ftth

Google's small business gigabit enables e-commerce for a few dollars more

23 November 2014 by Steve Blum
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An extra $30 or so gets you a commercially usable gigabit connection from Google. That’s the deal being rolled out to small businesses in a few districts of the Kansas City metro area.

The basic consumer price in Kansas City is $70 for a gigabit ($120 with television service). Google’s new small business package is $100 for the gigabit, plus another $20 if you want a static IP address (or 5 for $30).… More

FCC squeezes the AT&T GigaWeasel

17 November 2014 by Steve Blum
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Sneak peak at AT&T’s response.

The FCC slapped back at AT&T on Friday, demanding it turn over information describing exactly what it means when it says it’s going to build fiber to 2 million more homes if its deal to buy DirecTv is approved, but will otherwise stop upgrading systems while the FCC decides whether to regulate broadband as a common carrier service.

That was the gist of comments made on Wednesday by AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson (h/t to Fred Pilot at Eldo Telecom for the heads up).… More

Enthusiasm builds for Nevada County FTTH project, hope is money will follow

2 November 2014 by Steve Blum
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A standing room only crowd turned out in Nevada City on Thursday evening to celebrate the kick-off of a $28 million fiber-to-the-home project. As proposed, it would bring a full gigabit – up and down – to nearly 3,000 homes and hundreds of businesses in Nevada County. Hosted by Spiral Internet, the gala was intended to light a fire under the Bright Fiber build proposed nearly 2 years ago for a big grant and a (relatively) small loan from the California Advanced Services Fund.… More

Google's bootprint in Austin won't be Texas-sized

15 October 2014 by Steve Blum
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google press release
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Google Fiber plans to start offering gigabit service in a handful of Austin neighborhoods in December. That’s the word from a press conference held by Google earlier today. Details are sketchy so far – all I could find in the way of coverage this afternoon was a brief write-up on a website published by a local newspaper, Community Impact.

The article, bylined by Joe Lanane, identifies Austin’s South Lamar, Zilker, Bouldin and Travis Heights neighborhoods as ground zero, and quotes Mark Strama, Google’s local manager, as saying…

That is where we will start—that is not where we will finish…Not every part of Austin will get fiber, but all areas will have the opportunity, and we will build in the areas with the highest demand.”

… More

Muni advocates need to be careful what they wish for at the FCC

27 July 2014 by Steve Blum
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If you like the idea of cities and other local agencies encouraging broadband development and deciding to go into the business themselves – as I do – then FCC chair Tom Wheeler’s talk about sweeping away state-level restrictions is sweet music to the ears.

The City of Chattanooga certainly enjoys the tune. It filed a petition with the FCC on Thursday, asking it to override a Tennessee law that prevents it from expanding its fiber-to-the-home network.… More

Chattanooga forces Wheeler's hand: tear down muni broadband barriers

25 July 2014 by Steve Blum
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The City of Chattanooga formally asked the FCC yesterday to throw out a Tennessee state law that prevents it from extending its fiber-to-the-home network to surrounding areas. In doing so, the city is asking FCC chairman Tom Wheeler to make good on his high-sounding rhetoric about pre-empting state restrictions on municipal broadband.

The filing is a goldmine of information. The petition itself was written by muni broadband legal expert Jim Baller, and the attachments provide a wealth of case study material on the Chattanooga project specifically, and the history of muni broadband regulation and legislation in general.… More

Digital 395 fiber draws a last mile crowd in eastern California

Faster residential and business broadband service – including gigabit-class fiber-to-the-home service in some communities – is following in the wake of the Digital 395 project, an open access middle mile fiber link from Reno down through eastern California to Barstow. The California Public Utilities Commission just approved a $4.7 million grant proposed by Race Telecommunications to build FTTH systems in four small Mono County communities using the Digital 395 backbone.
The areas around Aspen Springs, Chalfant, Crowley Lake and Sunny Slopes should see upgraded service in the next couple of years.… More

Utopia moves ahead on FTTH bailout plan, but the monthly tax bill could go higher

30 June 2014 by Steve Blum
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A flat monthly fee of $18 to $20 – or, now, perhaps more – to rescue the failing Utopia municipal fiber to the home system in Utah got mixed reviews from the city councils involved, but even so the project’s board of directors voted today to move ahead with negotiating a bailout plan put forward by Australia’s Macquarie Capital Group.

The system encompasses 11 cities in the Salt Lake area (but not Provo, where Google rescued an independent muni FTTH system or Salt Lake City itself).… More

DSL is the new dial-up

20 June 2014 by Steve Blum
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On the whole, Internet service providers in the U.S. performed about as well in 2013 as they did in 2012 – largely hitting the same speed and consistency benchmarks. That’s one of the conclusions of the latest FCC report on the performance of consumer-grade fixed broadband services. Diving into the detail, though, shows that DSL-based service is falling further behind the performance levels achieved by cable and fiber technologies.

The FCC puts boxes inside the homes of volunteers across the U.S.,… More

AT&T Gigapower tease is just a Gigaweasel

5 June 2014 by Steve Blum
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AT&T is promising more fiber (and, by the way, higher rural wireless broadband speeds) if it’s allowed to buy DirecTv. That’s one way of reading a disclosure statement it just submitted to the SEC, but it’s not the way to bet.

What the filing actually says is…

The economics of this transaction will allow the combined company to upgrade 2 million additional locations to high speed broadband with Gigapower FTTP (fiber to the premise) and expand our high speed broadband footprint to an additional 13 million locations where AT&T will be able to offer a pay TV and high speed broadband bundle.

… More