Author: Mark Milliman

Mark Milliman is a Principal Consultant at Inphotonics Research driving the adoption and assisting local governments to plan, build, operate, and lease access open-access municipal broadband networks. Additionally, he works with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to increase the value of their intellectual capital through the creation of strategic product plans and execution of innovative marketing strategies. With more than 22 years of experience in the telecommunications industry that began at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Mark has built fiber, cable, and wireless networks around the world to deliver voice, video, and data services. His thorough knowledge of all aspects of service delivery from content creation to the design, operation, and management of the network is utilized by carriers and equipment manufacturers. Mark conceived and developed one of the industry's first multi-service provisioning platform and is multiple patent holder. He is active in the IEEE as a senior member. Mark received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Bluemile Purchases 20,160 Miles of Fiber Throughout Central Ohio

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Fiber Optic Globe

Bluemile has the largest carrier neutral fiber footprint in Central Ohio, three times that of the closest alternative.

Columbus, OH (PRWEB) January 18, 2011

Bluemile, which has offices in New Albany OH, Columbus OH and Rochester NY, is an established provider of cloud, fiber, colocation and wholesale voice solutions that power companies and service providers worldwide. A new fiber initiative with Columbus FiberNet (CFN), financed by Fifth Third Bank, reduces cost and increases choice for businesses in and around Columbus. Bluemile’s purchase of conduit from CFN and lease of conduit from Dublink Development Company, LLC will enable them to install a 288 strand fiber optic cable creating a new fiber footprint for the region (see attached map).

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Sonic.net Will Manage Google’s Stanford Fiber Network

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Sonic.net — a well-known, albeit small, independent ISP based in Santa Rosa, Calif. — is going to operate the trial fiber-to-the-home network to be built by Google on the Stanford University Campus. The network, whose construction is going to start in early 2011, will provide gigabit speeds to nearly 850 faculty and staff owned homes on the Stanford campus.

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Bucolic Barrington Hills hotbed of technology

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By Madhu Krishnamurthy

Mark Welsh, Staff Photographer

Nestled among rolling hills, massive horse farms, 5-acre minimum lot homes and thousands of acres of forest preserve, Barrington Hills remains unadulterated by suburban sprawl.

Straddling roughly 29 square miles over four counties — Cook, Kane, Lake and McHenry — the village has little more than 3,900 residents, lots of trees and open space.

But along with the benefits of living in a quintessential rural setting comes spotty cellular phone service and dropped Internet connections.

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Quincy, UK firm continue to work toward fiber optics network

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sewer party
Image by gnackgnackgnack via Flickr

By MATT HOPF
Herald-Whig Staff Writer

Quincy [IL] and a United Kingdom-based company remain in contact in hopes of reaching an agreement to install a fiber-optic network throughout the city.

The City Council approved a pilot project in September that allowed the company to install 1,300 feet of fiber-optic cable in municipal sewer lines along South 46th Street.

The cable is laid on the bottom of sewers and anchored down with mats, a process that has been used in the UK.

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Sides fight over fiber

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Storefronts in Two Harbors, Minnesota

Image via Wikipedia

This insightful article describes the typical woes that municipalities and counties go through with the incumbent carriers.  Lake County wants to build an open-access network that will offer modern telecom services to this beautiful part of the country.  This network could benefit not only the residents but also the incumbents.  The problem is that the incumbents are happy with the status quo because they do not have to compete for market share or invest capital in their network; thereby, preserving their margins.  Companies like Frontier and Mediacom should embrace these networks as a way to reach more customers and increase ARPU without massive capital expenditures.

My family has vacationed in this area for years.  It was one of the few areas of the country where I could truly disconnect from work and the world.  My pager wouldn’t even work in many parts of the Gunflint Trail.  Such a build-out in Lake County would mean an end to my escape from civilization.  It is a small loss for me and a huge gain for the citizens of this wonderful part of Minnesota.

The first public shots have been fired by a potential competitor with Lake County’s fiber-to-home phone, television, and Internet service project.

By: Mike Creger, Lake County News Chronicle

The first public shots have been fired by a potential competitor with Lake County’s fiber-to-home phone, television, and Internet service project. Mediacom, a cable and internet provider in Two Harbors and Silver Bay, sent letters to the mayors of both cities late last month asking them to reconsider the joint powers agreement the city councils approved as part of Lake County’s application for funds for the countywide project.

But the company may have misfired. In the letter, it cited a portion of the agreement that doesn’t exist; county officials say they believe Mediacom was basing its argument on an early draft of the final document.

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New software to solve municipal broadband issues

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National University of Ireland - Maynooth

Image by meghansvoyages via Flickr

Scientists at the National University of Ireland (NUI) Maynooth have devised a solution to what is a major challenge for cities worldwide − the provision of widespread, free, effective broadband.

For more than 10 years this has been a goal of cities in their drive to support the ’smart economy’, but it had remained elusive due to technological limitations.

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iProvo still has some tough hills to climb

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iProvo has had a tough time making a go of their network initiative, but now Veracity is doing much better.  Veracity is marketing the network and selling services as well as maintaining the network.  They are generating cash so Provo can make the bond payments minus some operating expenses.  Over time they should be able to generate cash to make the bond payments, operate the network, and eek out a modest profit.  The Provo example shows that municipalities need private sector partners with experience in operating broadband networks and a business.

Genelle Pugmire – Daily Herald

After five years, a couple of owners and few other course corrections, Provo’s fiberoptic network, otherwise known as iProvo, seems to be coming of age, according to Mayor John Curtis.

As he looks back on the year, Curtis said he felt talking to residents about what the fiber optic network is, and is not, has been a benchmark.

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