broadband

Longmont voters will decide whether to back FTTH with their electric bills

3 August 2013 by Steve Blum
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Putting broadband bonds on the meter.

As Google Fiber takes the reins in Provo, Utah, the city council in Longmont, Colorado is heading to the ballot box to, essentially, ask voters if they want to follow the same path. At least as far as using city electric bills as collateral.

The Longmont council voted in May to move ahead with plans to build a fiber-to-the-home system, leveraging an existing – and successful – municipal dark fiber business.… More

California lawmakers have a chance to reconsider cable lobby's big lie

1 August 2013 by Steve Blum
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Even Comcast doesn’t believe 1.5 Mbps is enough.

The effort to resurrect a proposal to add $90 million to the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) and allow independent ISPs and cities to apply for grants is gathering steam. The California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) has published a white paper that’s aimed at debunking one of the more outrageous bits of misinformation spread by cable lobbyists as they derailed the bill in an assembly committee last month.… More

Google accused of asking fiber subscribers to use common sense

31 July 2013 by Steve Blum
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A server and a thin mint.

When you go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, you don’t expect to be able to fill up an ice chest with lasagne to bring home for a neighborhood block party. Most people accept that common sense puts limits on what are otherwise unlimited offers.

Google is taking heat in a Wired commentary piece by Ryan Singel for telling fiber customers in Kansas City…

Your Google Fiber account is for your use and the reasonable use of your guests.

… More

AT&T boosts Uverse speeds for some Californians

30 July 2013 by Steve Blum
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High potential for an earthquake. Broadband, not so much.

California and Nevada are the next stops on AT&T’s deployment of its pair-bonded VDSL2 Uverse upgrade. The company announced the roll out of 45 Mbps service here in a carefully worded press release, and also held out the eventual prospect of delivering up to 100 Mbps to homes and businesses via copper wires.

It’s part of a plan announced last fall to focus on upgrading “high potential” cities and neighborhoods to maximum speed levels that are on a par with what cable companies claim to provide.… More

Slow broadband a drag on Seattle mayor's re-election campaign


I’ll have what she’s having.

Seattle mayor Mike McGinn is running for re-election and the editorial page of the Seattle Times, which has never particularly cared for him, is homing in on his failure to build fiber to every home and business in the city…

With a campaign pledge of broadband Internet for all, Mike McGinn promised big, delivered small, and hopes voters won’t notice the difference.

KUOW-FM, Seattle’s University of Washington-owned NPR powerhouse, reached a similar conclusion, although in a better researched and more nuanced way…

When Mike McGinn ran for mayor in 2009, he campaigned on the promise of high-speed internet for all of Seattle.

… More

Google Fiber's Provo deal is Internet on the instalment plan

24 July 2013 by Steve Blum
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A cashless transaction.

Google will be rolling out its fiber to the home offering in Provo, Utah next week. The company signed the deal to buy the city-owned system on Monday. Negotiated and approved by the Provo municipal council in April, the final details were ironed out and Google took possession of the system this week.

Google got the system in exchange for a token payment and a promise to finish building out the FTTH system to everyone in the city, and provide free service for seven years at something like 5 Mbps to any resident that pays a $30 installation fee.… More

Telco broadband slows at the edge, cable bottlenecks in the core

23 July 2013 by Steve Blum
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Speeds can drop suddenly at the edge.

Slow residential connections keep DSL speeds down, while cable’s problems are further back in the network. Researchers for the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology dug deep into data collected in 2011 by the FCC as part of its Measuring Broadband America program.

The NIST researchers asked the question: Where in the Internet is congestion? The results suggested that…

…a significant amount of congestion, especially for cable connections, occurs deeper in the network, perhaps, in the “middle mile”…or even farther, where the ISP connects to the “public Internet”.

… More

Cable for broadband speed, telcos for consistency in service and advertising

22 July 2013 by Steve Blum
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More likely so.

DSL is better at delivering advertised download speeds than cable, but cable modem service is still faster. That’s one of the conclusions reached by researchers for the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology after sifting through broadband test data collected by the FCC in 2011.

DSL broadband provided connections on average delivering download speeds above 80% of the assigned speed tier more than 80% of the time. By contrast, a significant fraction of cable connections received less than 80% of their assigned speed tier more than 20% of the time.

… More

Don't blame local government for a lack of California broadband competition

21 July 2013 by Steve Blum
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Kicking back in California is no kickback.

I admit to being a Californian, so my objections to (what I consider to be) a rant by senior members of TechFreedom, a think tank as they put it, might be specific to my native State. That said, their contention in a Wired editorial that local government is to blame for poor Internet service is not consistent with the facts.

The core of their argument is that local governments control access to utility poles and underground conduit, and they restrict competitors – particularly cable companies – from accessing it in order to extract kickbacks.… More

Muni WiFi still has utility, and at least two utilities


Originally, it was just the poles in Chaska that had a retro look.

The first generation of municipal wireless providers is mostly gone, as fiber takes precedence and mobile networks grow. One of the survivors deserves particular mention: the City of Chaska, Minnesota.

I visited Chaska several times in the course of building and running a similar WiFi-based broadband utility in Lompoc, California. Chaska’s project led ours by a few months and the lessons learned there saved us time, money and a lot of trouble.… More