Tag: open access

Bluemile Purchases 20,160 Miles of Fiber Throughout Central Ohio

  By
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).

Continue reading

Sides fight over fiber

  By
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.

Continue reading

Chattanooga’s speedy Internet may give it jobs edge

  By


Chattanooga Farmers Market, May 23, 2010 15
Image by Larry Miller via Flickr

Chattanooga has become the first U.S. city to provide blazing-fast Internet — with download speeds 20 times faster than anything now offered to big business users in Nashville or anywhere else, for that matter.

The question now is whether Chattanooga’s high-tech fiber-optic system puts Music City behind in the race for new jobs.

Continue reading

County faces a fiber-optic opportunity

  By

By Michael Pollick & Doug Sword

Map of Florida highlighting Sarasota County

Image via Wikipedia

Forget Google Fiber. For the bargain-basement price of $1,000 per mile, Sarasota County could build one of the fastest broadband systems in the nation.

During the next year, local government officials will construct an ambitious new fiber-optic network — with a capacity nearing that of the Internet backbone that moves data between major cities — to coordinate most of the traffic lights in Sarasota County.

Continue reading

Some residents voice opposition to Opelika smart-grid plan

  By


Optic fiber

Image via Wikipedia

Although I agree with Jack Mazzola in theory, he does not understand the reasoning behind the city’s actions and he is over dramatizing the impact of the utility’s proposed network. Mr. Mazzola has it correct that selling communications services is best left to private enterprise. The government should not be in the business of providing telecommunications services.  It could provide the last-mile infrastructure to service providers that want to offer voice, video, and data services, because building such a network for a single service provider is cost prohibitive.  The city should facilitate competition for private enterprise by providing a utility that a single provider could not afford to build on their own.

I am sure that the city would collect franchise fees from multiple service providers other than Charter, but the economics are not viable for Charter and other providers to build multiple networks.  Once again I return to the fact that building a broadband network costs a bit over $1,200 per home passed in small communities.  Divide the market in two and the cost doubles which extends the time for a positive rate of return to over 3 years.  Too much for public companies.

The city is wise in its intention to amortize the cost of building a fiber network across different uses.  The fiber has the capacity to support multiple services and applications.  By apportioning the cost based on bandwidth used by a service or application, electricity customers will pay much less than if they had to foot the bill for the whole fiber network;  negating the “rate hike” Mr. Mazzola mentions.  Higher value and bandwidth services would pay their fair share which would increase the revenue to pay for this endeavor.

Mr. Mazzola’s arguments of over regulation and loss of freedoms/privacy are a little overstated.  There is the potential for citizens to apply pressure on the utility to restrict certain types of “information” that Mr. Mazzola refers.  Providing an open-access infrastructure is the way around that problem because the city is not involved in the actual content of the services.

I admire Mr. Mazzola’s principles in an age where so many of the principles of which this nation was founded are being discarded, but he needs to be a bit more constructive in his thought.  If he would like to see free enterprise flourish and receive innovative services then he should support the city building an open-access fiber infrastructure to be used for the smart grid and competitive communication services.  These goals can be achieved with the privacy and financial transparency his group is questioning.  Opelika citizens head to the polls in about a week.  If the ballot measure is approved, then citizens like Mr. Mazzola should remain involved and shape the network to achieve their goals of free enterprise and free flowing information.

By Donathan Prater | Staff Writer

While many expect Opelika voters to give the city the nod when they head to the polls on Aug. 10 for a referendum that would create a city-owned telecommunications company, that feeling isn’t unanimous.

Some opponents plan to attend the public hearing in the Opelika City Council chambers Tuesday to voice their concerns.

Continue reading

Australia Expands Fiber Internet Network Footprint

  By

By RACHEL PANNETT

[SB10001424052748703977004575392593925589942]

Read more about key players in Australia's upcoming elections.

CANBERRA—Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Friday unveiled an expanded footprint for a planned national high-speed fiber Internet network that will now reach 93% of homes and businesses, up from 90% previously.

The network is a defining policy for Gillard’s ruling center-left Labor government ahead of an Aug. 21 general election.

But the program isn’t universally loved, even though it is popular with many voters. Australia’s main conservative Liberal-National opposition coalition has questioned the need for such an expensive service and has threatened to scrap the plan if it returns to power.

Continue reading

Swiss Get FTTH

  By

What would be interesting to know is how St. Gallen funded the effort and whether they hope to break-even or make money.  Seven different service providers will certainly keep Swisscom on their toes.  It would also be interesting to know how much they are charging for dark-fiber or bandwidth.

ALTDORF, Switzerland — Early this year the town of St Gallen launched its new fibre-optic network. In March the public utility company switched on the first connections in the quarter Im Vogelherd. Thanks to Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH), residents in around 1000 homes and many businesses now have faster, more extensive access to the internet, TV and telephony (Triple Play), and to many additional services offered by seven providers.

Continue reading