ftth

Santa Cruz gets more fiber, more gigabit service

19 May 2018 by Steve Blum
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AT&T’s recent fiber to the home (FTTH) upgrades in Santa Cruz mean that Cruzio isn’t the only Internet service provider bringing gigabit class infrastructure into town (unless you have a sneaking suspicion that it’s a competitive response – in that case you can thank Cruzio for it too). U.C. Santa Cruz’s Jim Warner tracked it down…

AT&T has been working on an FTTH deployment in parts of west Santa Cruz. The work has progressed to the point where some addresses are showing availability of gigabit service in AT&T’s on-line service availability tool.

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CPUC considers FTTH upgrade subsidy for Marin County town

3 May 2018 by Steve Blum
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Bolinas, a coastal community of about 700 homes in Marin County, is up for a $1.9 million broadband infrastructure subsidy from the California Public Utilities Commission next week. It’s the first grant proposal submitted to, and considered by, the CPUC since assembly bill 1665 was signed into law last year by governor Jerry Brown.

AB 1665 imposed severe restrictions on how money from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) can be spent. It lowered California’s minimum broadband standard to 6 Mbps download/1 Mbps upload speeds – if service is available at that level, then the legislature reckons no upgrade is needed.… More

San Francisco muni FTTP short list is down to three choices

20 April 2018 by Steve Blum
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The City and County of San Francisco is still tight-lipped regarding details of its $2 billion fiber-to-the-premise project, but its latest cryptic update indicates that the scheduled one-on-one interviews with potential bidders are complete and the first cut was made.

Thanks to a tip from a kind reader, I checked the City’s purchasing website and found this notice, dated yesterday, 19 April 2018…

Notice of Pre-Qualified Bidders for Citywide Fiber to the Premises Network, Lit Fiber and Wi-Fi Services RFQ

The City has completed its evaluation of Citywide Fiber to the Premises Network, Lit Fiber and Wi-Fi Services RFQ.

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A little more light shed on San Francisco muni FTTP contenders

12 April 2018 by Steve Blum
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The City and County of San Francisco has released a little bit of information about the companies that are vying for a $2 billion municipal fiber to the premise (FTTP) project. (Okay, they say it’s $1.9 billion, but at this early stage in the game, the rounder and higher $2 billion figure probably describes it better).

A cryptic post buried on the City’s purchasing website says…

Notice of Shortlist of Respondent Teams selected for Oral Interviews for the Citywide Fiber to Premises Network, Lit Fiber & Wi-fi Services RFQ

The written proposal evaluation for the Citywide Fiber to Premises Network, Lit Fiber & Wi-fi Services RFQ is now complete.

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Handful of hopefuls chase contract to light San Francisco FTTP

6 April 2018 by Steve Blum
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Five groups are in the hunt for San Francisco’s citywide fiber to the premise (FTTP) project, at least according to one of the bidders. Monkeybrains, a San Francisco-based wireless Internet service provider, tweeted that they’re on one of the five teams that submitted proposals.

The deadline for filing responses to the City and County of San Francisco’s request for qualifications (RFQ) was last week. According to the San Francisco Examiner, Monkeybrains is talking, but no one else is saying much of anything about it…

Rudy Rucker, who founded Monkeybrains in 1998 with Alex Menendez…that they are part of one team of companies that submitted by last week’s deadline…

“Monkeybrains has teamed up with Black and Veatch, Zayo and Nokia,” Rucker said in an email.

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Muni broadband gets Colorado voter love, but projects slow to follow

5 April 2018 by Steve Blum
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But you never know what you’re gonna get.

I guess this is my week for Colorado stories. Tuesday, voters in six more cities voted to opt out of Colorado’s general ban on municipal broadband initiatives, as state law allows them to do. According to numbers collected by the Denver Post, at least 92 Colorado communities have decided to go their own way. Or at least served notice that they wouldn’t mind doing do. As the article points out, a landslide victory at the ballot box doesn’t necessarily – or even often – lead to shovels in the ground…

Voters in Severance, Lake City, Lyons, Frisco, Firestone and Limon voted overwhelmingly in favor of allowing municipal broadband Tuesday, with margins of 347–92 in Limon and 222–18 in Lake City, for example…

Several communities have teamed up with local telephone companies or internet service providers to bring broadband service to residents and businesses, while Longmont, as well as Montrose and Delta counties, have taken on the task of providing internet service through their electric utilities.

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Open access fiber drives down consumer broadband prices in New Zealand

21 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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A national project to build fiber-to-the-premise infrastructure and offer it to any Internet service provider on a wholesale basis began in New Zealand in 2011, with an initial goal of reaching 75% of Kiwi homes and businesses. According to a study done by International Data Corporation, a research firm, and sponsored by Spark, the biggest NZ reseller of FTTP service, the build out has reached about 65% of NZ premises, and the goal is now to reach 87% by 2022.… More

Fiber can compete, but no competition, no fiber

2 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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Fiber-to-the-home broadband service can effectively compete against cable company offerings, but copper-based DSL service can’t. That’s a lesson that’s coming into sharp focus as telcos report 2017 financial results.

Verizon backed away from legacy telephone service, selling its California systems to Frontier among other things, but hung on to its FiOS business, which is concentrated in the northeastern U.S. As a result, Frontier is bleeding DSL subscribers (although it’s doing better where it offers FTTH service), while Verizon’s share of broadband subscribers in its FiOS territory is climbing.… More

San Francisco willing to pay for citywide FTTP, but not saying how much

1 February 2018 by Steve Blum
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The City and County of San Francisco wants a short list of companies willing to build an open access, wholesale fiber-to-the-premise system that reaches all homes and businesses. It posted a request for qualifications (RFQ) yesterday, asking potential partners to make their pitches, with the idea of winnowing the responses down to a handful that will go on to a second and final round of proposals later this year.

Unlike Los Angeles, San Francisco is making an upfront offer to subsidise at least some of the costs.… More

$351 billion U.S. consumer tech 2018 forecast built on broadband

8 January 2018 by Steve Blum
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Source: Consumer Technology Association, 7 January 2018. Click for the full presentation.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) predicts that connectivity, particularly via mobile networks, will fuel industry growth, with total U.S. retail sales hitting $351 billion in 2018, up 3.9% from last year. .
Traditional consumer hardware categories are flat or declining, while connected devices and services are booming – for example “smart speakers”, which are tied to artificially intelligent, voice recognition services such as Amazon’s Alexa, are predicted to hit $3.8 billion in 2018, a 93% increase.… More