ftth

Brentwood FTTH ordinance posted on muni broadband policy bank

23 July 2015 by Steve Blum
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A decision made in 1999 led to a fiber to the home system for Brentwood, California in 2015. Or at least the beginnings of one. Sonic.net is building an FTTH network using conduit installed by developers and deeded over to the City as they built new homes over the past 16 years, the result of an advanced technology systems ordinance that the Brentwood City Council added to its land development code in 1999…

The developer shall design, install, test, and dedicate to the City two advanced technology system conduits, size to be determined, within the public right of way.

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Cooperative FTTH looks like a low cost option for a lucky few in California

19 July 2015 by Steve Blum
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Southwestern Riverside County just got in line for a fiber to the home (FTTH) upgrade. The Anza Electric Cooperative submitted an application for $2.8 million from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to run fiber alongside its existing electric system…

Connect Anza will deploy a fiber optic cable on existing poles and rights of way and establish a network of sufficient capacity to establish high speed, quality internet service for Anza Electric Cooperatives existing service territory covering over 500 square miles, located wholly within western Riverside County.

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Competition will make or, likely, break Pacific Grove muni FTTH business model

The business case for a muni fiber-to-the-home play is the number one worry as the Pacific Grove city council considers whether to pay SiFi Networks about a million dollars a year for the next 30 years to build and operate a system.

At its meeting on Wednesday evening, the council heard a presentation from Lee Afflerbach, principal engineer with CTC Consulting, who was asked to evaluate the technology. The questions afterward, though, were all about the business model: would the system make enough money to pay the lease, or would taxpayers be on the hook?… More

Muni FTTH pitch in Pacific Grove goes from no cost, no risk to pay us $1 million a year


Bawtree-Jobson in Pacific Grove yesterday.

A fiber to the home plan for the Monterey Peninsula city of Pacific Grove has transformed from a commercial business venture into an appeal for public money. SiFi Networks, a British company with a corporate heritage of real estate development, began last year by putting a simple proposition in front of several Californian cities: give us unlimited access to your streets, sidewalks and, yes, sewers and we’ll build fiber to every home and business in town.… More

Texas regulators put Google Fiber in the fast lane

1 July 2015 by Steve Blum
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It seemed odd that San Antonio wasn’t on the list earlier this year when Google announced four new cities for its fiber to the home initiative. The city bent over backwards making Google welcome and it’s a short drive – less than a six pack, as they measure such things in Texas – from its current base in Austin.

Now it turns out that Google has been keeping its eye on the Alamo City. A story by Mark Reagan in the San Antonio Current says that Google asked for and quickly received permission to expand its fiber system from the Public Utility Commission of Texas.… More

Santa Cruz will be Silicon Valley's first fully fiber city

30 June 2015 by Steve Blum
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Homes and businesses in Santa Cruz are one step closer to full fiber-to-the-premise broadband service. The Santa Cruz city council voted unanimously last week to move ahead with negotiating an FTTP/FTTH partnership with a local independent Internet service provider, Cruzio. As envisioned, the city would own – and finance – the network, Cruzio would operate it and the two would work together to build it.

Cruzio’s proposal to the city also leaves the door open for other ISPs to join the project – that’ll be one of many details that the forthcoming negotiations will address.… More

Trans Sierra project proposes to bridge a mountain broadband gap

9 June 2015 by Steve Blum
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Click for all the maps.

Inyo Networks – one of the companies behind the Digital 395 network that serves the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada – is asking the California Public Utilities Commission for a $3.7 million subsidy to build access nodes along an existing fiber route that runs between Reno and Sacramento, more or less down the I-80 corridor, and includes a spur that connects the system to the Tahoe basin. The project was developed with considerable help from the Tahoe area’s broadband consortium.… More

Digital 395 proposes Inyo County FTTH expansion

3 June 2015 by Steve Blum
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Click for a bigger version.

Four more remote towns in the eastern California desert are in line for gigabit-class fiber-to-the-home service, thanks to the Digital 395 middle mile network that stretches more than 500 miles down the east side of the Sierra Nevada, from Reno to Barstow.

Inyo Networks – one of the companies behind the Digital 395 project – is asking the California Public Utilities Commission for $4.4 million to extend its middle fiber another 20 miles, reaching from Olancha to Keeler and Darwin, and to build FTTH systems in those three communities, plus the nearby town of Cartago.… More

Fiber to the home subsidies approved for two California communities

14 May 2015 by Steve Blum
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Fiber to the cabin coming to Wrightwood.

The first two broadband infrastructure grants of the year, totaling $3.3 million, were approved last week by the California Public Utilities Commission. Ultimate Internet Access’s Helendale and Wrightwood projects sailed through on a unanimous vote by commissioners. Both are fiber to the home proposals promising to deliver a gigabit up and down to about a couple thousand residents each for $70 per month.
With one exception, the projects as approved were the same as originally outlined last month by CPUC staff.… More

AT&T says its future is fiber, but that doesn't mean yours is too

30 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Hanging out, but not hanging fiber.

With the Comcast mega-merger officially dead, the next big deal in line for federal review is AT&T’s proposed purchase of DirecTv. The buzz is that regulators don’t have the same concerns and the expectation is that AT&T will get a green light. The odd thing, though, is that the idea that the deal will improve rural broadband seems to have caught on in Washington.

AT&T sent a letter (h/t to the Eldo Telecom blog for the pointer) to the FCC claiming that consumers would see faster broadband speeds if the deal is approved because off-loading video delivery onto satellite will free up wireline bandwidth and that, somehow, the deal will make fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) service economically feasible for two million more homes.… More