The Real Story Behind Veracity and Nuvont

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I had the chance to sit down with someone from Veracity yesterday to get a better understanding of what they do and how they do it. One of the things that came up that is the relationship between Veracity and Nuvont, a spin-off company. I know I had a bit of confusion as to the relationship between the two entities. Now that I have the full story, it’s worth getting it out in the open to clear that air.

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UTOPIA's Potential for Hosted Services

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Last week, I had the opportunity to go visit TenX Networks to see what kind of network devices they build and how this could apply to UTOPIA. (Disclosure: they bought me lunch, but nothing fancy.) Their basic premise is to build network appliances using off-the-shelf Linux software to keep costs low while providing a high level of functionality. In short, they have an office full of really cool toys. I got a demonstration of their media server appliance powered by Ubuntu and MythTV (with what appeared to be a lot of useful hacks). We also talked about a SMB appliance that was a router, Asterisk PBX and CRM server all in one. I was impressed with how smoothly the media center performed and when coupled with the high bandwidth UTOPIA offers, there is significant opportunity for new hosted services.

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Broadband Bytes: Monday Edition

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U-CAN Meetings for September

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U-CAN Meetings will be held this month in Brigham City and West Valley City. Due to the lengthy travel time involved in getting up to Brigham City, no meetings will be held this month in Utah or Davis Counties. The meeting in Brigham City will be held at the Brigham City Carnegie Library at 26 E Forest St and the West Valley meeting will be held at the Hunter Library at 4740 W 4100 S. As usual, all are encouraged to attend (even the resident mole from Frontier Communications).

UPDATE: In my haste to publish, I forgot to mention dates and times. WVC is on the 25th at 7PM and Brigham City is on the 27th at noon.

FTTH Coming Soon to Manti, Ephraim, Sterling

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It’s not just cash-rich incumbent telcos (read: Verizon) that can get in on the FTTH action. Broadband Properties Magazine reported in the August/September issue that Manti Tele Communications Company is replacing its copper with a brand-new FTTH network designed to devlier faster Internet speeds as well as IPTV. The company’s website (which looks like it was designed in 1997, the year the company was formed) is light on details, but I’m hopeful that this is a big step forward for these rural communities.

Broadband Bytes: Weekend Edition

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Today’s Broadband Bytes was brought to you by the letters C, W, and T.

  • Robert X. Cringely has some words to say about Comcast’s new bandwidth caps. He compares today’s caps to the caps he had years ago. Do they match up? Is Comcast offering a better deal than the ISP’s of the late 1990’s? And from Slashdot, “Comcast has filed a court appeal of an FCC ruling that says the company can’t delay peer-to-peer traffic on its network because it violates FCC net neutrality principles.“
  • Australia’s caps make Comcast’s look great.
  • With all the talk about city wifi networks becoming ubiquitous there are some downsides…scalability. Networkworld has an interesting article about the the technical problems with scaling WiFi to meet today’s bandwidth hungry users. As a side note, some users ask the network engineers at my place of employment (higher ed) when wifi will become our primary means of connecting desktops to the network. The answer is always the same: never. They say: “What do you mean I can’t use this new 2.4Ghz phone I just purchased?” Some departments decide to go wireless anyway (usually to avoid the cost of wiring) but later end up having to convert to physical connections anyway.
  • It looks like Comcast’s new caps are around thanks to Florida consumer protection laws. It seems that prior to the 250Gig caps there was no cap. They just cut off the top 1000 users every month. Because consumers were unable to find out how to avoid this in the future the Florida AG became involved.
  • As the Analog TV signals fade out, will you receive the new digital signals? In rural areas you may not!
  • Along those lines I dug up these old articles about Utah getting a jump start on converting the state-wide network of TV translators to digital signals. One interesting tidbit from the article: “It is widely believed that Utah has the largest terrestrial-analog translator network in the world. The system provides rural viewers with over-the-air television in approximately 80 percent of the state.”
  • Speaking of rural communities, two very small communities got federal grant money totaling $1.7 million from the United States Rural Development to build fiber optic networks. Is this different than the RUS funding UTOPIA originally had?
  • Verizon is using Yahoo as their “portal partner” for all their broadband users.
  • We’ve talked about the FCC wanting free broadband before. Here’s a company that wants to make it happen (good details). In a letter to the editor in USA Today, the writer asks, why should broadband be free? (he thinks it shouldn’t be). T-Mobile has been the most vocal opponent to this plan by the FCC to give out free broadband, they say because it could cause interference with other wireless signals. The FCC is trying to put that fear to rest in a demonstration.
  • The Register (based in the UK) has a great piece titled “Why the U.S. faces broadband price hikes” (due to the recent FCC Comcast net neutrality ruling).  But in somewhat unrelated news, others like CNET are talking about broadband price wars brewing. Those price wars could end up hurting consumers though instead of helping them.
  • Cable broadband is growing faster than DSL and tecos, and interestingly, VOIP is a big factor in driving broadband growth and makes up the biggest percentage of broadband value added services.

Insider: Broadweave Selling Re-branded Veracity Service, MSTAR to Follow Suit

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Remember how Broadweave constantly hammered on the importance of owning thier own phone switch? Apparently it’s all talk and no walk. An insider has revealed that Broadweave resells phone service from Veracity for all of the customers they acquired from MSTAR on the iProvo network. With Broadweave unable to control all of the SIP session from one end to the other, it sounds like subscribers should be prepared for more of the finger-pointing game when their voice service experiences issues. That’ll be a great selling point for the marketers from Telerus, won’t it?

This same insider has reported that MSTAR plans to follow suit and switch their customers on UTOPIA from using NGT to Veracity. They would join Nuvont in selling white box services from Veracity and make XMission the only current provider to not do so. This will reportedly result in a loss of dialing features, voice mail boxes and even some toll-free numbers. Subscribers had better prepare for the worst.

iProvo Deal Closes: Sorenson Gone, EsNet Takes Their Place

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Seems that the rumors were true: Sorenson took a long, hard look at the sale of iProvo to Broadweave and said “no thanks”. Despite this, Broadweave managed to line up alternate funding that appears to be an amalgation of EsNet and some of Broadweave’s existing investors including Fraser Bullock of Sorenson. Broadweave is playing thier hand close and isn’t talking numbers, so I’d be interested to know what the final deal is. After all, if we’re back to talking letters of credit and not money in the bank, we should be quite concerned that these letters are spread a bit thin.

Broadweave also won’t talk numbers. They won’t disclose the number of subscribers they have or the revenues they are receiving beyond vague statements like “the numbers are higher than expected”. While I can appreciate a business’ right to proprietary information, the public financing aspect of the deal means additional public scrutiny is a must. The rumor mill is that both Nuvont and Veracity plan to aggressively pursue new subscribers and many customers who’ve gotten fed up with the dwindling VOD options, flaky program guide and no after-hours NOC have been evaluating switching their provider.

Good luck Broadweave, but it seems that you aren’t totally up to the challenge.

h/t: Capt. Video for posting a link to the Daily Herald story.

Broadband Bytes: Thursday Edition

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  • Dish Network has started offering HD and SD content in MPEG4 format. Other providers cable and DirectTV are only providing HD content in MPEG4 format.
  • Qwest is trying to get Comcast taxed as a telco here in Utah.
  • Google says they need more undersea bandwidth and traditional providers can’t provide. So they are building more of their own. From an older article on the same subject “Google has so much cash, it’s now competing head-to-head the world’s biggest telcos.”
  • I wish this study came out when I was still in school. Then I would have had a better excuse for the 2nd phone line for the modem back in the day. Apparently broadband at home helps kids get better grades.

Update: Sorry for the dupe on the Comcast cap thing. I guess I should check the front page before posting.

Comcast Caps to Begin in October, Set at 250GB per Month

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BroadbandReports broke it and Comcast confirmed it: starting on October 1, Comcast will institute caps of 250GB per month. It’s beleived that overage fees are off the table for now, a welcome change from the initial plan to charge $1.50 per GB, a markup of around 100 times cost. There’s also a concrete DMCA policy. Anyone getting 4 or more DMCA warning notices in a 12-month period could have their connection terminated (but you were smart enough to use PeerGuardian, right?), but there’s nothing to hint at any kind of stepped-up enforcement.

The upside is that Comcast’s “you’re using too much Internet” policy is now clearly spelled out, though there’s no mention as to what counts or how to see your current usage. A cap of 250GB, while still a cap, isn’t all that bad considering that amounts to downloading about 125 standard-def movies.

The real lesson is that with all of the caps and “network management”, the age of all-you-can-eat Internet is over. It’s not fair to low-use customers to raise prices across the board to subsidize the top end of users and customers aren’t willing to accept vague limits on their previously unlimited Internet access. As long as the policies are clear and there’s a way to verify your own usage, I’m perfectly happy with the Age of Caps.