signals often drop or fail to get inside of their buildings, but the speeds experienced are slower than traditional DSL or cable modems. Since WiFi only supports Internet access, the investment takes many more subscribers to break even than do FTTP networks that combine voice, video and data. While some municipalities hope to boost subscribers by luring in cell phone users that can take advantage of built-in WiFi, it's a gamble that some cities just aren't willing to take.

Even with the high-profile failures and big losses reported to Wall Street, Earthlink is plunging ahead with WiFi in Philadelphia despite its uncertain future in San Francisco and cutting back on the number of projects it intends to tackle. With its dial-up business riding off into the sunset and co-branded DSL services not being widely available, you have to wonder how long the well-known ISP can continue to run in the red. 

Let that be a lesson: when you try and do something cheaply as opposed to correctly, it'll get you in the end.

(See full articles here, here, and here.)

The American Fork city council has voted unanimously to start negotiations with an Orem company to sell off their ailing municipal broadband network. Much like with the Packfront deal, Suphra would be required to upgrade the network to support triple play services and extend service to more homes than the network currently serves. Given the troubled history of the network (including some poor design decisions from the get-go), American Fork was left with few options. Council member Heidi Rodeback put it best:

Much as I love my high-speed connection to the AFCnet– in my part of town, it's reliable — I can't look the taxpayer in the eye and tell him we're leaving roads unfinished because we want to go $1 million in the red on municipal broadband.

The citizens and government officials in American Fork just don't have the stomach to fix a project plagued by a lack of purpose, subscribers and comprehensive service plans. This pretty much automatically precluded joining UTOPIA and making the small investments necessary to bring the network up to spec while automatically having contracts with 4 different service providers.

(See full article here.)

Google's been eyeing the upcoming auction for the 700MHz spectrum and involving itself heavily in the public debate over broadband. It seems their intent with the spectrum is to become a wholesaler of wireless access across the nation, letting companies bid against each other for the right to use the network in various markets in an AdWords-like auction. If this goes in conjunction with proposals that any network built on top of the frequency remain vendor-neutral, we may very well see Google becoming not just the gatekeeper of search but the gatekeeper of almost all wholesale wireless signals in the US. 

Is this is a good thing? On the one hand, a vendor-neutral wholesaler that builds and operates the plant encourages retailer competition, a system not unlike UTOPIA or iProvo. On the other hand, there are legitimate worries that Google could end up controlling too much of our digital lives with a potential to erode privacy. Only time will tell if Google will jump into this market and if they'll manage it in a way favorable to broadband competition.

(See full articles here, here, here and here.) 

Qwest has heavily marketed the idea of locking in the rate for pay for their DSL service, but you're left wondering if it's really that good of a deal. An in-depth look reveals that they can revoke that discounted price if you change speeds, move, change your service provider or cancel service before the end of the two-year contract. Early cancellation also brings a whopping $200 fee, though there's no word on if you have to then retroactively pay the difference for all the months of service you've already gotten, something Comcast will do if you break your contract. (I have a feeling that Qwest will try the same thing.) Considering that speeds are due to be rising substantially in the next 5 years, it seems like chaining yourself to a particular service plan is a bad deal for you but a sweet one for Qwest, a company experiencing a high churn rate as Internet users go to other companies and VoIP providers like Vonage eat away at their core business operations.

(See full article here.)