fttp

Muni broadband endorsed by Comcast, again

26 February 2017 by Steve Blum
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Comcast jumps on board.

Are you wondering whether or not you live in a place where Comcast will soon upgrade at least some of its broadband infrastructure and technology to the high speed, DOCSIS 3.1 standard? All you have to do is check to see whether there’s a municipal broadband project underway nearby. That’s a very reliable way to gauge the esteem that Comcast bestows upon your town.

According to a story by Daniel Frankel in FierceCable, Chattanooga, Tennessee is the next stop on Comcast’s DOCSIS 3.1 road trip, where it will begin offer much cheaper 1 gigabit service to homes and businesses…

Comcast had been delivering its pricey 10-gig fiber service to local Chattanooga businesses, and 2-gig fiber service to local residences.

… More

The copper GigaWeasel lurks under AT&T's fiber umbrella

6 October 2016 by Steve Blum
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You can see the fiber from here.

AT&T is casting a new shadow on its faster-than-average tiers of service. Instead of calling 300 Mbps copper service Gigapower, it’ll now lounge under the AT&T Fiber umbrella. At least that’s how an AT&T press release reads, when you connect all the dots.

The release says…

Under the AT&T Fiber umbrella brand we will use a variety of network technologies to connect more homes, apartments and business customer locations to ultra-fast and low-latency internet speeds.

… More

Muni fiber build RFP issued by Union City, California

20 September 2016 by Steve Blum
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A lot of long haul fiber criss-crosses through Union City, a town of about 70,000 people tucked in between Hayward and Fremont in the East Bay area, just north of Silicon Valley. The City of Union City has issued a request for proposals from companies interested in bidding to “design and install a high-speed dark fiber network in City-owned conduit” to take advantage of that wealth, and to spur development of a new business and residential area…

The Union City Station District is a high-density development area located around the Union City BART Station.

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Fiber gems stand out on California's central coast

27 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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The industrial/commercial broadband Star Rating system developed by Tellus Venture Associates for the Broadband Consortium of the Pacific Coast shows a wide variation in high grade broadband infrastructure across San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

In the BCPC region, most commercial and industrial census blocks rated 1 Star or less, however there were ample instances of 2 Star, 3 Star and even some 4 Star Ratings. The highest aggregate rating for a city was found in San Luis Obispo, which rated 2 Stars overall.… More

Star Ratings show where to find high tech, industrial class broadband

26 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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Click to get the methodology, maps are below.

The best place on California’s south central coast – on the whole – to look for commercial or industrial real estate with access to fast, fiber optic broadband service is San Luis Obispo. But there are plenty of other cities in the SLO – Santa Barbara – Ventura county region with pockets of fiber availability that are as good or, in many cases, better.

In the course of a doing a regional broadband assessment for the Broadband Consortium of the Pacific Coast (BCPC), we developed a method for rating the availability of commercial and industrial-class broadband infrastructure.… More

Google Fiber finds a balancing point between home and business FTTP

17 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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Google Fiber is rolling out service plans for small businesses, with prices ranging from $70 a month for symmetrical 100 Mbps service to $250 a month for a symmetrical gigabit, all with no data caps. The price for a gig is considerably more than Google’s standard $70 a month residential rate, but it also allows for more bandwidth-intensive uses. Up to a point.

For example, the acceptable use policy for Google’s residential service clearly prohibits running an online business via the connection…

You agree not to use or allow third parties to use the Services provided to you for any of the following purposes…

To operate servers for commercial purposes.

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San Francisco FTTP analysis embraces economic reality

25 March 2016 by Steve Blum
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The fiber-to-the-premise analysis run by the City and County of San Francisco nailed it: providing gigabit capability to every home and business in the City means either treating it like a normal municipal utility and taxing everyone to pay for it – $43 a month, they figure – or taxing everyone less – $26 a month – and making up the rest with subscription fees from people that want to use it.

The everyone pays, everyone gets model means a big initial buildout for something close to a gigabuck, with the $43 monthly fees split between paying that off and running the system as a municipal utility.… More

Google adopts Santa Cruz muni fiber model in Huntsville

29 February 2016 by Steve Blum
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The City of Huntsville, Alabama is following Santa Cruz’s fiber lead: building a fiber to the home (and business) network and leasing it out to a private operator. In Huntsville’s case the private operator is Google Fiber, while in Santa Cruz the partner is a local independent Internet service provider, Cruzio.

The lead consultants on the Huntsville project – CTC Technology and Energy – applied the lessons they learned working for the City of Santa Cruz…

The partnership model announcement today between Huntsville and Google Fiber is on the model of that pioneered by Westminster, Maryland in 2014 and by Santa Cruz, California last year…

This innovative, shared-risk partnership model puts the locality in the business of building infrastructure, a business it knows well after a century of building roads, bridges, and utilities.

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Santa Cruz fiber love becomes serious city business

10 December 2015 by Steve Blum
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It’s a love fest, several Santa Cruz city council members declared on Wednesday afternoon, as they unanimously approved 1. moving ahead with negotiating a fiber to the home partnership with Cruzio, a local independent Internet service provider, and 2. pursue lease revenue bonds to pay the lions share of the tab. That city-financed portion – Layer 1 in Internet lingo – could go as high as $50 million. The core network – the fiber in the ground – is pegged at about $35 million.… More

Santa Cruz city council unanimously approves muni FTTH

8 December 2015 by Steve Blum
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The vote was seven to nothing, as the Santa Cruz city council moved ahead this afternoon with a plan to build a city-owned dark fiber network that will reach every home and business in town. Under the current plan, the system will be leased to Cruzio, a local independent Internet service provider. Cruzio will light the fiber – buy and maintain the electronics, and provision the Internet bandwidth – and run the business. The cost to the city is in the $30 million range.… More