Wired and Inspired - Broadband Communities Magazine

Wired and Inspired
Fiber deployers show creativity, vision and determination in
bringing top-drawer FTTH services to communities at a time of
economic uncertainty. It isn’t always easy.
By Masha Zager ■ Broadband Properties
“W
ired and Inspired” is the motto of Fort Wayne,
Indiana, one of the first cities ever connected
to Verizon’s FiOS network. (Graham Richard,
Fort Wayne’s former-mayor-turned-broadband-evangelist, who
coined the phrase, appears in our Summit coverage in this issue.) I’m feeling wired and inspired myself after putting this
roundup together. Why? Well, it’s hard not to be inspired after
seeing the lengths to which deployers will go to bring FTTH
services to residents’ homes. For example:
• In Alaska, a telco searches for – and finds – a fiber management system that can withstand below-freezing temperatures, four feet of snow and swirling glacial dust.
• In New Mexico, an entrepreneur purchases assets from
a bankrupt company and sends its robots back to work
stringing fiber beneath Albuquerque.
• In Minnesota, a town that voted three-to-one in favor of
a municipal fiber optic network stands up to a lawsuit described by municipal telecom expert Chris Mitchell as “intended to run up costs, disrupt business plans, and scare
away other communities who are considering building
their own networks.”
• In the UK, an engineering company patents a new technology and begins deploying fiber through 360,000 miles
of sewers.
• And in Utah, a municipal utility whose fiber network is
stymied by restrictive legislation finds a “light at the end of
the tunnel” when the network is purchased by a competitive provider determined to make the system work.
I hope you’re feeling inspired by now, too!
Municipal Deployments:
Another Hurdle
for Monticello, Minnesota
F
iberNet Monticello, the municipal FTTH project
that was approved last year in a referendum by citizens
of Monticello, Minnesota, has obtained commitments
from private investors to purchase revenue bonds sufficient to
finance the project. The city’s Web site says, “Obtaining investor support for the FiberNet Monticello business plan is a true
demonstration of the financial viability of the project and a key
milestone in development of the system.” But just before the
city council met to vote on authorizing sales of the bonds, incumbent TDS Telecom (itself an FTTH provider, though not
in Monticello) filed a lawsuit against the city, claiming that the
project violates state laws.
Because the relevant state law expressly permits revenue
bonds to be issued for revenue-based utilities and public conveniences, Monticello city government says it is confident that
it is well within its legal rights and will prevail against the suit;
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| BROADBAND PROPERTIES | www.broadbandproper ties.com | June 2008
Independent Telcos: Neither Snow, Nor Rain, Nor Glacial Dust…
Matanuska Telephone Association (MTA), an
Alaska telephone cooperative that launched its first FTTH
projects last year, has begun a large fiber deployment
about 50 miles north of Anchorage. This is a particularly
challenging build because of the savage weather in the
location, where three to four feet of snow is not unusual.
MTA selected Clearfield’s FieldSmart Fiber Scalability
Center and ruggedized splitter modules for its outside
plant because of their ability to withstand the weather.
The splitters come with “cold weather tails” to protect
them, and the cabinets were modified with 18-inch extension bases to help keep them out of the snow.
Another unique challenge for MTA is glacial silt. “We
have a lot of glacial dust in the air, so a tight seal on the
cabinets is of supreme importance. It’s always important
to keep the connectors clean during an install and make
sure they’re good and tight so the glacial silt doesn’t
work down in there,” explains MTA’s outside plant network planner, Rod Schultz.
MTA was founded in 1953 to bring telephone service
to the Matanuska and Eagle River Valleys, and now serves
38,000 customers across nearly 10,000 square miles with
services including voice, video and high-speed Internet
access.
Liberty Communications, an Iowa ILEC, is preparing to upgrade its existing copper plant to an all-fiber
network in the towns of West Branch and West Liberty.
The $7.5 million project is expected to be complete in
2009, and Liberty plans to offer triple play services.
The company’s newsletter says, “Looking at the indus-
try, we see an ever increasing demand for bandwidth.
As we look to the future our goal is to ensure that the
towns of West Liberty and West Branch have the underlying infrastructure to keep pace with the changing world. We are committed to doing our part to lay
the foundation for advanced services for residential
customers and to build an advanced network for businesses, thus ensuring the economic vitality of the area.”
BTC, an Iowa telephone company doing business as
Western Iowa Networks, received $10 million in broadband loan funding from USDA Rural Development. According to Senator Tom Harkin’s office, the loan will be
used to construct a fiber-to-the-home system in the
town of Carroll, and to provide advanced communication services to about 2,000 subscribers. Senator Harkin
says, “In the 21st century, high-speed Internet access is a
basic, essential utility. Farmers and others need it to do
business. Students in rural America need it to do their
homework and connect to the rest of the world. Yet for
far too long connecting rural America to broadband access was wrought with obstacles. This loan helps to remove some of those obstacles.”
Fallon, Nevada-based CC Communications, which offers FTTH services in a portion of its service area, is replacing its legacy Class 5 switch with a TaquaWorks softswitch
and unified communications suite, in order to provide
advanced converged services across its FTTH-based IPTV
and wireless networks. Converging services over TaquaWorks will allow CC Communications both to generate
new revenue streams and reduce operational expenses.
New Open Access Network in New Mexico
CityLink Telecommunications emerged from stealth
mode last month to host a “sneak peek” at its new fiber-tothe-home services. The services were displayed during the
grand opening of Albuquerque’s new Emerald Building, a
commercial site to which CityLink supplies dark fiber.
CityLink’s new residential service will start out providing
Internet access at 50 Mbps symmetrical for about $70 per
month plus installation, or 100 Mbps symmetrical for about
$130 per month plus installation. Voice services will also be
available, and the company is testing video services.
Working with developers, CityLink has already connected more than 150 new condos and loft apartments in
downtown Albuquerque, and expects to expand the deployment throughout much of the downtown area, potentially to tens of thousands of residents.
In a conversation with Broadband Properties, City­Link
president John Brown explained that his company bought
a metro fiber network out of bankruptcy in 2005 and has
been working since then to upgrade it, including installing
Active Ethernet equipment from Occam Networks. It is now
deploying residential and commercial services as a competitive provider. The number of commercial buildings connected to the network has been increased from 19 when
the network was purchased to more than 50 today.
Two noteworthy aspects of the CityLink fiber network:
•
•
The network is completely open access. Although CityLink is providing services, other carriers are welcome to
lease the fiber access to homes (Active Ethernet technology makes open access easier to manage) and also
dark fiber to enterprises.
The carrier whose assets CityLink purchased had deployed fiber optics through the sewer system using
robotic technology, and CityLink is continuing to use
this approach, which Brown says is faster than traditional trenching and boring. Part of the assets purchase
includes right-of-way agreements in 50 markets across
the US, and CityLink is now actively pursuing deployments in several markets in New Mexico and other
southwestern states.
June 2008 | www.broadbandproper ties.com | BROADBAND PROPERTIES |
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Broadweave Purchase of iProvo Confirmed
Last month we reported that competitive provider
Broadweave Networks planned to buy iProvo, the
financially troubled municipal FTTP network owned
by the city of Provo, Utah. The proposal engendered
some controversy – at least one other service provider
protested the sale, and some elected officials also expressed reservations – but it was approved on June 4 by
the Provo City Council in a 4-3 vote.
In April 2007, Provo City issued an RFP for telecommunications services on the network, and Broadweave was
one of several companies proposing not only to provide
services but to take over the network itself. Lengthy negotiations led to the agreement that was signed in early
May 2008. The city council approval paves the way for
the acquisition to close on June 30, with Broadweave’s
service going live on July 1.
Ensuring a smooth turnover
Even before the city council vote, Broadweave began
taking steps to ensure a smooth turnover. First, in keeping with its proposal to combine network operations
and service provision under a single roof – which the
city as owner was legally constrained from doing – it
acquired Veracity Communications, a profitable provider of business voice and data services on the iProvo
network now. (Veracity also provides services on UTOPIA and Qwest networks.) The acquisition resulted in a
merger of operations and two of Veracity’s principals
joining Broadweave’s executive ranks. Broadweave has
said that it intends to focus more strongly on providing
business telecommuncations services in Provo.
In the next step, Broadweave reached separate
agreements to acquire and service the Provo-based customers of both Mstar Metro and Nuvont Communications, which provide residential services on iProvo. The
transition of customers will coincide with Broadweave’s
acquisition of the iProvo network. Unlike Veracity, Mstar
and Nuvont are what Broadweave CEO Steve Christensen calls “marketing companies” – that is, companies
without any significant assets other than their customer
bases – which is why Broadweave acquired the customers rather than the companies themselves.
Nuvont CEO Brandon Grover, who will become a
customer and partner of Broadweave as he launches a
new company selling VoIP services, agrees with Broadweave’s assessment that the separation between network operation and service provision – mandated for
publicly owned networks by Utah law – did not work
well for iProvo, saying: “Under the old wholesale model,
it was difficult and inefficient to adequately service customers. We saw this firsthand as a service provider. In
the long run, Broadweave’s model of being both the
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network owner and the service provider will result in the
best experience for the customers.”
Finally, Broadweave took steps to address persistent
reports of telephone service failure, which Christensen
saw as the largest obstacle to the network’s success –
and especially as the largest obstacle to selling business services. Configuration changes alleviated some
problems, and Broadweave was prepared to use its own
telephony switches to guarantee service. But during its
due diligence it also found that the customer premises
equipment did not support voice service adequately,
and it began publicly putting pressure on the manufacturer to fix the equipment.
“If the manufacturer fixes the problems with the current version of home portals by implementing a fix to the
firmware, then Broadweave will be happy to keep those
devices on the network and will continue to purchase
equipment from the manufacturer,” Christensen announced, saying that if the manufacturer failed to solve
the problem within 90 days of the closing, Broadweave
would replace the devices. While Broadweave did not
identify the manufacturer, most of the electronic equipment on iProvo is supplied by World Wide Packets.
Despite CPE problems, Christensen calls the network
basically sound; he told Broadband Properties he is
“proud to be taking over a world-class network.” Broadweave intends to stay with the Active Ethernet technology (which it uses in its networks elsewhere in Utah) but
to make upgrades that Provo City did not have the financial resources to make. Christensen says, “There are some
interesting product investments we can’t announce yet,
that will take the network to the next level.”
Broadweave also committed to Provo to keep prices
equal to or better than those of its competitors. Christensen says, “Our focus will be on taking customers from
single to double play, or double to triple play, and on
adding features and services. We’ll focus on businesses,
and try for a higher take rate from both businesses and
residential users.”
We asked Christensen whether the sale of iProvo
to a private company should encourage or discourage
other cities that are considering building municipal
systems. His reply: “If you build the right system, there
will always be a market for it. Municipal bond financing
can do things that sometimes the private sector cannot
do. In some form, there is a really good partnership opportunity between municipalities and service providers …. This also shows that for a lot of municipalities
today struggling with wholesale model, in some phase
or another of financial stress, there can be light at end
of tunnel. There are service providers out there that understand what it takes to make these systems successful,
and they will step up to the plate to do this if the cities
are interested.”
| BROADBAND PROPERTIES | www.broadbandproper ties.com | June 2008
it says the lawsuit’s timing and the grounds alleged “lead to
the impression that the suit was intended to interfere with the
award of the bonds and create additional costs for the city project.” The city plans to move forward with the project, and its
bond managers are continuing to prepare for the bond sale.
FiberNet Monticello’s presentation at the Broadband Summit
is included in the Summit coverage in this issue.
The city of Powell, Wyoming, began construction of its
municipal FTTH network last month, celebrating the occasion
with a community open house. The network will use GPON
technology from Calix. The project involves a partnership between the city, which will own the network, and two private
organizations: service provider TCT and integrator US MetroNets (USM). USM developed the business model that allowed
Powell to obtain private financing and is now acting as project
manager during construction. TCT is a nearby independent
telephone company that has deployed a GPON network in its
own territory, over which it provides triple play services; it will
manage all services once PowelLink goes live.
The city of Wilson, North Carolina, deployed ETI Software Solutions’ Triad énconcert billing system to manage the
Greenlight FTTH network it is launching. Énconcert supports all aspects of billing and activating broadband services.
It manages and controls customer premises devices, provisions
services, generates statements, and manages receivables, collec-
Vendor Spotlight
Calix
www.calix.com
Clearfield www.clearfieldconnection.com
ETI Software Solutions
www.enhancedtel.com
Occam Networks
www.occamnetworks.com
Starz Entertainment
www.starz.com
Sonus Networks
www.sonusnet.com
Taqua
www.taqua.com
US Metronets
www.usmetronets.com
UTStarcom
www.utstar.com
tions and payments. Mike Basham, the city’s IT director, says,
“People are used to government reacting to a problem. We are
dealing with an issue to ensure our city remains at the forefront
of technology.”
As one of the few community broadband providers that
does not already own an electric utility, the city of Salisbury,
North Carolina, faces hurdles that most other municipalities
do not. It overcame one of them last month by negotiating a
contract with Duke Energy that allows it to string fiber optic
cables on Duke’s utility poles.
WCNH.NET, a consortium of eight rural towns in westcentral New Hampshire, has been working since 2005 to develop a publicly owned fiber-to-the-home network. The con-
June 2008 | www.broadbandproper ties.com | BROADBAND PROPERTIES |
19
sortium’s plan is to provide 100 Mbps
connections over fiber to residents and
businesses in the eight towns, hire a private company to manage the network
and allow open access to service providers. Funding for the network has not yet
been secured, but local media report that
consortium leaders plan to travel this
summer to visit other municipal fiber
optic deployments.
Verizon Wins
NYC (True),
Abandons FiOS
(Untrue)
V
erizon’s FiOS rollout continued
with video franchise approvals
by communities in Massachusetts, Oregon and New York. The biggest video market of all, New York City,
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appeared ready to welcome Verizon as
the city’s Franchise and Concession Review Committee voted unanimously to
approve Verizon’s proposal to provide
FiOS TV citywide for 12 years. The
proposal sparked some local criticism on
the grounds that it held Verizon insufficiently accountable for meeting buildout
schedules and for providing customer
service. However, it is supported by the
city’s elected officials and is expected to
receive final approvals soon. This will
make New York City the first major
city in the US with citywide access to
a fiber-to-the-home network. The agreement calls for the network to be finished
by 2014.
Verizon also announced an agreement with Starz Entertainment that will
bring Starz Play to Verizon’s broadband
subscribers. Starz Play is a subscriptionbased, over-the-top video service that
includes both live programming and
downloadable movies. Verizon also delivers 16 Starz and related channels on
| BROADBAND PROPERTIES | www.broadbandproper ties.com | June 2008
its FiOS TV service, but apparently it
sees over-the-top video as complementary to, rather than competitive with,
FiOS TV. (See “Why We Need More
Fiber” in this issue.)
The most surprising Verizon (non-)
news this month was the French national
newspaper Le Monde’s report that “telecom operator Verizon just announced
it was giving up its deployment of fiber
to the home. Too long, too expensive.
The cost of recruiting a subscriber was
valued at $5,000 dollars and worth only
$3,400.” (Our translation.) Needless to
say, no one told the FiOS deployment
crews about this. Possibly the report was
prompted by a recent statement by Vincent O’Byrne, director of access technologies at Verizon, that the company
was in no rush to replace the RF-overlay
video technology it uses for FiOS TV
linear programming with IPTV.
The Arizona Investment Council, a private organization representing
utility investors, issued a report on up-
Deployer Spotlight
United
Kingdom
France
Bahamas
United Arab
Emirates
India
International
deployment activity.
Alaska
States with fresh
deployment activity.
North American Telcos
Broadweave Networks
www.broadweave.com
BTC (Western Iowa Networks)
www.win-4-u.com
CC Communications
www.cccomm.net
CityLink Telecommunications
www.citylinkfiber.com
Liberty
Communications www.libertycommunications.com
Matanuska Telephone Association www.mta-telco.com
TCT (as service provider) www.tctwest.net
Verizon Communications
www.verizon.com
grading the state’s infrastructure that
recommends building a FTTH network
to serve all of Arizona. The report says:
“Not having a state-of-the-art telecommunications infrastructure is [a] detractor for businesses and residents when deciding if they should locate in Arizona.
Put another way, a ‘gold standard’ telecommunications infrastructure (which
most commentators observe to be fiber
to the home) would attract new businesses and more highly skilled jobs to
the state.”
The report recommends that Arizona
state government consider some or all of
the following steps:
Other North American Deployers
City of Powell, Wyoming
www.cityofpowell.com
City of Wilson, North Carolina
(Greenlight)
www.greenlightnc.com
City of Salisbury, North Carolina www.salisburync.gov
FiberNet Monticello
www.monticellofiber.com
WCNH.NET
www.wcnh.net
International Deployers
Bahamas Telecommunications
Company
www.btcbahamas.com
du
www.du.ae
H2O Networks
www.h2onetworksdarkfibre.com
Neuf Cegetel
www.groupeneufcegetel.fr/html/en
United Telecoms
www.utlindia.com
• Anchor tenancy – state and local governments purchasing all their bandwidth needs from a single company,
with the company agreeing in turn to
provide infrastructure to areas that
otherwise would not receive service.
• Allowing Arizona municipalities to
build, operate and maintain their own
telecommunications infrastructure.
• Creating a telecommunications infrastructure bank that would give
municipalities and private companies
access to low-cost loans.
• Establishing a broadband universal
service fund that telecommunications providers could use when pro-
•
•
•
•
viding broadband services to highcost communities.
Streamlining or limiting right-ofway costs to reduce the burden on
telecommunications providers.
Altering building codes to require
new or remodeled buildings to be
wired for fiber to the home.
Realigning tax incentives to level
the playing field for telecommunications.
Offering grants to the private sector
to serve areas that are not commercially viable without support.
June 2008 | www.broadbandproper ties.com | BROADBAND PROPERTIES |
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International
Deployments:
United Kingdom
Awash in Fiber
Middle Eastern carrier du provides fiber to the
home throughout its service area – and Dubai’s
rapid development guarantees that the company
continues to expand its fiber footprint.
hile the UK’s incumbent provider, BT, has taken a “goslow” attitude toward fiber to
the home, a new competitor has stepped
in to fill the breach: H2O Networks has
said it will deploy fiber throughout the
UK’s 360,000 miles of sewers. H2O just
announced that in the next six months it
will begin work on the first deployment
in Bournemouth, southern England,
where it will bring fiber connectivity to
all of the homes and businesses in the
town. H2O will be funding and providing the Bournemouth network at a cost
of around £30 million ($59 million).
Most of the fiber will be put into the
sewers using H2O Networks’ patented
FS (Fibre Optical Cable Underground
Sewer) System.
Councillor
Nick
King,
the
Bournemouth Council’s Cabinet Member for Communications, says, “This
decision is a giant leap forward and
gives us a real competitive advantage.
Bournemouth really needs to embrace the many advantages that being
a fiber city will bring …. The Council
has already installed H2O Networks’
high-speed fiber to its offices and the
Bournemouth International Centre and
Pavilion Theatre, so we are aware of
the difference this type of connectivity
can make.”
H2O Networks will be announcing more deployments over the coming
months, and plans to have a nationwide network deployed over the next
few years, with speeds in excess of 100
Mbps. The company calls its method,
which requires no digging and little
road disruption, more environmentally
friendly than traditional methods of fiber deployment. It also says its method
is at least 80 per cent faster than traditional deployment methods.
Where deploying in the sewers is not
feasible, H2O Networks will use its pat-
ented BMD (Blown Mini Duct) system.
With this system, a 20-mm-wide slot
is channelled into the road in order to
lay the cable. The company says this is
not considered a civil dig and will cause
minimal disruption to the local area.
In France, competitive FTTH provider Neuf Cegetel renewed its partnership with the FNAIM Paris Ile-de-France,
a group of property managers and managing agents. One of the biggest hurdles
to fiber-to-the-home deployment in Paris
is building-by-building negotiations with
building managers (Paris residences are
almost all MDUs). The partnership with
FNAIM is part of Neuf Cegetel’s broader
program for real estate professionals, and
enables Neuf Cegetel to push ahead with
its FTTH deployment.
The partnership agreement addresses
building managers’ concerns and sets
out Neuf Cegetel’s commitments from
initial go-ahead through to network
operation. For example, it explains how
Neuf Cegetel will inform the building
manager and obtain formal approval before starting any work on the building,
and it guarantees that the in-building
network will be usable by other vendors.
Neuf Cegetel also provides a one-stop
hotline for managing agents, property
managers and lessors.
Bahamas
Telecommunications
Company, the telecommunications service provider for the Commonwealth of
the Bahamas, is replacing its legacy access infrastructure with the Calix C7
multiservice access platform. This paves
the way for higher-speed, more widely
available broadband and advanced new
information, communication, and entertainment services to be deployed
throughout the islands. The Calix solution will be provided through a resale
and integration agreement with Sonus
W
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| BROADBAND PROPERTIES | www.broadbandproper ties.com | June 2008
Networks, and is part of a larger effort to
replace the entire circuit-switched voice
network with Sonus’ VoIP network,
which will provide a foundation for integrating wired and wireless networks. Bahamas Telecommunications is focusing
initially on pushing fiber deeper into the
access network, making multi-megabit
DSL services universally available, and
enabling H.248 VoIP on all subscriber
lines, and will then begin selective deployment of GPON-based FTTP as well
as new services such as IPTV.
Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company, which does business
as du, became the first FTTH provider
in the Middle East in 2003. Because it
has been building out fiber to keep pace
with Dubai’s rapid development, du now
owns one of the largest FTTH networks
in the world, with 300,000 homes passed
and 50,000 customers. All residential
units within du’s footprint are currently
served via FTTH.
Recently the company announced
that it was expanding its network to
cover new developments such as Burj
Dubai, Dubai Palm Islands, the World
and other Dubai waterfront projects.
In India, United Telecoms Ltd.
awarded a contract to UTStarcom to deliver IPTV, bandwidth on demand and
VoIP services over a GePON network in
the state of Goa.
This will be the first FTTP network
designed to deliver e-governance and
triple play solutions in India, and will
serve more than 100,000 subscribers. It
represents an expansion of UTStarcom’s
recently deployed fiber network with
United Telecoms. Additional applications and services to be delivered include
on-demand entertainment, interactive
gaming, telemedicine, distance learning
and e-commerce. BBP