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Utah Cities To Provide High-Speed Net Access
Instarx writes "The New York Times reports that Salt Lake City and other Utah cities plan to install an ultrahigh-speed optical network as a public utility project starting next year. The network would provide internet access [for about $28 per month] in direct competition to slower commercial offerings. The network would be capable of delivering data over the Internet to homes and businesses at speeds 100 times faster than current commercial residential offerings. It would also offer digital television and telephone services through the Internet."
Clicky-clicky
The article points to the sluggish economy as a hindrance to this sort of deployment in Utah, as well as other municipalities, but I think it may actually help the project.
When you look at the vendors, their pricing has just dropped because they are hungry. So, you can get incredible pricing for the equipment, the electronics, the fiber, all the things you need. Because the economy's down, interest rates are down, so that's going to help financing.
And because they don't just have a free flow of cash in the telecom world, there are companies that are very interested because they don't have the capital riding on somebody else's network. You take that all together and the timing actually is pretty darn good.
As far as municipal involvement in this, the genie is out of the bottle in my opinion. Municipalities across the country are either going to do the retail or the wholesale, but they're going to do something. And they're not satisfied to just sit and wait when an incumbent or some private sector company decides that they're big enough and it's worth their while to come in to build the networks.
The speeds to be provided "are way more than what most consumers need in their home," Mr. Fenn said, adding, "Why provide a Rolls-Royce when a Chevrolet will do?" As I see it, the project is more like building an 8 lane bridge when a 4 lane will do just fine. Of course, I think Salt Lake is very very wise for making the decision to do it. Getting everything on one large "pipe" is what most cable companies are already planning. Hell if telephone companies thought that they could push TV over twisted pair they would be talking about it too. A few "watchdog" groups are a little worried about the spending, and I don't blame them, exp after the tech boom bubble burst. However, I am not sure of the price of rolled fiber cable, but I think it's a safe bet that it's better than it was 3 years ago.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
They don't explicitly talk about upstream bandwidth so I'll play the cynic and assume the worst.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Perhaps Utah is different from where i live...
But as a d00d working in an ISP that offers both high-speed wDSL and dialup, i say they missed the mark by about 5 years.
Sure there are geeks like us that demand high-speed inet, but for the most part, i see people leaving high-speed in droves to go back to dialup.
It appears that even though broadband is cheaper than it has ever been, there are enough people still trying to justify the cost to check their email a few times a week.
The Internet Craze Is Over(tm).
do() || do_not();
Remember, this is Utah, where Blockbuster is too risque, so they edit R rated films to PG standards. I wonder if they plan on running some sort of web filter on their connections, it would be local government reflecting the will of the people.
Well, I would envy the people who get this deal... if they didn't live in Utah. Don't get me wrong, I think Utah is beautiful, but unless they put in all new people along with the cables, I'm staying away.
I just hope they aren't taking money away from everyone else in the state to pay for something that's only going to benefit the cities.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
About damn time.
Well, it's a good idea in some ways, but isn't there major potential for DOS attacks? I mean against the local network, can't you monopolize pretty much all the bandwidth of the neighborhood fiber? I guess you can get into QOS metering and stuff, but that's a hassle.
This is really cool though in that it goes back to what the internet really is - peer to peer at its lowest level. Everyone is a client, everyone is a server, everyone has a public IP. No more of this corporate-shoved consumerism dreck. Very cool
funny munging
Optical fiber on Wikipedia
this seems all well and good, but what about local ISPs in utah? How are mom and pop shops expected to compete with the government? Hopefully this doesn't happen in PA, or I'd be out a job, and very very angry at my local government.
Okay, cool. Now, when do we get this in Silicon Valley? Is our great new governor Arnie going to do this for us? Or are we going to have to wait for Comcast to go ahead and do what they're threatening to do.
With SCO in Lindon attracting tons of DoSes and continuous Slashdotting and getting millions of megs of subpoenaed documents in Word format, I bet they're putting a strain on the entire state's innurnet infrastructure.
...
Did you see that burn mark by the I-15 on Point of the Mountain? that's the fiber optic running underground to Canopy
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Is the job of the government to provide high speed internet service to homes? As much as I like the sound of inexpensive bandwidth, if it's directly the government's service, there is a large potential for filtering or other restrictions on access, and a much greater threat for logging one's activities. I do not like this idea.
The government does not provide phone infrastructure, it instead regulates the companies that provide telephone service. I wouldn't want my telephone, television, newspaper, radio, or internet access to come from one extremely powerful group who would have a significant interest in manipulating information for their own benefit.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I don't think its a bad thing that critical infrastructure like this be in public hands. Obviously the local cable/telcos don't see the economic advantage to providing really fast afordable internet, and in this case its going to help the region.
I like competetion and I hope they'll probably lease the lines to various providers who can end up providing new services at cheap prices.
Anyway, this will make jobs. (thus the Rosevelt reference.)
With a name like Utopia though..
I live in South SLC - it would be great if it happened, but I'm not holding my breath. I've waited years for DSL and only finally received cable (w00t!)
Note that Provo (about 35 miles south) has such a network, but they're still having last mile and content problems. Provo has pulled fiber all over the city, but no one is providing content, or subscribing. Also, keep in mind that Utah is ultra-conservative. Provo, for example, created their own cable TV system because they didn't like the soft-pr0n on AT&T's cable system. Ironically, Provo has a higher per-capita consumption of soft-pr0n that the US.
Anyhow - I for one will welcome our new fiber overloards, but I'm not holding my breath, and I'm very suspecious as whether or not content will be regulated.
This is the best news yet!
Go back to your dial-up mere mortals. Leave us all the more bandwith to download the 1,001 Linux distro ISO's out there.
-- taking over the world, we are.
All roads lead to mormon.org...
The costs are substantial. Mr. Morris said Utopia would spend about $1,100 a home to run the fiber network by each house in the 18 cities involved, and an additional $1,400 for each home that decided to be connected.
What would you personally do with $1100 dollars? Would you spend it so you can have the potential of spending another $1400 and monthly fees to get more bandwidth than you would ever need right now?
Now how about enforcing that on every homeowner in your city?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
In a time where high speed access has started to actually become affordable to the average consumer, we still have those elect few who live in the 'boonies' where their only high speed is derived from satellite or wireless.
;-)
I being one of them.
I see this 'experiment' as a stepping stone for future investments. Just imagine the outcome if it flops! - But, imagine the dream of dreams if it is indeed a huge success: fiber optic everywhere!
Personally, I could really use a reliable high speed connection - one that coupled Telephone, Cable TV, and Internet into one nice bundle pricing - all under $100 (although, the article claimed a $28/mo fee for the subscribers).
One other question, what's the restrtictions? Can I host my own personal web/mail server on my personal high speed connection??
Note to self: avoid shitty LDS references.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
cursing bad, multiple wives good.
Leave this to the free market of competition -- any time the government enacts these "wonderful projects" it ends up costing bigger bucks than if it was done for profit. How many non-users will pay higher taxes so that the actual users can get a service they way? How many ISP jobs will be lost? How many useless government jobs will be added?
Is this what you want? The same bureaucrats who have ruined education, who have done nothing but porked their budgets out of control -- you want these guys serving your high speed data?
Does anyone know what the 17 other cities are?
I never thought I'd say this in my life, but I'm moving to Utah!
Illinois citizens pay the price
These towns better look hard before they leap....
CMDRTACO CHECK YOUR EMAIL!
Gee, this is really nice guys, except one slight problem... You have TO LIVE IN FREAKIN UTAH!!!
Lame
Like Roy Moore trying to shove the Ten Commandments down everyone's throat...
evil adrian
Isn't the internet illegal there?
From the article:
Jerry Fenn, the president of the Utah division of Qwest, the regional telephone company here that provides its own high-speed Internet access, said there were few uses yet for the network Utopia plans to deliver.
The speeds to be provided "are way more than what most consumers need in their home," Mr. Fenn said, adding, "Why provide a Rolls-Royce when a Chevrolet will do?"
This is exactly the line of thinking that prevents projects like this from implementation all accross the country. Just because "it's more than we need" right now does not mean it won't be down the road. It's the chicken and egg situation of the tech sector- no one will build it until there is a need, but there will not be a need unless it's there for people to develop uses on. Sort of ironic coming from a society which prides itself in gas gussling SUVs and exhorbitant homes.
Even though I live on the other side of the country, I hope this goes through, if not for the geeks of Utah, but for the hopes that municipal (read not controlled by draconian corporations) communications infrastructure can be rolled out in other places too.
Higher speed means the ability to order more wives on those online mail order bride sites. It's Utah, you know.
These are all for the USA -
From April 2003: Broadband adoption races ahead in US
A little older, 2002: More consumers hooked on broadband
I think you get the idea...
I work for the Local Government in Lafayette, Louisiana and we've been rolling out fiber for years now all over the city... Businesses and residents can buy access through numerous resellers which all specialize in different things... Including one or two that specialize in delivering high-speed wireless access to your house. :)
Of course LARGE cities end up in the news for mentioning they'll be rolling out fiber someday now, while us smaller cities that have had a fiber network for a couple years never get mentioned.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
and only half a brain.
*sigh*
Living in Utah, finding broadband solutions can be annoying. Qwest is downright horrible, while Comcast is growing, but doesn't cover a large enough area. Most people in my town of 30,000 cannot get high speed (cable or DSL), and because of the way the phone lines are laid out, the best modem connection many get is 28.8k.
A statewide network should do what the state wanted, attract more business, as well as provide it's citizens with high speed bandwidth
Ummm.... a small percentage of people here feel the need to pay some other company, most definatly NOT blockbuster, to edit out the "bad stuff" for them...
For the rest of us, there's nobody telling us that we can't go pick up a move that's rated "R" if we want to, or for that matter go to an adult video store with "XXX" videos, or get them on pay-per=view, or whatever... Sure, they've tried..but failed, since the majority of people figured out that it was a stupid idea to begin with.
So I can pretty confidently say that they won't try to force a filter onto people, we're not talking about China here!
I'll be the first to tell you that Utah has some oddities...especially when it comes to alcohol laws. But if you haven't lived here, (and I have, my entire 27 years), then forgive me for being blunt, but you don't have a clue.
Please show me in the Constitution where it becomes the responsibility of the State to provide public utilities, especially considering that the market already is serviced by private companies? How can you compete with free?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Okay, ha ha... we are all a bunch of amish here. Whatever! Is there a market here for movies w/ the violence and swearing taken out? Sure. Can you still get the other R rated films as well. Yes. Would they force people to use censor'd net if they did have it? No. If anything they would just provide it as an option, which I am sure some people would appreciate, but you could still get the raw full of pr0n feed if you wanted it.
/me packs up and moves to Utah!!! This has gotta be great for counter strike or quake servers!!! =]
I live in an area with a dsl monopoly. $80 a month for 1gig or $20 a month for dialup fun are the only two choices. I think what their doing will create more kinds of new jobs and attract fresh business to that area. Sounds like a good investment if you want to be competitive.
...why did it have to be Utah?
Oh well, if it turns out profitable there,
maybe other areas will copy the idea and we can finally catch up to Canada and Malaysia in terms of
bandwidth per connected household.
Maybe this could also bring back the days of people running personal servers off thier home connections. I miss surfing the web at the edge of the network. With so many EULA's preventing servers period it has slowly started to mirror other content distribution systems.. all push all the time.
/* * pope1 */
The local government will have access to logs of every site you visit, every email you send/receive will pass though it's network.
I'd have to do some heavy reading into their privacy policy before I signed up for this.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
That's never happened to me for choosing Burger King instead of McDonald's.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Excuse me, but Roy Moore has the support of more than a "small group of people" in this state. In polls of Alabamians, Moore averages over 60% approval. We're right; the courts are wrong.
And so are you.
Oh, of course, because EVERYONE wants to see sex and violence and hear F*ck every 10 seconds.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the possibility that there was a demand for this BEFORE the companies were created.
This is certainly a conspiracy by Big Brother to CENSOR us and take away our freedoms (You know, like watching a movie in your home with your family, to your standards).
Oh, you mean like every fag in america having a parade every friday to shove their deviant way of life down our throat?
Umm, that wasn't our 'deviant way of life' we had you swallowing. That was our cocks.
But I know I can speak for the rest of us fags when I saw that we're so glad that you enjoyed the experience. Lets do it again sometime?
Is that a poligamy joke?
That should read "Utah Taxpayers To Provide High-Speed Access".
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Given that Salt Lake City (where I live and work) is in a budget crunch like most everywhere else, I can't see where the money will come from to lay fiber everywhere. The cost of DSL is about $50 a month for 640down/256up, $40 for 256/256, and Comcast cable costs about $45 (without cable TV). While most peole I work with have DSL or cable, I don't see the masses demanding high speed.
There was another compnay based in American Fork (next to Lindon and SCO) that was a startup and was trying to implement something similar, but eventually found out the cost was just too high and not enough people were willing to pay for it.
Fiber could be laid to neighborhoods and then branch copper off from there to the actual homes, but even that's going to cost a bunch, not to talk about the maintenance.
And only $470 million to lay fiber directly to 248,000 homes? To me that sounds like an underestimate. What about the network equipment and customer support and..... to support those 248,000 homes?
"It's usually in the best interests of a small group, who doesn't accept things being different than their notions of the way the world works. So, rather than take a live-and-let-live approach, they feel a need to enforce their ideas upon others, even of the original ideas of the others do not harm those that wish to remain unharmed.
We live in a sad world when people feel a need to tell others what to do, think, or feel when what is already done, thought, or felt isn't really a problem."
A perfect description of liberalism. Congrats.
How much unused fiber is there around the US? All the major telcom's got sucked into the dot-com broadband explosion in the 1990's, and almost all of it is unused. Why will Utah be different? Are the taxpayers really wanting to pay to install this system, only to pay again to use it? Being a relatively conservative state (not everyone in Utah is a Mormon... but the educated masses of /. knew that), I can't see them wanting to pay higher taxes, just so they can get broadband access. Businesses in the area will appreciate the choice (if available for commercial usage), and the geeks will be into it, but Ma and Pa Kettle probably don't give two wits about it.
I say spend the money on our real future, school systems.
Forget filtering... any decent lawyer would be able to make a constitutional case out of that Utah or anyway else.
Now what would scare me with government run ISPs is their complete compliance with the rest of the government (i.e. the judiciary). Is Utah's state run ISP going to fight subpeona's of their users traffic records? Of course not! The government and media are all ready so far under the covers together that handing one control of the pipe while the other controls the content is a Bad Idea. If you thought the broadcast flag was bad, wait till they set the evil bit on the state run routers.
Just curious, but I know that my state (IL) has "no compete" laws that basically say that the government cannot compete in established industries. e.g. They can't open a donut shop because that would hurt Krispy Kreme's business. Do other states have similar laws?
In polls of Alabamians, Moore averages over 60% approval. We're right; the courts are wrong.
I bet if you took a poll, over 60% of Alabamians would also support "lynching all them there niggers" too.
you can read more about the project at their (unfinished website): utopianet.org It's mostly empty, but there is a list of cities and a good FAQ
OK, so while the internet overall is migrating towards more multimedia content and increased speed... currently there is little use for such bandwidth to the home consumer. However, when you think about it, what does the average netizen use heavy bandwidth for even on current DSL/cable standards. Excluding games and perhaps pr0n, I believe that piracy does include a decent chunk of it (though legal online music sales are definately starting to catch on).
So, if an ISP starts getting sued, or for that matter employees of an ISP, is this a game that the public/government really wants to get into? I mean, supporting the DCMA is a fine thing (for them) until they end up under the gun... and in many cases draconian anti-piracy enforcement won't endear them as an ISP.
I'd say that they'd better prepare for some interesting surprises, though perhaps having the gov't on our (or at least the ISP's side) of the DCMA/internet fence might be a godo thing.
In polls of Alabamians, Moore averages over 60% approval.
Cue the opening strains of 'Dualling Banjos'.
We're right; the courts are wrong.
Just as we were bout everything from desegregation to the abolition of slavery as well.
I personally think this is the appopriate way to move forward with public infrastructure. The community pools together resources from taxes to pay for its own infrastructure - and then allow service providers to pay for access (to help defray up-front infrastructure costs) and actually compete for consumer dollars.
Create a municipal digital network, and allow cable/telecom companies to actually compete. If anything, people should have learned their lesson -- when Comcast offers to build your infrastructure 'for free', its monopoly is going to cost more than the upfront cost to have done it publicly.
Similarly with power lines and water/sewer. There is a basic conflict of interest between a corporations who are focused on profit above all else, and the public good which is focused on dependability and quality above all else. for example: consider the power transmission infrastructure.
sure, if the consumer cares about quality and dependability, the free-market should bear out those providers who manage such standards. However, the shared infrastruture -punishes- companies who invest (all its competitors benefit from the increased quality, only the investor takes the financial hit and then has to charge -more-, pricing itself out of the game).
The logical step is simply taking jurisdiction of the local lines back on the local level, and the long-haul lines on the federal level (think US highway/road system).
it's not like our infrastructure couldn't use a nice big upgrade anyway. and the telecom industry could certainly benefit from some public works projects to bid on.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Companies are free to do whatever they want. If there's a market for it, companies will produce product. It doesn't force anything upon you.
There's also many companies (Blockbuster, Hollywood Video) on about every corner here who sell the regular, unedited videos.
It's all about choice. Get over it if everyone doesn't choose to view what you do. Personally, I don't care to watch the videos from the edited store *or* the unedited stores. There's better things to do with my life (like read Slashdot, of course
Oh, you mean like every fag in america having a parade every friday to shove their deviant way of life down our throat?
First Amendment
Or did you mean like every alcoholic trying to drag down the sober to their level?
What are you talking about? Facts? Citations?
Or were you referring to everyone so incapable of dealing with their pathetic lives that they have to hide behind marijuana and trying to legalize it so we can all hide together?
Religion is the opiate of the masses... marijuana is pretty harmless...
Or were you referring to the p0rn addicted movie producers who'd love to see the traditional family and it's values disappear so they'd have more p0rn addicts to sell their movies to?
First Amendment
Ok, here is my question, it may sounds stupid to some but honestly I have no idea how else Ill find an answer
I pay my dialup ISP $10/mo for access. They pay big bucks to Verizon for access. Who does Verizon pay for access? How do I get on without the middle man, or is it not possible because I dont own a bunch of fiber lines?
If you traceroute a connection between here and accross the country I find myself going from major ISP to major ISP, but who lets those ISPs on? I understand ICANN but I dont think this has anything to do with them.
Sorry if this is sounding really stupid but Its been blowing my mind. At least with DNS I could find a book, and I'm sure I can with this but I wouldnt even know what to google.
Anyone?
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
They have been sued off the 'net by the RIAA!
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
When was the last time you were in Utah? I have lived in Utah for 3 years and every blockbuster I have been to has carried R movies. I lived in California for 20 years before I moved out here and I have not noticed the slightest difference in internet content or movie selections.
Perhaps that's just wishful thinking on my part. Personally, I don't place myself in either camp. It all depends on the product being produces. Do I want a for-profit company making decisions about my medical coverage? Hell no! Do I want the government making my car? Of course not!
In this case, it only makes sense that a critical infrastructure like Internet service be provided by the state. Charging me $50/month for my broadband connection seems ridiculously high. Either the the cable company is terribly inefficient or they will be making money hand over fist far into the future.
We all know companies set prices where they will make the most profit, the public be damned, with no obligation to social justice issues. They don't care if nearly 33% of the population can't aford to shell out $50/month for broadband. All that matters to them is that it will make them more money if they gouge those who can afford to pay and leave lower income folks out in the cold.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
Ironically, Provo has a higher per-capita consumption of soft-pr0n that the US.
Citation?
There are some minor problems. Technically, the staff of the city network need to gain a little experience. But overall, it has been a pleasant experience and I recommend it to everyone else.
It's about time the rest of the state catches up to us. Heck, we're just a little ol' cowboy town that barely knows how to find the 'on' button for our com-poot-urs.
H0ek
Think you're smart? Prove you've got brains!
Now I'll be able to download my legal binary copy of fully licensed SCO Linux faster. Response times for bug reports and fixes should be faster too. Gotta love those Utah guys.
TT
Come on guys! Is the Mormon church the only thing that comes to mind when you think of Utah? You've got a lot to learn. Yes, I am Mormon, but I don't live in Utah. Utah is probably one of the most tech-savvy (and Linux-friendly btw) states in the nation and I think the rest of the nation could learn alot from Utah due to the likes of companies like Novell, SUSE, PowerQuest, Iomega, Overstock.com, Freeservers.com (owned by About, Inc), and many others. There is a slew of IT knowledge there, and some great jobs for IT and non-IT alike. Not only that, but you've got the scenery of the mountains, the skiing in the winter, Park City, and did I mention that the majority of Salt Lake City IS NOT Mormon?
Yes, there are some weird laws imposed by the Mormon majority of the state, but from what I know from non-members of the Mormon faith these haven't kept those people from partying, drinking, smoking, or having whatever fun you like to do. Much of Silicon Valley is now moving to Utah due to the IT-friendly nature it's government has, and has had for years now.
Living on the East Coast, I have to admit, I wish our governments out here imposed similar programs to bring in the competition with the larger telecom monopolies that leave us residents with little to no choice in what internet access we can have. They are simply slow on this side of the nation. I am happy to see what Utah is doing and hope more cities and states can impose similar programs to improve the access to technology of their own citizens.
Will Utah filter internet access? I doubt it - the ACLU is probably more powerful there than it is anywhere else in the nation first of all, which would make it almost an impossible task in the first place, and I think Utah has enough technical knowledge to know that a user can filter what they want from their own homes rather than forcing things upon it's own citizens.
Oh, and on a side note - before you start making the weird underwear jokes have you considered learning about the religion yourself rather than criticizing it?
When Utah passed "liquor by the drink," they limited it to one drink at a time, meaning no doubles, no Boilermakers etc...
I probably got the quote wrong, but whatever. They're always telling us we'll never need more than whatever is the status quo. Ha! My net could always be faster, my computer could always be faster, my screen could always be bigger! I applaud Utah for trying to bring high speed to the masses. It takes guts. Plus, the Internet should be for the people, not for the mega-conglomerates to make money! It's as important as electricity, libraries, and schools now.
___Abuse of power comes as no surprise___
i agree with your assessment and solution. but to comment on the reasons that this is a good idea, i would say that the article gives the best reason. why keep upgrading the network from twisted pair to cable to ethernet to fiber when with government support you can jump right to the top? this is where government works best and the reason we are surfing now.
additionally, this will create a lot of new business opportunities. i'm interested in getting a place in the mountains and this would sure as hell sell me! park city here i come...
you have to admit that the telcos have not exactly jumped at the chance to improve the network. hopefully, initiatives like this will wake them from sleepy time.
a new place I should call home.
Parent might be modded as a troll, but he/she has a perfectly valid point (even if it is a bit redundant).
http://wsulug.org
They need a Brady wife law in Utah: 3 day waiting period for getting a new wife, and a "one new wire per month" law might not be such a bad idea either.
(No, a Brady wife law has nothing to do with Florence Henderson)
You've never been here, have you? All you have to go by are the stereotypical images from the 1960's. We weren't opposed to desegregation; we were opposed to the Federal government ignoring the 10th Amendment. And, unlike in the North, desegregation went very smoothly here.
Only a government would justify a project like that. At a business it would not even pass the laugh test.
While I am all for more bandwidth I do not believe it is the place for some bureaucrats looking to make a name for themselves to do it.
The costs compared to the numbers served is atrocious. This can only work at the point of a gun.
That state finally does something right... I'll be damned. It's about time internet access became a public utility like electricity.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
As a small business owner in Utah, this is very exciting news. I have several small offices in the state and real-time data sharing is simply not possible on the bubget I have. This makes centralized data storage a reality. In addition, the word telecommuting becomes more than just a buzz word. This can push the internet to the next step for businesses. I hope this becomes reality.
A note about the funding for the project from the above web site:
The UTOPIA business case indicates that wholesale usage fees, charged to service providers based on their use of the network, will generate enough revenue to pay the capital investment costs, operating expenses, and debt service obligations associated with building and maintaing the network. No taxpayer money will be needed. However, in order to secure a competitive interest rate on the bonds that UTOPIA will issue to cover the cost of network construction, member cities may pledge to guarantee some of the debt.
So Utah tax payers (me included) won't be paying for this from our taxes. I can't wait, however, until ISPs in Utah start passing the cost of the whole thing onto me (the consumer). Sure I can get Gbit speeds. The "basic" package may cost $28 (probably at speeds comparable to current cable), but wait until you ask for a full Gbit/s. I can get a DS3 (45 Mbits/sec) for about $20,000 per month right now. No thank you. I'm happy with my 640k/256k DSL at $50.
Let's hope it's IPV6. They claim it will not need an upgrade any time soon.
The government should not be providing this service in any way, shape, or form.
In areas where the business case is doable, private companies are already doing it.
You've got a case here where they are far far overstepping their bounds. This is a government who is constantly whining about needing tax dollars, who can't provide decent public transportation, but is now getting into ANOTHER business!
BUSINESS. The government isn't IN business. The internet is not a necessity in any way, shape, or form. It's not a country wide monopoly, you've got millions of dial up companies, hundreds of broad band companies, etc.
One can't compare this to a service like the US Mail, which is a necessity, and BY necessity, has to be a monopoly to perform it's function.
This isn't the power company. It's not a medical organization. The internet is a function of entertainment, and there is alot of private sector investment.
So now the government is using our tax dollars (sorry guys, it's true by definition - they EXIST on our tax dollars) to compete with private companies in an entertainment market.
Is the government going to lease it's infrastructure to competitors? Does it tax it's own income? Does it fall under federal legislation?
Another case of someone thinking the government should be bigger rather than smaller.
Cue the opening strains of 'Dualling Banjos'.
At least we know how to spell "duelling".
Ah, the things children say. :-) So much hate for the Big Evil Corporations, and so much trust in Happy Bunny Government.
At least I can sue a corporation, and possibly even win. Every try to sue the government?
Silicon Valley? As in California? As in the state that has issues controling electricity, fires, and thier spending? That California?
How in the hell do expect California to control light when they can't even cover the basics.
I would be curious to see how much of a commercial tone the Internet service would have. For instance, ISPs (especially cable) don't like to allow people to run their own servers because they want to sell people another (rather meaningless) 'tier' of service -- the 'business plan'. This has always bugged me because there is no technical reason for such restrictions, but I am pretty sure that a publicly available service would not impose such corporate-minded restrictions.
Nothing like collecting taxes from a business and using that money to go into competition with them.
This project is interesting and is more or less the way people here in The Netherlands are thinking the future will be like. I have personally worked on projects like these and the general idea is like this.
1. The only worthwile infrastructure for the future is fiber. This is a statement of fact/religion. Wireless may be nice in your house, but as a shared infrastructure it doesn't work for high speed data services.
2. Having companies lay 2, 3, 4, 5 parallel fiber infrastructures to each house amounts to a huge investment which you can't earn back over time.
3. To save on the investment on the physical and datalink layer. The fiber and active components at the end of each street are owned by a not-for-profit organisation, this can be customer owned, owned by housing corporations, Public Private Partnership, public organisations or maybe even private organisations.
4. Routing is done in such a way that local traffic stays as local as possible. You can actually make local traffic free, because the fiber and active components have been paid for already (with a mild cap maybe to keep people from hogging bandwidth)
5. The whole network is hooked up to one or more central locations which act like Internet Exchanges. Here corporations hook up their networks. An ISP could expand its network to individual users via VLAN's. An end user just subscribes to a VLAN to get a service. This allows for easy access to end users for all suppliers and for easy changing of suppliers by end-users. At this central location you will also find bandwidth intensive services like video on demand. (Just like one builds an electricity intensive company next to a hydrodam)
6. It would be great if you could have indivdual vlans per device, so your IP-phone hooks up to a different vlan than your securitycam than your ISP-connection. This allows for easy access to multiple services without the nescessity to route everything through your ISP first. Power to the people.
All in all given an investment of about 1100euros per household this would amount to about 15 euros per month for 15 years. This would generate a total revenue of about 2700 euros for 15 years. That would about cover for organisation, maintenance and new kit every 5 years. On top of this the end user would get a service bill where each service gets indidually charged.
So all in all: Physical and datalink layer are a utility, all higher layers are not a utility and need to be payed for one way or another. Though local traffic could be free.
Use Adsense for Charity
I am wondering if they are planning on purchasing any of the dark fiber runs that I'm sure are buried all over the place and turning that on, or if they are going to go all-new fiber runs. I'm sure there must be quite a bit of unused fiber runs in the area given the number of high-tech and networking companies that went out of business.
Providing such a fat porn pipeline for the population least likely to use it.
Next: Free online gambling and dancing for Baptists.
...with $87,000,000,000 ? Would you give it to exxon?
LOL, not everyone in Utah is of this upbrining. Some of the law makers are. For example, they passed a law some years back where bars serving mixed drinks had to do so using those small sample bottles rather then out of a full sized 1/5 or 1/2 gal. As a direct result those interested in something like a gin and tonic always got just a little too much jin, and the drunkards got extra drunk as sample bottles are larger then a typical shot, typical shot being I believe sub one ounce.
Needless to say, they were better served letting the bars water down their drinks rather then using an exact specification, esp one larger then standard.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
instead of the woefully underfunded public ones, why, they just gotten get a good white man's job, and pay for it.
There are companies in Utah which will sell you an editted version of a movie, if that's what you want to buy. It started with Titanic, where people thought it was a great movie (it wasn't) except for Kate Winslet's nude scene. So a company sprang up to sell original VHS tapes that had a little editting applied to them to remove the naughty bits. The key was that the tapes were shrink-wrap packages straight off the shelf, for which everybody got paid (copyright respected), but then the store cut down the tape to remove the "offensive" part. This is exactly what I do with my kids' Disney tapes, except it's the 15 minutes of previews at the beginning that I cut out; open the tape, cut, respool, and presto! the movie starts as soon as I plunk it in the VCR.
I think I had a point in there somewhere.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
Personally I dont think we need to focus on this yet. Rural people like me (in indiana) rely on poor dial-up service (max of 40k), and we already are talking about people in cities having fiberoptic, while, yes, ruralites have Can we focus out side the box of city limits?
Eat a Chicken, You know you want to.
Build it and they will come...
Even with a cable connection, multimedia streaming over the internet stinks. 100mbits doesn't even really sound like that much now when considering that DVD-quality broadcasts will use 6 and HDTV quality will use 18. I think they're on the right track here. The telcos have no interest in building the infrastructure because they are already maxing their profit margins. I agree with the article, that high-speed data connectivity is no longer a convenience.
Being ahead of the curve, and probably only by a little bit at that, is the way to go.
I reflect your pompous signature back upon you.
Let's see. Let people have their own free will to decide what's best for them = Free society = Liberal. Okay.
So following that "logic", here's the other side of the coin. Spoon feed people what "we" say is good for them and label the dissenters as terrorists = despotism = conservative.
Head for the hills, the liberals are coming! If they take over, we'll have to think for ourselves!!!
If whales learn how to use weapons we're all screwed!
The only possible reason I see is price fixing.
Anyone else see a different logical reason for it?
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
The speeds to be provided "are way more than what most consumers need in their home," Mr. Fenn said, adding, "Why provide a Rolls-Royce when a Chevrolet will do?"
Same crap they went through in Eugene, Oregon. The cable companies blew it up with0
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I've seen Government Housing, Government Education, Government Health Care and Government DMV. No thanks, I'll pass on Government ISP.
How funny that all the little government fanboys get so moist at the suggestion of another government monopoly.
Corporate "Monopoly" - bad
Government Monopoly - Fanboy wet dream
How long before the existing companies (telephone, cable) file for a court injunction to stop this from happening...
1. Set up massive high speed network in ultra-conservative society. 2. Keep logs of which politicians visit which websites. 3. Threaten to release information to public. 4. ??? 5. Profit.
gl4ss:
The reality is that public education in Finland is actually very different than public education in the U.S. In Finland, almost all the dollars for the education system is paid for by the local town. In the U.S., we share money from other cities, counties, and even States. It is unfortunate that I have to subsidize the education of people in States hundreds of miles away. If the money comes from only the local people, there is definitely more control over spending and waste! Finland's "success" to me is still a bit of a failure, as the local system definitely has moved more towards indoctrination than education in recent years.
As for the private companies not wanting to offer the service, it is more an aspect of over-regulation by the local, State, and federal governments trying to control communication rather than a lack of desire by private corporations to get involved. If the city provides the service, it can get around many aspects of regulations that it imposes on private corporations.
Unipuma: It is very hard to see how much money you're really paying for a government provided pathway, even if private companies provide the next level of service on that public pathway. Taxes at so many different levels mask the true cost of the public provision.
Slycrel:
Are you sure it is profitable? How many ISPs provided bad service because their regulations required them merely to provide a certain level of expected service? When government regulates (such as airline security), private corporations can say they've met the level of expected service as regulated, and then point the blame on the government's minimal desires. When any government agency sets a mandated monopoly, that corporation is surely in bed with the bureaucrats. When you remove the regulations, and allow true competition, then competitors work hard to provide better service. Look at the PC industry. If Dell was mandated as the only provider of PCs in your area, and the government said that Dell had to sell at least a Pentium 2 with Windows 98, do you really think Dell has any incentive to provide P4s with Linux? Of course not.
Anonymous Cowards:
The Interstate Highway IS a waste. Look how many we pay in hidden taxes (gas taxes, amongst others) to pave the highways. Complete overspending.
The Internet started out as a government project, where it didn't go anywhere until private corporations provided their own "Internet." I think AOL and Prodigy were the head of the game when they created their own nationwide network. Look at the realities. How many years did the government provision do anything? It wasn't until private companies created a proprietary structure that it bloomed. Then, the market dictated that they preferred a compatible model between the big ISPs, and the Internet REALLY boomed. I see little reason to applaud the government for the growth.
As for the big telcos needing to lobby to tilt the playing field, they can only lobby because it is a government regulated system. If it was true competition, lobbying would accomplish NOTHING. The money could be better spent on improving each competitors' system, so they could win out in the long run.
Move to Utah so I can get my hands on one of these nice fiber pipes :)
I was in Utah on business and the strongest beer you can get at most stores and bars is 3.2%, almost half what normal beers have. Utah has some tough liquor laws but at least it's not a "dry" state.
OK I'm just jealous of the cheap high speed access and I will feel better by drinking a 12% Imperial Stout.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
dnd their porn.
"Look how the Internet is growing, it's only a matter of time before multimedia content pushes the limits of even modern broadband setups. They are building capacity for the future, as well as for increased longterm demand."
I agree. Soon I'll be able to grab Matrix:Revolution, The Hulk, and Brother Bear, plus Britney Spears and some E-Books all at the same time instead of one at a time. Thanks Utah.
"Look at the rest of the industry, are you hard drives too fast, is your printer too fast, can you ever be too fast (besides playing old games and some emulators)?"
Hell no! I can RAID the entire alt.binaries group, and print out the latest novel. Thanks technology. You've made my life easier. Anyone want a copy of Madonna's latest?
A public works project? What kind of socialist crap is that? High speed internet access should be for the rich and privileged only!
This can be good for business to if done correctly. For one this project is going to employ lots of people and is going to involve the purchase of lots of equipment. Possibly they should then leave the network open for businesses to provide media and content services. Cable companies are still going to be needed to rpovide access to TV and HDTV content, if they could concentrate on competing based on their content and not capital-intensive infrastructure it would probably help their bottom line. Giving preference to local businesses would definitely help the community and payback the initial investment over time.
STOP ROCK VIDEO
This is NOT the state I'd want handling my internet traffic if I were a surfer of pr0n. It wouldn't surprise me if they BLOCKED a lot of that stuff.
I lived in Utah.
The place is so damn small that no commercial companies will provide broadband in most places.
* The government HAS TO because no one else will. *
(They don't call them "Utards" for nothing.)
Wow! Elected government actually doing something that the market failed to deliver? Do you think they're some sort of Communists?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The internet is a function of entertainment, and there is alot of private sector investment.
What are you talking about? The Internet is a telecommunications infrastructure, entertainment is a subset of what kind of services the Internet provides.
Just in case you weren't aware, all of the various US government departments use the Internet, as do various research and education institutions.
Fine. Let's tear up the interstates then, it was big government that built them wasn't it?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
And the answer is: the almighty dollar. People are abandoning dialup because of $. If they can replace their cable (~$40) and phone (~$30) and internet (~$10 for uber-cheep dialup, ~$40+ for a fat pipe) with one nice fat pipe, at the proposed price of $28, that's a huge benefit, and you'll see people ditch the old services in droves to sign up for it.
All the same benefits, but more of them, for less money? Only a fool would turn that down.
That is, assuming that the sales pitch is honest, which I'm not sure of.
BlackGriffen
I happen to live in Salt Lake City (and this is the first time I've heard about anything like this so I am both excited and a little skeptical) and the situation here right now is that we have two main sources of high speed internet: DSL from qwest and cable from comcast (formerly AT&T, formerly TCI). There are also various other odd solutions like high-latency wireless in certain areas, satellite, etc...
:)
Now, if you want to use your own ISP (like I do) you cannot use cable. If you want cable you have to use comcast as your ISP, which is absurd. Even qwest deliberately tries to steer all of their customers toward MSN as an ISP (because they have some deal worked out with Microsoft). When ordering DSL you have to specifically say you don't want to use MSN and then tell them which local ISP of your choice you want to use.
So ya.. this deception and these private networks are nonsense. If my tax dollars are going to go toward anything, I want them to go toward a high speed PUBLIC network that can be used to hook into any ISP that I so choose. After all, isn't that what government is supposed to be for? To serve the people?
$28 a month... heck I am paying that right now just for my DSL line and I get 640kbps down and 256kbps up (yes, that is about 65kilobytes/s download). So this would only benefit me... I say go for it and why haven't they done this already?
And who cares if not everyone in Salt Lake would use it? hehe... not everyone in Salt Lake uses light rail but they installed that, didn't they?
Nonsense! He was talking about replacing the edges of the banjo with vertices at the midpoints, and the vertices with edges likewise positioned.
My hometown has had this for about 6 years now...its really nice. Can't say much about competition because the local utilities basically drove the competing cable TV/Internet provider out of town. I don't know anyone who uses them anymore. But it is really nice to have a fast connection with all the possibilities you need coming right into your home.
In Provo. They sell fiber connections that see about 22Mbps throughput for $600/mo to complexes. Haven't heard anything about digital TV or phone service on them yet, but then again, we're not Salt Lake.
Inconceivable!
Utah is one of the most urban states in the US. Sixth most urban overall, isn't it? So basically, there aren't enough people living outside the cities to fund anything of this sort anyway. It's money from the cities, for the cities.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Private entities censor too, all the time, and they don't have to worry about pesky things like voters or courts or bills or rights. Paid any attention to what companies are doing to their employees' internet connections?
If the censor is the company that owns the physical network, then the censorship is every bit as effective, too--unless you happen to have a few hundred million of your own lying around, or a lot of investors willing to make a very long-range gamble competing with an established monopoly, you can't very well decide to finance your own fiber rollout to compete with your cable company's just to get uncensored content.
--Bruce Fields
That is the key I think - even if you could accept the argument that most people do not need or want broadband (which I don't really believe), the thing is that a city with great broadband infrastructure will help attract the people that will be creating the growth companies for years to come. It's making me think about moving there (after they get it in place).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
(n/t)
Here in Norway demand is still high, in particular the more rural areas want to get on the bandwagon. Also, in addition to the traditional high-speed cable/DSL connection, two variations seem to be catching on. One is nicknamed "slowband" (just watered down ADSL) and the other a tightly metered connection (drop to ISDN speed after quota is up) - both designed for users with less intense needs, but that give them a permanent internet connection without per-minute charges.
With many families now having more than one computer, most prefer that over dial-up and having one "master" computer that must have internet sharing activated. These are in particular the University educated people that have lived on campus with high-speed internet for years. Also, typcially student's apartments outside campus now often share a DSL line or similar. So I see no signs that it is slowing here, though YMMV I guess.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Municipalities across the country are either going to do the retail or the wholesale
Many have been, and in spite of the track record and sufficient demonstration of their inability to operate as a professionally run telecom entity, many still aspire to do things more interesting than running their local water plant.
What is important for any consumer (and citizen, in the case of a municipal considering getting into commercial enterprises with your tax dollars) is to understand the dynamic of motivation in any operation.
In Utah, the complaint is being made that too many commercial entities are ignoring the demand for broadband. Being one who provides this to a third of a fly-over country state, I can tell you that the claims of interest in broadband (even at 60% comperable city cable modem prices) is far less than the claims. I've had communities present us with petitions with over 200 signatures, only to discover that less than 20% of that number were actually prepared to pay for the service when it was finally provided. (It wasn't price or competition - but rather a large majority of parties signing it to pad the numbers in the hope they could bring something good to their community - without they themselves actually having to purchase it!)
And we're motivated by the consequence of failure being of significant disinterest (forget about making great profits at this point - broadband in rural America is being operated exceptionally well if you're breaking even) . Contrast that with a municipal. They are used to 8:30 to 4 work hours, not twelve-hour days, expect to sneak out early Friday and never work weekends. They're typically overstaffed with undercompetent people and solve problems by throwing more bodies at the problem, or (god forbid), hiring and believing consultants.
Their motivation? It's typically prestige and recognition. Failure isn't a possibility, as they will quickly transfer moneys from their monopoly operations (water, sewer, etc.) either legally or illegally (watch out for those creative loans from the monopoly that get "forgiven" and wiped off the books a few years later, or the illegal transfer "loaning" of assets, including employees, vehicles, equipment and office space that is billed to the regulated monopoly but actually put to use within the broadband operation).
The result: you end up paying the highest water, sewer, electric, etc. rates in the state. One municipal in our region, who decided to offer broadband (in spite of three - yes, three - other broadband offerings) has an electric and water rate over 40% higher than anything remotely close in the region. That and creative accountants.
Worse yet, the municipals simply do not understand the telecom business. They're used to product life cycles of 5 to 10 years and don't understand capitalizing something that'll be obsolete in 12 months. They don't understand that core business means you need to have expertise on the subject - they'll hire consultants to an extent that ensures their project will never be profitable. This leads to unfortunate purchasing decisions - e.g. buying proprietary equipment from a company that goes bankrupt and leaves the municipality with an investment in junk (this happens more than you'd think - in fact, one of the proprietary near-line of sight vendors in our business that has the most success with municipals is a breath away from chapter 11 or 7, but they nail the municipal process by building their confidence up in the sales process about how easy this broadband stuff is - "heck, this stuff sells itself and is nearly self-installable!").
Now you're really in trouble, as a consumer of the water/gas/electric from the municipal. Consider for a moment - what would you do if you disagreed with paying 50% or more for your utilities to subsidize a pathetic broadband operation? Have you evern looked at how you can get rid of your municipal management? They're very hard to remove - most are unaccountable to the political process and report only to a w
No, but it was a... well, no, it wasn't even a good try. Maybe you'll get it next time.
I doubt it, though.
There is actually already such a network in place in a rural community. In Grant County, WA, they have optical network connections to the home. This, too, was funded by a public entity, the Grant County Public Utilities Division (GCPUD). Currently, they have a 'cable' provider that. in addition to being an ISP, streams all of the regular 'cable' content (MTV, ESPN, HBO, etc) over this network to peoples homes. The settop boxes for the decoding of the streams are Linux-based boxes, each with a RJ45 connector in the back instead of a coax connection.
I've been up there to see it in action and it is truly impressive. Unfortunately, the majority of the communities don't even understand what they have. There were no DSL or Cable internet providers in the area before this. These people are going from dial-up connections to FIBER. There are TRAILER PARKS in Grant County with thick black cables running into them. It's as bizarre as it is impressive.
Optical network connection for under $20/month? Yes please.
Check here for a blurb on GC's Zipp Network.
Hey, redneck -- the right to deprive other people of their rights isn't guaranteed by the 10th Amendment.
Imagine, when you get a hankerin' for a new wife every 8 or so years, you don't have to go through the messy divorce proceedings and alimonly problems which occur when there is the technicaliy of divorcing the previous wife that you have to deal with.
But of course, there are costs. Figure 2/3 of the revenue goes to operating expenses leaving a healthy 33% margin and you're looking at $22,000,000 to pay down the $420,000,000 loan. That's about a 5% revenue stream to pay back a 6% note, leaving you 1% in the hole.
Granted, these are back of the envelope numbers but if my 33% margin guess is optimistic, Utopia will be known as Dystopia.
When anything happens in Utah you don't ask "Why is the Utah doing this?". You ask "Why are the mormons doing this?". Be prepared for massive quantities of spam urging you to join the LDS Church. And once you join up please send us a goodly portion of your income. Thanks.
Hard to buy liquor, but high speed internet... that's a tough one. I guess you can egg SCO hq more convieniently too...
-"It seems like you're trying to exploit a security hole. Would you like help?"
This is the best news I've heard in a long time! I really don't understand why people (other than the local cable and telco companies) are against this project. The future is the information infrastructure.
I read a previous post about how many people are going back to dialup from broadband... Of course they are! The broadband that companies currently offer has no added value. Sure, you can download the Paris Hilton video a little faster, but there are fewer and fewer people that see the value in paying 50 bucks a month for faster porn, or faster news feeds. They are realizing that the fatter pipe really means nothing to them unless they can get something of real value out of it.
This is where the Utopia (and other projects around the country) project comes in. It will not only provide the Internet access at half the price and a zillion times faster than anyone else, it will offer all of the services that people need: telephone, television, video-on-demand, etc... and still has room to spare for future innovations/inventions that will make people's lives easier.
I, for one, cannot wait to sign up!
A reasonable voice saying that each situation needs to be judged by it's own merits? Pointing out pros and cons to each arguement?
...
Toto, I don't think we're at slashdot anymore
I bet you read the article too, didn't you! You insensitive clod.
you're all figments of my deranged imagination
The most telling part of the article isn't the price of installing fiber. It's the exorbitant rates (and apparantly, incompetence) that the cable and telecom companies charge.
The article gives a price of $470 million for a fiber-optic network connecting Utah cities at 95 Mbps. Not only that, but it comes out to be $28/month averaged over 40% of potential users.
The cable and dsl companies mentioned were paying $370 million and $100 million respectively to upgrade their systems to a lightning fast 3 Mbps (slower for dsl)!!! Not only that, but they charge about $50-60/month for the same service that the fiber network could provide for half the price!
For everyone else out there who's in love with the idea of the "free market", I think it's pretty clear that the cable/phone companies have become a little too content with their respective monopolies. This project could help clear out the deadwood (trying to tack high-speed data services on to networks clearly incapable of it) and jump-start competition at an entirely new level of service.
The NY Times is really "out-there" on this one. Did Jason Blair file this report?
I live in the Salt Lake area and I have heard of efforts to connect discrete locations with high traffic (i.e. schools and hospitals). The costs associated with the "last mile" for connecting each and every residence is something completely different. Those costs would face substantial opposition from the status quo (cable and telco). This article amounts to simple cheerleading for Utopia. This is not a "done deal" by any stretch of the imagination.
Also, notice Utopia's business plan follows a bootstrap model. It works if enough people sign up. Wait a minute, works perfectly for Utah.
You know, I've never once in my career ever had a business customer say this. Why is that? Perhaps they understand that someone has to pay for this capacity? Tell me, when was the last time you bought a Freightliner semi-truck and trailer just for the rare chance you might need more capacity than the family minivan? Seriously, this is like your unemployed cousin ordering the most expensive bottle of wine at dinner when he knows he's not paying the bill.
Let me share some first-hand experience with a FO overbuild project in a community in our region:
Interestingly, these numbers were apparently modeled after other FO implementations. What does this mean? Add to it the cost of content (high-speed egress to the Internet, phone transmission lines to the access tandem, cable programming) and you've got a subscriber that's going to get whacked with costs. Transmission alone, especially when it is carrying high-capacity service from a rural community to a major metro where tier one networks can be reached (e.g. Sprint/AT&T/Level3 IP) alone is costly - T1 loops often start at $500. Regional fiber IRUs typically hit $80K or more for a ten-year lease on a 30-45 mile span. There just isn't a no-cost way to carry your sustained 3 Mbps MP3 downloads down from the Internet. If you're financially well-backed, you can build your own regional fiber in at a starting price of about $17K/mile (not including right-of-ways, which will get more costly and difficult the closer you get to your metro.)
So back to my original question: how much are you willing to pay for high-speed Internet? If $60/month for your 3 Mbps/1 Mbps cable Internet is too slow, will you pay more? Are you aware that you probably aren't paying the real costs of your service yet at these rates and this is part of the reason (along with the disappearance of DSL resellers who forced a below-cost retail rate) your rates continue to go up?
If your provider pays $150+ per Mbps or more on a DS3 basis, adds local/regional transmission, switching, sales and support to the cost, how are you supposed to have this for less?
I'm still waiting for a consumer like this previous poster who is ready to give me a blank check for his unlimited demand...
*scoove*
This is nothing new. My entire county, and nearly every city within, is now fibered up. It's like having my own T3 for $30 per month. Learn more about the Grant County Zipp project here: http://www.gcpud.org/zipp/
Ya know, something she'll accept.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Utopia would spend about $1,100 a home to run the fiber network by each house in the 18 cities involved, and an additional $1,400 for each home
$2500 per subscriber to build the last mile. This is a very interesting number, as it's identical to the number used by cable television entities in the mid to late 90s in estimating the cost to upgrade their networks to support digital service / high-speed Internet/etc. Folks like Mediacom, Charter, Cox, Time Warner and other operations (many very heavily entrenched in debt).
Except several years later, they determined the actual cost was more than double this $2500 prediction.
And that didn't include transmission out of the market - most of these deployments were in major metros that had access tandems, permitting local-loop transport to interexchange carriers for long-haul Internet capacity.
These are completely terrible numbers for Utopia. It just isn't possible to make a positive return absent $250 or more a month out of a subscriber. Then again, maybe they'll do a Worldcom deal, go bankrupt, shrug off the debts, and allow management to flip it around while sticking the original investors with the cost.
*scoove*
Tried the same thing in Evanston, Illinois. With support from Cisco, a non-profit called eTropolis (or something to that effect) was attempting to expand on Northwestern University's fiber ring by adding 2 more rings. One would stretch south towards Chicago, the other one would go west. The plan initial plan was to offer very inexpensive DSL on existing telco lines at first, then start upgrading to gigabit fiber after a few years. The idea of gigabit fiber in every building was amazing at the time. For some reason the project died. Plans were scaled back, Cisco pulled out, and then it just fizzled out.
TallGreen CMS hosting
Personally, I think this project is a great idea. Though the one point that causes me pause is the idea of a Mormon controlled government being able to control the entire internet in Utah. The Utah government will be next in line behind China and Saudi Arabia trying to setup firewalls to block anything they deem objectionable. Hey come to think of it maybe we could get the Scientologists to fund a network like this for the whole country. Or maybe not.
Not only that, but it comes out to be $28/month averaged over 40% of potential users.
Congratulations. You've spread a single cost element (fiber construction, at optimum projected budget cost) over a completely unrealistic marketshare projection (40%).
Assuming you were the most fortunate manager in the US and got 40% marketshare on day one, while keeping your fiber transmission cost on budget, you've got to add up the rest of your costs:
- fiber transmission: $28/mo (per your budget)
- local fiber loop: $45/mo (from looking at Utopia's data)
- Internet transport: $16/mo (3Mbps/1Mbps profile)
- customer support: $4.50/mo.
- billing: $3.50/mo. (includes credit card payment costs)
- sales: $3/mo (cost of acquiring you, over projected lifetime of account)
MONTHLY COSTS: $100
Add to that a minimum 15% rate of return - necessary because you wouldn't give me your investment money for this venture unless I could do better than traditional investments, given the high risk we're taking here. This yields:
MONTHLY RATE: $115 (before taxes - estimate another 10% for your final bill)
Do you see a problem here (hint: look at household demographic data, or better yet, talk to normal people around you - they don't have an extra $135 a month lying around for Internet alone!). Don't forget, we've assumed 40% marketshare out of the gate, as well as pretended that we'll have no budget overruns. Oh, and we haven't allocated any funds for backoffice - e.g. the company that runs this all. We've also given the customer a free install with zero costs (impossible) and have made ZERO expensive service calls using $60K service vans and $120K boom trucks to your house over the contract term. Not a single dollar lost to bad debt (deadbeats who don't pay their bills, steal equipment, etc.) - all 40% marketshare will be perfect customers.
they charge about $50-60/month for the same service that the fiber network could provide for half the price!
What's the line about something being too good to be true?
the cable/phone companies have become a little too content with their respective monopolies.
And replace it with another monopoly? To get your 40%, you're going to have to prohibit other competitors from entering your market.
Please... there are real people that work at these companies, real people that invest money expecting 15% or greater for their risk, real costs of doing business, etc. Any post-high school graduate should have enough of a personal financial experience to understand these basics - and those that don't usually learn after their first personal bankrupcy filing.
It's important to be realistic about the consequences of projects like this. Having a terribly conceived project like Utopia in your market only scares realistic providers out of your market - the last thing we want is a fool for a competitor who can perpetually tax their way to oblivion while they fail.
For Utah, this project will put them 10 years behind neighboring states. As if Novell's failure didn't leave enough of a void.
*scoove*
... each household will get two concurrent high-speed connections (illegal in other states).
I suspect that forcing bars to serve out of "airline bottles" was a response to rampant drink-watering, not the morality of drinking. Or possibly it was an attempt to indirectly drive up the cost of hard liquor to reduce drinking? But yeah, it's surprising how few of those "little" bottles it takes to get quite hammered :-D
Freedom: "I won't!"
You gotta love corporate asshats.
It would have been more accurate if he had said "Why provide a motorized vehicle when a horse-drawn buggy will do?"
Only on
Because big routers cost as much as houses?
Interesting. My home town of Tacoma, WA did this some 4-5 years ago. Ran fiber out to the houses in an area and provided high speed internet and digital cable. I've found it to be quite reliable and fast. They don't provide phone services at this time, and you get the choice of three ISP services to choose, the most expensive of which is like $29 a month for internet access. Compared to the $40+ for Comcast of Verizon, its a great deal. I can see more and more cities adding internet and cable into their utility services. If it can mean lower prices and better service, I'm all for it.
Sig? No thanks, I don't smoke.
scove your obviously missing that the government will help subsidize this cost and it wont cost people any where near this amount. the article says it will be only $28 dollars. this makes it so everyone can have the service and it is not much more than AOL.
it is only right that people help support their neighbor with taxes. in fact, sen. hatch has talked about taxing software like linux that unfairly competes with good software like sco. imagine if everyone had to pay a tax for their linux and opensource stuff, it could help balance the playing field for and at the same time pay for internet for everyone!
make opensource software users pay their fare share. not doing so steals from all of us!
Funding is the key, and this project's Achilles' heel. As I understand it, and I'm in a position to know a little bit about the utopia project, they've got the buy-in, but not the bucks (yet) to pull this off.
I agree, on principle, that this ought to be funded locally. For Utah, this happens to be a geographical and population distribution issue as well. 85% of the state's population live within 3 or 4 adjacent counties. The rest are largely spread out so thin, their only hope for decent internet is a sat dish. My point is, even if they decided to tax the residents not in the serviced area, the result wouldn't amount to a hill of beans. So aside from the principle of it (not that I'd bank on governments operating on principle), the practical forces at work make that sort of funding scheme highly unlikely.
Need a simple, easy to use data tier generator? http://www.gryphinsoftware.com/
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Schools are built to house a certain number of students based on current and small estimations in population growth.
I don't know about elsewhere, but we have had quite a few schools that are brand new and already have trailers on their opening day.
It doesn't cost substantially more to bury high-capacity fiber than low-capacity fiber.
You're exactly right - burial costs are probably indifferent. But is that the primary cost of the network? No.
Look at OC-622 gear vs. OC-12. Distances vary significantly. This means many more repeaters. Then there's the termination and switching cost. Etc.
Lots of other factors and costs...
"Let's see. Let people have their own free will to decide what's best for them = Free society = Liberal. Okay." Yes like in Canada where just the mention of a Bible Scripture and verse without printing the complete text has now been prosecuted as hate speech. Show me the trend anywhere other than Islamic countries(Which liberals seem to love lately) where homosexuals, pedophiles, pot smokers are being more restricted instead of less? You have no problem with Bible thumpers losing their rights but you might when the courts start telling you what to think.
Really? And would you say that govermental and educational traffic composes the majority of internet traffic?
Just because a particular highway happens to run through an educational institution, it does not become educational. It's still a highway, intended for transportation.
The internet is used by the vast majority as an entertainment tool. Period. Maintained by primarily private sector profits.
They disappeared years ago.
Best Slashdot Co
Criticism from an anonymous coward means a lot to me. Next time have the stones to use your username.
If whales learn how to use weapons we're all screwed!
San Diego recently outsourced all of its IT to four companies in a first of its kind deal. That's a good thing. This Utah plan is different. There is no real alternative if cities want to prepare for the inevitable bandwidth demands that are coming. We didn't rely on corportation to build the Interstate Highway System in America because of the costs and risks involved. Nobody will argue that it was bad for the economy in the long run. In fact, in hindsight, we didn't build enough freeways. We have small time villagers paving the roads but it's time for an interstate info-highway.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Logical reason: providing this stuff is expensive. If you're located at a major access hub (Hudson St in NYC, for example), bandwidth IS cheap ($50/Mbps/month, for committed bandwidth, or thereabouts). If you're a retail customer, then there's the cost of building the infrastructure to you. This is $1000 even in an _extremely_ high density case, (i.e. everyone in your neighborhood also takes the service), and can be much higher. Pulling fiber can cost $10 a foot, and sometimes even more, especially when the plant is underground (digging up the street, repaving, etc.). If a telecom provider has to pull 2000 feet of fiber to get to you (pretty typical, often even more), that can be $20k and up of construction costs. When you then add in operations costs (sysadmins and NOC employees don't work for free, nor does switching/routing gear maintain itself, customer care reps gotta eat, etc.), you're looking at only ~50% of the revenue you take in going to pay back those capital costs.
No matter which side you're on, bible thumper or free thinking hippie, being legislated into a belief system is a very dangerous level of control.
I find it interesting that you chose to lump gays pot smokers and pedophiles into the same group. I fail to see the parallels between two consenting adults having sex or somebody smoking out and vegetating on their couch and a person who violently rapes children. There must be some suspension of rational thought in order to consider the three to be on par as far as socially damaging crimes.
If whales learn how to use weapons we're all screwed!
if the government was technologically competent, generally competent, and honest.
seeing as that's never the case, it's not that great of an idea, now, if they simply installed the wires, that would be fine. then allow the local isp's to use these wires, or allow new isp's to sprout, thus making a more option oriented market, instead of a monopolistic environment, then that would be great, but knowing people, even those small isp's would buy each other out, then a new monopoly would start, then one of the shitty telcos or cable companies would move in and monopolize in a heartbeat.
thus stuck back to square one.
so, looking at all possible consequences... it's a bad idea. good intentions, good idea in theory, but bad idea in reality.
My reading of your post... Is the job of the government to provide high speed freeways to citizens? As much as I like the sound of easy commuting, if it's directly the government's service, there is a large potential for speed limits or other restrictions on access, and a much greater threat for highway patrols. I do not like this idea.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Maybe if I convert, some nice Protestant city will throw in free cell phone service in order to win me back.
scove [sic] your [sic] obviously missing that the government will help subsidize this cost and it wont [sic] cost people any where near this amount.
And you, Mr. Coward, are obviously missing the fact that we are the government. Government subsidies don't reduce costs. They merely disguise them. Think about it: where does the government get its money? Here's a free hint: April 15. If the government needs to subsidize this to the tune of a hundred bucks a month (using scoove's estimate, which I consider generous), then taxes will have to increase by $1200/year/subscriber.
When will people learn that government subsidies do not reduce costs. Ever. Government subsidies disguise costs, and shift costs to other people (people who may or may not benefit from the service), but they never reduce costs.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
It's a good question, but you can get all the logging/filtering/restrictions without the government ownership of the pipes.
The key thing to bear in mind here is that there are potential economic benefits from this project that will be felt by the whole community, not just the project owner. My guess is that the cost-benefit study includes such things as attracting internet users (generally more educated, flexible people) to the community, and the changes in behaviour that might come if there is good universal access. For instance, more people can telecommute, which reduces pressure on the roads, reduces pollution, reduces accidents. People who telecommute might be less stressed which also improves public health. I would probably go crazy working from home, but it's nice to have the choice. The Internet broadens consumer choice, which should mean a lower cost of living, and therefore greater spending power. It should also enhance the educational system.
I realise that this probably sounds quite socialist to an American audience, but it's essentially the same reasons that justify public provision of street lights and schools. The thing is, a private company doesn't care about the externalities, however much their PR department might want you to believe otherwise.
Yay! Fiber optic lines rolling out? thats a great idea! Why, its almost like the Alberta Supernet project thats been running for years now.... http://www.albertasupernet.ca is a good site with some decent info on it. sorry, I felt it was needed to poke some fun and try and "up" alberta :p
Pacific Bell was in the process of providing fiberoptic cable to residents here about six years ago. Where I live (downtown San Jose near San Jose State) they had the network boxes on street corners and all the fiber layed. Then they were taken over by SBC. One of the first things SBC did after the takeover was to cancel the project. Then they dug out the cable to make sure no one could ever use it.
Utah has some oddities...especially when it comes to alcohol laws. But if you haven't lived here, (and I have, my entire 27 years), then forgive me for being blunt, but you don't have a clue.
Forgive me for being blunt, but if you've never lived anywhere else, you don't have a clue. Travel really does broaden the mind.
I've posted some additional comments on the article based on my experience as Utah's CIO and some personal interactions with the players.
First Amendment
That's bullshit, and here's why: If I had a "Straight pride parade" or a "KKK power parade" that involved shaking my almost-naked body in front of children while making out with the person next to me, I'd be cited for "lewd conduct"
Someone does the same thing to a person demonstrating at a gay pride parade, and it's a "hate crime" or being "prejudiced". I'm all for equal protection and first amendment rights, but there is a double standard when it comes to gays/straights.
Right, that's why the decision against Moore was unanimous. The judges sure know which side their bread is buttered on.
A road is a passive structure. It is built to be use without fee by the community that it serves. There is no subscription to the road. Anyone can drive on it assuming that they meet the qualifications to obtain a license. Any law enforcement on the road is there for the purposes of ensuring safe driving (though I don't agree with all of the restrictions). Maintenance is provided by the government, but the concept of a road is one that requires installation and structural maintenance. Not routers, switches, IP addresses, unless they're for backend maintenance. The driver simply drives.
We also receive federal money to assist with the maintenance of many of our roads, for the purposes of fostering national defence through the ability to move war materials through the country.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I am in the SLC area and this ticks me off. I am a programmer that connects remotely to the home office maybe 80% of the time. I couldn't pay USWest (Qwest) anything for them to install a DSL line. They said they could not give special treatment to anyone by law, which apparently meant that the "rich" (those willing to pay) could not even pay them to install DSL lines in my neighborhood. We had to wait until they were ready. It has been over 3 years so far and no sign of DSL. No cable either.
I eventually went with StarBand, then ISDN (took them 4 months), Radio, then back to ISDN, but I still can't get that DSL.
So now the gov is going to come in and fix the "sluggish" implementation of high-speed internet?! Please
Fiber would be nice and all but what's the point of a 100mb connection if you only have a single dynamic ip? Port forwarding through your nat box would work but it's still a pain
Good point, but that already happened in Utah. The state legislature passed a law protecting projects such as UTOPIA.
Face it, fiber optics are the future, they are inevitable. Sure DSL and cable may work for the next few years, but they still limit the potential of digital distribution systems. And this would not only be for Internet service, since fiber optics can support VoIP and HDTV programming as well which are "for the common good". It also opens the door for other services we cannot even imagine.
I suspect that this will be a bigger success than you realize.
First, there are a number of factors you missed. Current broadband subscribers are dying to get it: DSL is about $5 more, and cable broadband is about $25 more (that's why Qwest and Comcast are complaining). Companies will order more than one connection. Government will order hundreds or thousands of connections. The article touched briefly on what was planned for Provo, one of the smaller cities: Since each intersection has low-resolution cameras installed for controlling traffic lights, they intended to connect each camera up to the network so that crashes and congestion can be viewed remotely. At each sporting event or traffic jam, the entire city's traffic pattern could then be sent to a central location and be more carefully coordinated. That's a few hundred connections right there for a single city.
Second, Your numbers are off. In one instance, you concluded that 2.8M * 12 = 67M which obviously wrong.
Rather than using the approximate numbers given in the article, I went to the census results for the area For the 4 counties involved in the project (Davis, Salt Lake, Utah, Weber), there were 531,977 (not 248,000) households and 40,862 (not 34,500) businesses in 2000. Each of these counties is also experiencing rapid growth internally and due to in-migration.
Using the 2000 information, double your number of households, and increase your businesses by 1/3. That brings the elegible base up to 570,000, or 600,000 by the time it is implemented. You suggested that 33% of the population would be interested, but knowing the area, I'd suggest it is closer to 40-50%. The cost of $28/month is much less than what the Qwest/Comcast monopolies want to charge, even for DSL, so expect a huge price war (which is what the two companies were complaining about -- no more price gouging.) Qwest's current charges for 640k DSL is $32/month, + $5/month for modem, plus $100 install fee, plus ISP fees. Comcast is charging $53/month + modem + install for only slightly faster speeds. The Utopia system's $28/month + install is a great deal, considering you can run whatever you want on it, and you get substantially faster speeds.
Assuming your conservative base of 1/3 adoption and one line per business, that's 200,000 installations, $5,600,000 per month, $67,200,000 per year. Assuming a 2/5 adoption rate gives $80,640,000/year.
But there will be more users than just homes and businesses, and businesses are going to take more than one line each. My company will probably end up with 20 or more. Government facilities are planning on massive use of the system, including joining the system up to all the traffic lights and detection systems.
My current company works on traffic detection. Detection stations need to be connected online, and most are currently attached through CDPD modems or fairly expensive fiber cables anyway. Moving over to this service would give huge bandwidth benefits (converting from 9600-19200 baud CDPD to optical) and big savings (a few hundred each month per CDPD modem or wired connections, moving to $28 plus installation costs.) I've been in meetings where this project was discussed, including seeing the numbers run and seeing the savings to the company.
There are a lot more people interested in this than you might suspect, including a substantial cost savings to thousands of companies and geeks in the area.
frob
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
They are only competing with government created monopolies anyway, Comcast and Qwest. I have been extremely frustrated with both of these companies, especially Comcast who couldn't fix my cable and took a week to show up when called. DSL is slower but seems a bit more reliable but I'm limited to 20 gig/month with my provider.
Could finally be a good reason to stay in this state.
Obviously the poster has never lived outside of Utah if he thinks the soft-core stuff you can get here qualifies as real porn. Even the swill in Evanston or Wendover is infinitely better.
Of course, I already have high-speed internet access, so I don't have to actually *pay* for decent porn.
BTW, I've been tempted to start a chain of video stores called "DirtyFlicks" where I cut out everything but the nude scenes. Really, I see it as the only way to make Titanic or Monster's Ball watchable.
I do use all the upstream I can get...
Like in the Galactic Empire... "Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really poor -- at least no one worth speaking of."
i DIDDNT move here in relation to the assasination attempt on Darl McBride's life! I .. uhh ... came here for FAST INTERNET ACCESS!@$!
- You're not paranoid, they really are after you.
As a resident of Utah I am comfortable in saying YEAH RIGHT what a load od Bull Crap. Yes I said Crap instead of the S word. Didn't I mention I live in Utah? I've been hearing similar stuff like this forever. I am sure it coincides with Gov Mike Leavitt leaving to play politician in DC and the new Governer What's Her Name pulling deacade old buzz words out of her butt. In the end we'll end up with some silly web site that lists the sales lines of variuos Cable and DSL providers in Utah. ~Z No I didn't read the article, it's easier just to gripe.
http://www.utopianet.org/faq.php
Question: What business do cities have in getting to the telecommunications industry?
Public agencies have always had a responsibility to see that vital public infrastructure--roads, bridges, water lines, sewers, airports, and (in many cases) energy--is developed and maintained for the good of the community. The private sector relies on this infrastructure to haul the goods and transport the passengers. The municipalities that comprise UTOPIA see wholesale telecommunications infrastructure in the same light. The cities will not sign up the customers for telephony, video, or data services, they will merely provide an open public infrastructure over which the retail providers of these services will be able to reach their customers.
Question: How does UTOPIA plan to finance the network?
The UTOPIA business case indicates that wholesale usage fees, charged to service providers based on their use of the network, will generate enough revenue to pay the capital investment costs, operating expenses, and debt service obligations associated with building and maintaing the network. No taxpayer money will be needed. However, in order to secure a competitive interest rate on the bonds that UTOPIA will issue to cover the cost of network construction, member cities may pledge to guarantee some of the debt.
Question: What services will be available over the UTOPIA network?
The initial offerings by UTOPIA's service providers will include broadcast video, telephone, and Internet access. In time, other services are likely to include high definition video, video on demand (renting movies to watch at you leisure without going to the video store), expanded home security, telemedicine (including always on medical monitoring), interactive (real time video) distance learning, high quality graphics video gaming with competitors around the world, telework (real time collaboration with team members using video conferencing and instant file sharing capabilities), and full screen video phone service.
Also of note:
The UTOPIA network is based on a layer 2, multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) active electronics architecture. In the open systems interconnect (OSI) model, layer 2 deals with the least complex dimensions of digital services delivery to minimize the interface between service providers and the network. An active electronics design (where neighborhood cabinets contain powered switching devices) makes it possible for the network to scale more inexpensively than the alternative passive design (where optical cables pass signals down the line through unpowered splits in neighborhood cabinets) and supports remote provisioning of services when customers change providers or choose product upgrades. The UTOPIA system will include both the access portal that decodes optical signals at the side of the premises into the signals that telephones, televisions, audio systems, and computers can use, and the video gateways that manage video content at the television set. This design makes it possible to support flexible customer service without requiring a truck roll every time the customer makes a change in the services requested.
The telecommunications industry has not deployed the infrastructure improvements that are essential for delivering advanced telecommunications services such as telemedicine, telework, video on demand, full motion bi-directional video phone, and similar products. Digital subscriber line services (DSL), cable modems, wireless service, and satellite service all lack the bi-directional bandwidth that these services require.
UTOPIA will address this problem by deploying a fiber to the home (FTTH) network with a minimum capacity of 1 Mbps in both directions. This bandwidth will make it possible for service providers using the UTOPIA network to deliver dramatically higher quality services and to launch innovative new services that existing networks cannot support. Since the carrying capacity of fiber plant can be increased by simply changing the electronics at the ends of the network, the UTOPIA network will have a long useful life in spite of technological change.
Government providing internet access makes it very easy for them to see what your doing.
Comcast tried to keep their users private when the RIAA came knocking, you think the government will do the same? OR do you think they'll have bots watching everything you do?
Chapter 1: The Dumming Down of Slashdot.
:(
It used to be, we used numbers. Now, things are relative. "One-hundred times faster....".
And they call themselves techies.....
Have you read my journal today?
Utah is really not that different from the rest of the US. I can say this having lived in Utah for 18 years, and outside of it in various places for 4. Sure, you are pretty limited as to what you can buy in stores where it comes to pr0n, and even looking at smut on the net is technically illegal. But, does a SWAT team bust down your door when you click on that "I am over 18 and pr0n is legal in my state" link..? Hmmm...
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini