ftth

Gigabit Seattle raising FTTH attention but not cash


Adding lift to a trial balloon.

The Gigabit Seattle team is trying to tap into Google Fiber’s buzz by releasing a fiber-to-the-home pricing plan that sounds a lot like what’s on offer in Kansas City, albeit for a few dollars more and with a little less freebie time. Otherwise, there’s been precious little in the way of specific information about the project since it was announced six months ago.

What I wrote then is true today: Gigabit Seattle’s financial vehicle is still a concept car.… More

Caveat vendor: the customer can say no

11 June 2013 by Steve Blum
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Thank you for your input.

Organizational budgets and goals are set in the C-suite, defining the resources and limiting the options available to IT executives. Then it’s up to them to find solutions that maximize employees’ chances of meeting those goals while minimizing the pain and staying within the budget.

IT executives have to balance the arts of managing up and implementing down. The best outcome occurs when everyone’s needs, wants and dreams are fulfilled. It’s a tough job that requires a diverse set of skills.… More

Verizon FiOS doesn't have an edge over cable in Netflix rankings

25 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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Netflix accounts for a third of the Internet traffic in North America, so it’s not surprising it has something to say about how well Internet service providers perform. Whether or not the ISPs appreciate the input. Netflix just updated its speed index of U.S. wireline and fixed wireless companies and, not surprisingly, Google Fiber tops the chart. On the average, Netflix viewers connecting via Google Fiber do so at 3.4 Mbps.

Of course there wouldn’t be many of those, since Google Fiber’s reach is very limited.… More

Longmont keeping FTTH details out of public view for now

20 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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Taxiing towards takeoff in Longmont.

The Longmont, Colorado city council settled for a staff report and a powerpoint presentation that summarized the results of a feasibility study, before voting unanimously to take the next step toward building a municipal fiber-to-the-home system. The nitty-gritty details – business model, raw research data, quantitative analysis and the like – are being kept out of the public domain for now.

The report asked the city council to allow staff to continue moving ahead with work on the project, and in particular to give the city’s finance director permission to develop a financing plan, based on various debt options.… More

Google lights a prairie fire in Kansas

19 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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Kansas kicks it up.

Average Internet download speeds over the entire state of Kansas jumped by 86% in 2012, according to the State of the Internet tracking report from Akamai, a content delivery network pioneer.

To be sure, Akamai’s study relies on its own observed traffic and more or less ignores low speed, sub-256 Kbps connections, which would bring the average down. But its methodology is reasonably consistent across geographic markets and provides a fair basis for making comparisons.… More

Waiting for the FTTH feasibility case in Longmont

14 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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Art is nicely presented in Longmont, too.

The city council in Longmont, Colorado considers today whether to move ahead with plans to build a municipal fiber-to-the-home system. They’ll be reviewing a feasibility study prepared by a consulting company and then deciding whether to direct city staff to come up with a financing plan.

Longmont is near Boulder, in the Denver area. The city runs its own electric utility, serving about forty thousand households, and has a backbone fiber optic network that was installed about fifteen years ago to support utility operations.… More

Survey finds Google Fiber getting high take rates in Kansas City

12 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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If the hare has staying power, the tortoise will lose.

Google’s early results in Kansas City have to be giving incumbent carriers the shakes. According to a survey done by Bernstein Research, one-third of the homes in neighborhoods where Google is already offering Internet and television service have signed up. And even more are thinking about it.

Bernstein surveyed 200 homes in the relatively small area where Google Fiber is up and running. One-third were already taking the service and of the rest, about three-quarters were thinking about it.… More

Google's goad sinks a little deeper into Kansas City

7 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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Wanted in Grandview.

Grandview, Missouri is latest addition to Google’s wish list of Kansas City suburbs. The city council – board of aldermen as they call it in Missouri – took a no-brainer decision tonight to invite Google to expand its existing fiber to the home network into their community. Google’s response is to say thank you, but “it will still be awhile before we can build fiber in Grandview — we need to plan and engineer our network there first.”… More

Incumbent carriers' response is exactly what Google intended to provoke

6 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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Google’s fantastic fiber voyage on (a long) course to a happy ending.

In the same way the tiniest virus can trigger a massive flood of antibodies, Google’s willingness to bankroll competitive – and likely money-losing – fiber to the home projects in a handful of markets is rewriting capital investment plans at major carriers.

CenturyLink’s decision to build out an FTTH network in a limited area of Omaha is, as many have pointed out, a special case.… More

Fear and economics fuel CenturyLink's Omaha FTTH test

2 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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The case for fiber converges on Omaha.

After getting stung by Google in Provo, Utah, CenturyLink will roll out fiber-to-the-home service in Omaha, Nebraska. Two key factors that will drive future FTTH deployments make this announcement more than a marketing stunt.

First, CenturyLink is targeting a particular area served by pre-DOCSIS hybrid fiber and coaxial cable system, according to a story on the Telecompetitor news site. Instead of upgrading it with better coax or trying to refurbish it in place, CenturyLink is replacing it with gigabit passive optical network (GPON) technology.… More