Posts with keyword: broadband

6 entries

New From AT&T: Family Visit Plans

Tue Jun 19 08:31:00 2007

As I was reading this Bob Frankston quote on Doc's blog, I was imagining what would the world be like if our entire road system, including the roads in our neighborhoods have been built privately and we had to pay fees to use them. You'd probably see packages advertised on TV announcing the new Family Visit plans for only $19.95 per month. Pay one low rate and visit all the relatives you want. Malls would have to pay huge hookup fees to the road networks because of the "extra traffic" they'd generate. Interchanges would not just exchange cars, but
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Optical Illusion: Qwest's Concern for Consumers

Wed Jun 13 22:10:00 2007

I was quoted in a City Weekly article on what Salt Lake City mayoral candidates think about municipal broadband in general and Utopia in particular. It wasn't my quote, however, that caught my eye, but one from Jerry Fenn. Jerry is a lawyer by training and Qwest's Utah President (a position that's mostly about lobbying, I think): Fenn admits that Qwest has been on "the other side of municipally backed telecom projects" mostly because of the long-term harm to consumers. From Salt Lake City Weekly - Optical IllusionReferenced Wed Jun 13 2007 22:00:46 GMT-0600 (MDT) Is there anyone, and
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I've Got Fiber to My House

Thu May 3 22:09:00 2007

Utopia truck ready for install(click to enlarge) Utopia is Utah's large-scale municipal-broadband project. My city, Lindon, was one of the first supporters of the project and all winter I've watched in anticipation as crews dug up the lawns in my neighborhood laying fiber. I first heard about Utopia when I was Utah's CIO and Utopia was just a dream Paul Morris had. I've supported it, written about it, testified about it to city councils, and, mostly, waited for it. Yesterday was the day that I had service installed in my house. To understand the overall situation, it's important to
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iProvo Prepares to Cross 10,000 Subscriber Mark

Mon Mar 12 14:22:00 2007

iProvo is Utah's second largest municipal broadband project. The largest, Utopia, is a consortium of cities from around the state. iProvo, on the other hand, is a project of the Provo City. A story in today's Deseret News says that iProvo now has 9,480 subscribers. The graphic accompanying the story shows the growth since August, 2005. The trend is nearly linear, up and to the right. iProvo used to believe that they needed 10,000 customers to break even, but that number has gone up to between 12,000 and 14,000. The big question is whether they can hit break even
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Inside Utah: Talking About UTOPIA

Wed Jul 5 14:29:00 2006

Jennifer Napier-Pearce interviewed me about UTOPIA, Utah municipal broadband project, for issue 50 of her Inside Utah podcast. Jennifer, who works in public radio, produces a good show with board interest for folks in Utah and high production values.
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Spectrum Talks Up UTOPIA

Fri Jun 2 13:00:00 2006

An IEEE Spectrum article discusses Utah's muni-broadband project, UTOPIA. There's a map of UTOPIA cities, but the legend seems to be missing. There's also a page of photos. The piece also contrasts the UTOPIA architecture with Verizon's FiOS service. The peaceful coexistence of multiple service providers is another thing that distinguishes Utopia. Because Utopia sends TV programming as Internet packets, indistinguishable from e-mail, Web pages, and everything else, it puts a huge reservoir of bandwidth at the disposal of its providers. By contrast, Verizon's FiOS, a sort of DSL on steroids, reserves most of an optical fiber's capacity for
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