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Fiber to the Home
FTTH
Content tagged with "FTTH"
Sarasota, Florida, Recognizes Need for Better Broadband
Another community in Florida is considering a community broadband network as a solution to its need for faster, more reliable broadband than incumbents offer.
The City formed a commission and created a white paper discussing the problem and potential solutions (referencing the success of Chattanooga and Lafayette). It recognizes broadband as a key infrastructure.
The report lays out a range of options for the city: from doing nothing and letting the market determine Sarasota's broadband future; to partnering with a private entity in building a network that would increase speeds; to tapping a public project already in the works that could create a powerful Internet backbone between Manatee and Sarasota counties.We recently reported on another community, Dunnellon, that is building a community fiber network. Unfortunately, these communities have to deal with unnecessary barriers created by the Florida Legislature as they invest in the future of their community. Photo used under Creative Commons License, courtesy of 83d40m
Interview with Wilson's Greenlight Community Fiber Network
This is a good 5 minute interview discussing what Wilson has done to build the first citywide FTTH network in North Carolina. Greenlight has a business customer taking 1Gbps -- something that would undoubtedly have been totally cost-prohibitive (and possibly just unavailable) if the City had not made its broadband infrastructure investment.
Toward the end, Brian Bowman is asked if he recommends all communities build a similar network. His answer is very wise: all communities should have the right to do it and they should decide for themselves based on their situation. That is our position as well.
This video is no longer available.
Associated Press Ignores Muni Broadband Successes
The AP says Burlington Telecom may be a cautionary tale for cities around the the country that contemplate building their own networks.
It is fascinating that this article appears now, as we wait for the audit of Burlington to be published, where we hope to finally discover exactly what went wrong in the network. The Mayor used to allege that Tim Nulty (General Manager who built it) left it in ruin when he resigned.
However, it looked good (not great, but good) at that point. And after the transition, the Mayor's Administration ceased Nulty's policies of transparency, so we would have to take their word for it rather than any proof. For instance, BT ceased to work with citizen oversight committees. This is the same Administration that hid supposed transfers to the network from the City Council and the people.
The very fact that such secrecy was possible is troubling. These networks are intended to behave somewhat transparently and should be independently audited to ensure problems (which may be corrected when found) are not hidden for political reasons. Burlington had a unique structure that allowed the Mayor too much opaque control over the network - something rarely found in the structure of most community networks. (Some things, such as prices paid for content, should remain secret for competitive reasons, but that should not allow the Mayor to hide key metrics regarding the health of the network.)
There are reasons to believe the Mayor improperly accounted money to BT, which is why we await an audit from the state that we hope will clear up exactly how Burlington Telecom went from being a good example to the worst example of public ownership (something paid shills from telco and cableco groups critics love to point out).
Author Dave Gram has an odd passage regarding this situation:
In September 2009, BT notified the Vermont Public Service Board that it had used $17 million in city funds in violation of its state license. State officials have been mum about the details of their investigation, and an FBI spokesman, through an assistant, would not confirm or deny a Burlington Free Press report that that agency had stepped in.
Using Faster Broadband
Chattanooga's Times Free Press explained how locals are using the nation's fastest broadband network. You may remember that Chattanooga's gigabit service generated a fair amount of attention back in September:
Searching for “gigabit” on Google after the announcement revealed 298 news articles about Chattanooga’s milestone, and more than 9 million Twitter impressions within 48 hours, according to the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce.We already reported that one company (HomeServe) cited the network as a reason for bringing 140 jobs to Chattanooga. This article quotes their director of IT infrastructure: “This network will be so fast that it will be like we’re right next door." That company is located all over the East coast: Miami, New York, Connecticut, etc. Diagnostic Radiology Consultants are excited about the network:
“The bandwidth is a huge part of the practice because each one of these images is huge, about 300 megs,” Busch said. With DRC’s outgoing server uploading information at a gigabit, the nearly 700 doctors who use his service will be able to quickly access body scans anytime, from any computer, instead of on the more limited point to point networks many clinics and hospitals currently use.Another company in the carpet industry needs the faster connections to meet their clients needs and become more efficient. As customers and clients request more streaming media, they greatly need to increase their upstream capacity. It isn't just about business, but education and entertainment…
The Tennessee Aquarium has already taken several steps to prepare for increased demand for streaming HD content, said Thom Benson, communications manager for the Aquarium. The Chattanooga landmark has already set up two webcams to stream live images of aquatic life to the Aquarium’s online visitors, and one HD camera to observe weather conditions outside.
Vermonters Angry at Wireless Broadband Stimulus Grant Instead of Fiber Loan
Vermonters are asking some hard questions about the federal broadband stimulus decision to throw money at a wireless network for Vermont rather than loaning money to an organization dedicated to delivering real broadband.
Senator Bernie Sanders convened a meeting to discuss the awards toward the end of October.
Senator Bernie Sanders led off his “broadband town meeting” Saturday morning at Vermont Technical College with a ringing affirmation of the need for better broadband coverage in Vermont and the nation. However, nobody in the crowd of nearly 300 people needed to be convinced of that. What they wanted to know was whether a huge new federal grant to a private company was the right way to do it.VTel, a small private telephone company, received a $116 million grant to build a FTTH network to serve their existing 18,000 footprint as well as a wireless network that is intended to serve the entire state. In contrast, the East Central Vermont Fiber Network (which we have covered previously), applied for a loan to build a FTTH network to everyone in the 24 communities that have joined together to form the network. The ECFiber network would be run by a nonprofit and would repay the loan from revenue generated by selling triple-play services on the network.
Background From Reedsburg, Wisconsin: Community Fiber Pioneer
David Isenberg, of isen.blog, has published a short history of Reedsburg's community fiber network that he previously wrote for the FCC when they were gathering evidence of successful networks they would later ignore in formulating a plan to continue the failed status quo of hoping private companies will build and operate the infrastructure we need.
Nonetheless, one cannot say that smart people like David did not try to help the FCC overcome its obsession with national carriers who dominate the conversations, and whose employees often work periodically with the FCC in what we call the revolving door (which itself, is a reason the FCC has been captured).
Back to Reedsburg; it is a small community approximately 55 miles northwest of Madison that just happens to have far better broadband service than just about anywhere else in Wisconsin.
David writes,
RUC first entered the telecommunications business in 1998, when it constructed a ring to tie its wells, its five electrical substations together and to provide Internet access for its high school, middle school and its school administration building. In planning the ring, the city asked Verizon and Charter if they would build it, but they were not responsive. RUS built a partly aerial, partly buried 7-mile ring of 96-strand fiber at a cost of about $850,000. Internet access was provided by Genuine Telephone, a tiny subsidiary of LaValle Telephone Cooperative which ran a fiber from LaValle, about 8 miles NW of Reedsburg.As they were building the ring, local businesses asked to be connected as well. Reedsburg took the path that so many communities have followed, start by building for yourself and expand opportunistically. Of course, this requires that you originally engineer the network so it can be later expanded, which is good practice regardless of your future plans. Reedsburg used bond anticipation notes, a financial mechanism that few others have used in building similar networks.
A local bank loaned the initial $5 million in bond anticipation notes for planning and construction.
Analysis: Faster, Cheaper Broadband in North Carolina Comes From Community Fiber Networks
For years, the North Carolina General Assembly has considered bills pushed by cable lobbyists to ban community networks. A new analysis from the folks at MuniNetworks.org shows that community fiber networks offer the most advanced services in the state -- faster speeds at lower prices. Preempting these community networks would cripple North Carolina's ability to compete in the digital future.
Read the Report [pdf]
Florida Muni Dunnellon Building FTTH Network
Yet another town has decided to take responsibility for their broadband future: a small Florida community has secured financing and is moving forward with their publicly owned FTTH network.
The City Council voted unanimously Monday night to approve the $7.3 million in funding with Regions Bank in Orlando. City Manager Lisa Algiere told the council members the city would be doing most of its business with the local Regions Bank. The funding will come in the form of three bonds: a series 2010A Bond, which is good for 20 years and has an interest rate of 3.61 percent; the second bond is a Series 2010B Bond and is for five years with an annual interest rate of 3.20 percent; while the third bond is a Series 2010C Bond and is good for one year. The funding secured by the city is a drawdown loan, meaning it will only take what it needs and only repay that portion.The network has been branded Greenlight (though the website is not yet fully functional). Greenlight is also the name used by the Community Fiber Network in Wilson, North Carolina. Light Reading interviewed a network employee, shedding more details than have been released elsewhere. He says they are passing 7,000 premises, but Wikipedia only notes a population of 2,000 in 2004, so there is more than meets the eye at first glance. They financed the network without using general obligation bonds, working with a nearby bank (Regions is a big bank, headquartered out of state). Local competitors are AT&T and Comcast, though both offer extremely slow services; the fastest downstream speed available from Comcast is 6Mbps. The new network, as do nearly all recent community fiber networks, will offer much faster connections, the slowest being 10Mbps.
Fibrant Laughs at Time Warner Cable Puny Upgrades
As we wrote last week, Salisbury's Fibrant -- the newest community fiber network in the country -- launched last week and immediately saw Time Warner Cable respond with an upgrade to its cable plant that allowed it start advertising even faster speeds - a 50/5 tier of broadband (whether they actually deliver that to anyone, I doubt and will wait to see).
Fibrant was "only" advertising (and delivering) 15/15 and 25/25 speeds, so some suggested that TWC had taken the top honors away... though for people who know much about telecom technology, most of us will gladly take a 25/25 on fiber-optics over a supposed 50/5 on an old, unreliable coax network.
Nonetheless, Fibrant didn't break a sweat, and announced that they were already offering a 50/50 plan though they did not advertise it. I'm not sure why it was not advertised -- though if the reason was to hold a trump card ready in response to TWC's gimmicks, it was a smart move. And Fibrant's 50/50 plan at $85 is cheaper than TWC's 50/5 plan.
Though community fiber networks consistently offer better experiences and lower costs, the big incumbent providers are well versed in gimmicks -- communities must keep that in mind as they plan their own networks. This may mean creating higher tiers of service that many only interest a select few, if that, to remind the populace of the technical superiority of the public network.
Salisbury has since announced that both 100/100 and 200/200 plans are in the works from their network. A 200/200 will be the fastest plan in North Carolina -- though one wonders how the results of the election will impact the future of community fiber networks in the state. Unable to beat community fiber networks in the market, TWC has repeatedly pushed for crippling laws against communities that would dare create competition against TWC. After the 2010 election, North Carolina has a more conservative state government that may find TWC's lobbying more persuasive.
In the meantime, TWC is yet again increasing rates to subscribers, as noted by Stop the Cap!.
Wilson's Greenlight Ahead of Schedule, Deals with TWC Predatory Pricing
Wilson's Greenlight community fiber network is ahead of schedule. They continue to operate ahead of the business plan, despite a few difficulties that offer lessons to up and coming community networks.
We recently covered the fallout from their application to the broadband stimulus program where they had to disclose network information to their competitors.
Fortunately, that was not the only news last month from North Carolina's first all-fiber citywide network. They also surpassed 5000 subscribers and remain 6-9 months ahead of their business plan in take rate, according to the Wilson Times.
The number of customers is expected to reach 5,300 by the end of the fiscal year if the current trend continues, according to Dathan Shows, assistant city manager for Broadband and Technical Services. The city's current business plan calls for Greenlight to reach 5,000 customers by the end of the third full year of operation, which will be June 2011.This is not the first time the network has exceeded projections; the network was built faster than expected and quickly jumped out ahead of take rate expectations. One of the reasons Greenlight may be growing is its attention to local needs, as illustrated by the network finding a way to televise local football matches that otherwise would not have been available. However, the Wilson Times story goes into much greater detail regarding the competition from Time Warner Cable. As we regularly see, Time Warner Cable is engaging in what appears to be predatory pricing to retain customers and starve Greenlight of new subscribers. A lesson to other community networks, Wilson is documenting the deals TWC uses to keep subscribers. All communities should keep these records.
"Time Warner Cable's market tactics include anti-competitive pricing that interferes with Wilson's ability to secure customers through normal marketing," the application [for broadband stimulus] states.