ftth

The art of estimating broadband subsidy costs by households in rural California

2 October 2013 by Steve Blum
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It’s one house, but how many homes?

Maybe 800 homes on the western side of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains will get upgraded broadband service, many via fiber to the home connections, if a pair of draft resolutions is approved by the California Public Utilities Commission.

CPUC staff is recommending giving Ponderosa Telephone Company a total of $2.7 million from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF). About $1.8 million would go to an FTTH build in two small Madera County communities, Beasore and Central Camp, and $900,000 would help pay for a DSL upgrade and limited FTTH service in the Big Creek area of Fresno County.… More

Sheer tenacity primes Boron FTTH for California broadband subsidy


Boron upgrades from twenty mules to a gigabit.

On its fourth try, Race Telecommunications seems set to get public grant backing to build a fiber-to-the-home system in the small Mojave desert town of Boron. California Public Utilities Commission staff have released a draft resolution that, if approved by commissioners, would spend up to $3.4 million from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to pay 60% of the cost of building a fiber optic network to serve about 900 customers in the Boron area, plus cover the cost of any state or federal income tax on the grant.… More

Major Kern County broadband project prepped for CPUC vote

13 September 2013 by Steve Blum
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The Tehachapi Pass of the future will have broadband too. And probably a lot sooner.

Race Telecommunications proposed building a fiber-to-the-home system near the Tehachapi Pass in an application for a California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) grant earlier this year. Now, it’s been vetted by California Public Utilities Commission staff, and it’s heading for a vote by commissioners at their 17 October 2013 meeting.

A draft resolution released yesterday explained why the Kern County High Desert project, intended for the communities of Stallion Springs, Bear Valley Springs and Golden Hills, got the green light for 12.6 million from CASF…

Staff recommends this project for funding, because it has an above average overall score relative to the other projects.

… More

Provo proves Comcast can offer better service at a lower price when there's no other choice

6 September 2013 by Steve Blum
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Comcast’s patron saint.

“You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.”
Al Capone

Comcast guards what it considers to be its turf with a ferocity that makes a Chicago gangster look like a social worker. Now, it’s putting a move on Provo.

As Utah broadband blogger Jesse Harris tells it…

I spoke with one of their sales guys who confirmed that Comcast will be offering a package of 250Mbps/50Mbps for $70 starting in September, but only in Provo.

… More

China has new national broadband plan, goals

19 August 2013 by Steve Blum
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I signed up for broadband and all I got was this little red book.

China wants to lead the broadband world in something other than malicious Internet attacks, 42% of which originate there, putting it comfortably ahead of the U.S., at second place with 10%. So China’s State Council – the equivalent of its cabinet – is setting a target of 50% national wireline broadband availability by 2015. By 2020, the goal is to connect the entire country – all 1.3 billion people or so – with a minimum of 20 Mbps in urban areas and 4 Mbps in rural areas, and top speeds of 100 Mbps.… More

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

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

Municipal broadband is an economic choice, not a holy crusade

15 July 2013 by Steve Blum
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The debate continues.

I’ve been taken to task for an article I wrote on the prospects for fiber-to-the-premise service in Palo Alto. It was just published in Broadband Communities, and was based on a study I did last year for the City of Palo Alto evaluating a particular business model.

Christopher Mitchell, the proprietor of MuniNetworks.org and an advocate of public ownership of telecoms networks, called it odd and misleading in a blog post.… More

Bell Labs bridges a gigabit over a copper gap

6 July 2013 by Steve Blum
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The case for copper. Source: Alcatel-Lucent.

AT&T and Verizon should think twice about running away from older copper networks. Bell Labs has prototype technology that can already move half a gigabit through legacy wiring. Testing by parent company Alcatel-Lucent and Telekom Austria succeeded in pushing more half a gigabit over multiple legacy copper POTS pairs, using elements of the emerging G.fast standard and mixing in advanced vectoring technology – dubbed Vectoring 2.0 – developed by Bell Labs.… More