Category Archives: News

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

FTC Report Shows Many Benefits to Muni Broadband

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Among the benefits are increased competition, lower prices, and higher efficiency. The only con it can come up with is a weak sauce possibility that municipalities would engage in anti-competitive behavior. That's amusing considering how long cable and telephone companies have been abusing their monopoly status. The article also cites that HR 5252 would have protected efforts to roll out municipal communications services had it not been stalled by the Net Neutrality debacle.

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San Jose's "Free" WiFi Bogged Down in Access Concerns

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A forum on San Joe's new WiFi system resulted in a lot of concerns over privacy, ID theft, rural access, and underserved residents. The bottom line is that WiFi is bringing up more issues than it solves. WiFi is never really secure (even WPA2 keys can be cracked relatively easily), you can't throw the signals far enough to reach low-population areas, and even making it free can't make people happy. The lesson to be learned is that the "free" service is exactly what you pay for: service is not guaranteed, you might have to purchase a signal booster for as much as $120, and the speeds aren't likely to be as competitive as cable or DSL especially when comparing prices. Sounds like San Jose is preparing itself to become Silicon Alley by not investing in the future that is FTTP.

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Fiber Being Installed in Small Indiana Town

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The small town of Crawfordsville, IN will be knee-deep in fiber by 2007. The municipal electric company is installing the FTTP project which will be live by early next year. From the sounds of things, this project is going to be a single-carrier network, but it should provide some decent competition for the cable and phone companies.

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North Carolina Town Mulls Municipal Fiber

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The town of Wilson, N.C. is currently mulling doing its own municipal fiber project. It has already built 30 miles of the network to link together city agencies and the city-owned utilities and sees the promise in a high-speed network throughout the town. Their major roadblock is that state law prohibits government from competing with private business. The solution they should be looking at is a UTOPIA-style model which has already been signed off on by the state's courts.

The most interesting part of the article, however, is citing a study done by Carnegie Mellon University and MIT showing the benefits of broadband. Communities with a high broadband penetration rate experienced job growth that was a full percent higher, larger increases in the number of businesses in their city (especially technology companies), and had property values grow up to 6 percent within a year of broadband availability. Yes, Virginia, the project doesn't need to directly break even to be considered an overall economic success.

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Home Fiber Installations Top One Million

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Fiber to the home (FTTH) is now in over one million homes nationwide with an estimated six million that could be hooked up, the so-called "last mile" issue. Something significant is that while Utah only makes up 0.7% of the national population, it accounts for about 4.1% of the installed base for fiber, almost all of it belonging to the UTOPIA and iProvo projects. It goes to show that UTOPIA is necessary to keep us on the leading edge and maintain a competitive business environment, especially since Qwest seems to be doing a whole lot of nothing when it comes to fiber.

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Power Companies Leasing Power Lines for Broadband

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While Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) isn't a new concept, it certainly isn't widely deployed. Power companies aren't keen on making major capital investments to support high-speed connections to their customers, yet those same lines reach 47 million underserved Americans who have no other broadband choices. Some of them are turning to leasing their lines to providers as a way to cash in without all of the risk.

While I can see that another major player in the land-based broadband market could help stir up competition, I can't help but think that the power companies will do exclusive contracts with a single provider, a provider that will most likely be a name we've already heard of like Earthlink or AT&T. If that ends up being the case, it'll be just another monopolist in the market providing only token competition without much in the way of true competition. This is especially so if BPL can't deliver equivalent or superior speeds when compared to cable and DSL offerings. I fear this will be another "me too" technology that won't solve our duopoly problems.

Again, it becomes more and more clear that our best alternatives lie in municipal fiber projects like UTOPIA that provide open access to a wide range of competitors at superior speeds and competitive pricing.

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FreeUTOPIA Gets Press

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I was interviewed about UTOPIA in an article in the latest Salt Lake City Weekly. Grab a copy from one of dozens of places around town or see below for the link to the article.

Unsurprisingly, Comcast and Qwest are denying that UTOPIA has forced them to be more competitive, yet the article can cite differential pricing in areas with UTOPIA and a sudden interest by both carriers in delivering broadband to Brigham City after they signed up with UTOPIA. The article also cites how both Qwest and Comcast have been using 1-year contracts to lock people into their service just head of UTOPIA rollouts. Same old game, guys, and we're wise to it. 

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Statewide Cable Franchising: A Bad Deal for California

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California has joined a number of states in issuing statewide cable television franchises, a move that will probably leave small towns even further out in the cold. The telephone and cable companies, who both supported this bill, claim that it will increase competition and result in lower pricing.

Who do they think they're kidding? Why on earth would a company support a law that forces them to compete harder? The simple answer is that they're lying. This law removes cable television franchising from the intense scrutiny of the cities and places it far removed from them in Sacramento. Small towns may have to fight an endless battle with the state when a cabe television provider acts up as opposed to simply kicking them out of town.

Cable companies will now be able to sneakily cherry-pick neighborhoods, avoid rolling out comparable services to rural areas, and increase their monopoly powers by creating a maze of state regulations that only cash-laden companies can navigate. That's always been the intent of these bills, and leave it to crazy California to take the bait hook, line, and sinker.

These unscrupulous and monopolistic behaviors make it more and more apparent that we cannot depend on the incumbent carriers to make good on their promises of better service at lower prices. The only way left to get real competition is through municipal fiber projects like UTOPIA that bring in competitors on an even footing. 

UTOPIA Brings Broadband to Rural Users Faster Than Qwest, Comcast

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There's an article in the Davis County Clipper concerning UTOPIA's rollout to rural areas. These areas have been underserved by the incumbent carriers for years. UTOPIA finally brings them the benefits of high-speed without the high price tag that cable and phone companies charge. UTOPIA could very well be the first and only broadband service that many rural Utahns will see.

The article also notes that demand in urban and suburban areas is strong with developers of new housing and apartment complexes requesting that UTOPIA be built into the property. 

Editorial: HR 5252 Would Increase Competition, Lower Prices for Cable

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An editorial from Tuscon chimes in to support HR 5252 without the badly-written poison pill to banish Net Neutrality. According to the editorial, our southern neighbors in Arizona overpay for cable by over $178M per year due to lack of competition. Let's speed up UTOPIA adoption so we don't end up in the same boat!

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