utahluge
join:2004-10-14
Draper, UT
 ·Comcast
| UTOPIA Fiber 50/50 NOW Available - $39.95 Ok. So my brother is a designer for the layout/footprint of the Utopia network and he informed me that the Utopia network is now available in a tier of 50/50 for only $39.95
I called in to see if I could get it and they confirmed it is available!!
ha ha ha to cable/dsl! | |
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 utahluge
join:2004-10-14
Draper, UT | Re: UTOPIA Fiber 50/50 NOW Available - $39.95 Oh ya. FYI
You get that price if you are a new customer, or if you are already a customer you just ask for the upgrade! | |
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Karl Bode
News Guy
join:2000-03-02 | Utopia offers service through multiple ISPs, can you clarify which ISP is offering that deal? Got a link? Are there caps? | |
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 | utahluge
join:2004-10-14
Draper, UT
·Comcast
| Re: UTOPIA Fiber 50/50 NOW Available - $39.95 said by Karl Bode  :...can you clarify which ISP is offering that deal? Got a link? Are there caps? ISP:
I have MStar but it should be all of the ISP's.
Link:
I just called them up. I will see if I can find any links.
Caps:
ha ha Nope. My brother made sure to clarify that there are no caps. During my time with MStar I have never hit any kind of cap. I have downloaded multi-hundreds of gigs (linux torrents & making linux mirror) and have never heard a peep from MStar. | |
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woodward
XMission Broadband
VIP
join:2000-12-28
Salt Lake City, UT
| 50/50 Mbps is a new UTOPIA residential wholesale tier, and I think all of we service providers will soon support it.
Its a little ironic that XMission has the most robust network of the service providers on UTOPIA, yet we seem to be the most concerned about the quality of service we can provide that that speed. We're starting rigorous testing and research to see what impact an increase like that will have. When we know we can properly support it, we will bring it to market.
I don't know about caps, because I haven't seen UTOPIA's back end pricing, yet. All I've seen has been a marketing concept on paper with zero technical or financial proposals to back it up.
Up until now, however, there have been wholesale variable costs on usage that service providers pass on to the subscriber through one means or another. They went unenforced for a long time until monitoring infrastructure was placed, and there have been stretches when enforcement was suspended due to errors.
But seeing as you're discussing a residential pipe that is fatter than a DS3 for about $40/mo*, I can say with some faith that any provider who intends to stay in business for more than a couple of weeks will have some bandwidth policy attached.
___
* for reference, Qwest will put 2000 DSL subscribers on a single 45 Mbps DS3 | |
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| utahluge
join:2004-10-14
Draper, UT
·Comcast
| Re: UTOPIA Fiber 50/50 NOW Available - $39.95 It sounds like & from your thingy on the left, that your from XMission.
(If I could, I would use XMission hands-down!)
I am in Provo so I was unable to get the 50/50 but the representative I talked to just about signed me up till she found out I am in Provo (dang it!).
I wish I could have gotten it so I could give perspective from a 50/50 customer end. | |
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DavidCar
@mstarmetro.net
| said by woodward :Its a little ironic that XMission has the most robust network of the service providers on UTOPIA, yet we seem to be the most concerned about the quality of service we can provide that that speed. We're starting rigorous testing and research to see what impact an increase like that will have. When we know we can properly support it, we will bring it to market. In your testing and research are you finding any problems with routers? | |
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woodward
XMission Broadband
VIP
join:2000-12-28
Salt Lake City, UT
1 edit | If you are in Provo, you are not using UTOPIA. You are using iProvo, which is Provo City's own FTTP network. iProvo does not currently have plans of offering 50/50 (though they haven't refused, either).
iProvo has invited us to talks about joining their network as a service provider, which we have begun. If we all come to terms, I suspect we'll be a service provider on iProvo sometime early next year. It would be sooner, but they're currently rebuilding their wholesale model, and that must be completed before we proceed further.
(edit) and yes, I co-manage XMission's fiber service on UTOPIA. I also manage our DSL service, and because of that have casually monitored DSLR forums for nearly 10 years. | |
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| utahluge
join:2004-10-14
Draper, UT | Re: UTOPIA Fiber 50/50 NOW Available - $39.95 (ya, I know iProvo is not part of Utopia [just to clarify]) | |
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Karl Bode
News Guy
join:2000-03-02 | Thanks for the information Woodward, it's greatly appreciated! | |
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Andreas
@comcast.net
| Hi guys,
I live in Draper myself and currently have Comcast(which I really hate). I also do not like Qwest very much and have had horrible experiences with them in the past. I have looked at UTOPIA for years now and wondering when/if we will ever see more cities along the Wasatch Front open up to UTOPIA- what is the likelihood of Draper, Salt Lake, Sandy, and other areas becoming part of the UTOPIA network? I'm sick of paying more $$$ for slower speed.
Thanks so much for any information you can provide!
Andy | |
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woodward
XMission Broadband
VIP
join:2000-12-28
Salt Lake City, UT
| Re: UTOPIA Fiber 50/50 NOW Available - $39.95 Andreas, UTOPIA is an open consortium that the City of Draper would be welcome to join, if they desired. You should speak with your local city council about the prospects.
That said, there is a lot of anti-UTOPIA legislation being seeded in the Utah legislature right now that would make it significantly more difficult for you or anyone else to join UTOPIA in the future.
If you're really interested, I'd suggest you read up on Jesse's blog at »www.FreeUTOPIA.org. He has done a spectacular job of tracking all of this in his own personal quest to get UTOPIA is the small township where he lives. | |
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Andreas
@comcast.net
| Re: UTOPIA Fiber 50/50 NOW Available - $39.95 Woodward,
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my question.
I am interested in UTOPIA; I am interested in getting it to Draper, but will it really make a difference if I contact my City Council? It seems odd to me that not more cities are joining UTOPIA, it would seem like the clear choice to chose Fiber over conventional cable/DSL for both price and speed.
Thanks for the link to that website- I will check it out right now.
Andreas | |
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woodward
XMission Broadband
VIP
join:2000-12-28
Salt Lake City, UT
| Re: UTOPIA Fiber 50/50 NOW Available - $39.95 said by Andreas :
Woodward,
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my question.
I am interested in UTOPIA; I am interested in getting it to Draper, but will it really make a difference if I contact my City Council? It seems odd to me that not more cities are joining UTOPIA
Its more complicated than that. Shortly before launch, the anti-UTOPIA lobby scored two victories. 1) They convinced the mayor of Salt Lake to back out at the last minute, and (2) they convinced members of the Utah Legislature to place a moratorium on any additional cities joining. This is the main reason you haven't seen other cities sign up in these intervening years.
That moratorium just expired, which is why new legislation is brewing from that same anti-UTOPIA lobby. But meanwhile, there are number of Utah cities now deep in discussions over joining UTOPIA while the window exists again. A lot of Utah were nervous about taking the leap and being an early adopter at tax payer risk. We now have numbers on paper that prove that its a success, and because of that, a lot of those cities are taking a much harder look now. And Salt Lake is in the process of electing a new mayor, and both candidates are pro-UTOPIA (though with a little hedging, and it sadly doesn't seem to be a significant priority for either).
For those reasons, yeah, it may be worthwhile to ask your council about it.
In your testing and research are you finding any problems with routers? Sorta. Thus far, the only consumer grade router (i.e. under $100) that can make a dent in those speeds is the Linksys WRT54GL, and even it seems to top out at about 37-40, and only in ideal conditions and only when using DHCP. But this is early testing.
We're wide open to suggestions, by the way. | |
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davoice
join:2000-08-12
Saxapahaw, NC
 ·Comporium
| Re: UTOPIA Fiber 50/50 NOW Available - $39.95 Warren,
Have you encountered residential customers complaining about not being able to attain the full speed of their connection over wireless connections? (Since 802.11g is limited to ~10mbps throughput at best but that is never spelled out on the box for normal people to understand.)
For routers, I'd suggest taking a hard look at the Linksys RVS4000. That's their wired gigabit router. It runs ~$125 retail. No built-in wireless but that baby rocks. We're using them in public WiFi backbone buildouts.
I've clocked ~85mbps full duplex on 100mbps ethernet through the test unit I have at home through NAT. Supposedly it supports up to 800mbps through NAT when connected w/ gigabit ethernet on both sides.
PS... I'm an Xmission colo customer.  Now if only our Draper office had access to Utopia, I could get rid of the fileserver in that office. Hehe.
}Davoice | |
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DavidCar
@mstarmetro.net
| Re: UTOPIA Fiber 50/50 NOW Available - $39.95 When MStar made some changes recently, it made some old DNS numbers programmed into my computer and router obsolete. That made my router unusable, and when the computer was directly attached to the gateway, webpage load times were horrible. After I figured out and corrected the problem, things work great again.
I have 15/15 service from mstarmetro, but their speed test shows I'm getting 17/60 when directly connected to the gateway. I get about 12/25 now through the router. I will probably get a new router and upgrade to 50/50.
I'm tempted by the RVS4000, but I've seen mixed reviews on the internet. SmallNetBuilder.com says it gets 16 Mbps WAN to LAN, but one of their commentors said he "...noticed that the download speed had slowly crept up from the initial 11~12 Mbps to 80Mbps." Other commentors reported problems. | |
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davoice
join:2000-08-12
Saxapahaw, NC | Re: UTOPIA Fiber 50/50 NOW Available - $39.95 Just make sure you load the latest firmware on it and it'll be fine. If you get one that's been sitting on the shelf for a while and still has the 1.0 firmware on it, YMMV. Same goes with any Linksys 1.0 firmware!
Davoice | |
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aaronwt
Premium
join:2004-11-07
Woodbridge, VA
 ·Verizon FIOS
| said by davoice :Have you encountered residential customers complaining about not being able to attain the full speed of their connection over wireless connections? (Since 802.11g is limited to ~10mbps throughput at best but that is never spelled out on the box for normal people to understand.) I hit the 30mbs limit with FIOS over my 802.11g(non turbo mode) wireless network consistently with my laptop. For files transfers from my laptop I hit around 47mbs from wired PCs that are on a gigabit network. | |
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Andreas
@comcast.net
| Woodward,
Thank You again. Your information has been VERY helpful. I am planning on contacting my city legislature soon and see what they have to say about this. Are there any online resources or anywhere people post about council meetings/city meetings on UTOPIA topics where those of us PRO-UTOPIA could attend and maybe make a difference?
Thanks again,
Andreas | |
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woodward
XMission Broadband
VIP
join:2000-12-28
Salt Lake City, UT
1 edit | Re: UTOPIA Fiber 50/50 NOW Available - $39.95 said by Andreas :
Are there any online resources or anywhere people post about council meetings/city meetings on UTOPIA topics where those of us PRO-UTOPIA could attend and maybe make a difference? I'm going to punt back to Jesse at FreeUTOPIA.org again. He tracks things like far more closely than we do, and just the other day committed to becoming a central organizing point for exactly such things. | |
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DavidCar
@mstarmetro.net | So would I need a new router if I got 50/50? | |
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Andreas
@comcast.net | Thank You! I appreciate you taking the time to point me in some right directions! | |
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spongemonkey
@broadweave.net | I realized that www.iprovonews.com has information about mstar it seems like a major flub really. I'd like to see some backing behind it. | |
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