Utopia Not So Picture Perfect > The chickens have come home to roost.....

said by wifi4milez:

There is no such thing as a free ride, and this just proves it. People on these forums have be touting the Utopia network as the model "we" should pay to have rolled out nationwide. Thankfully, this failure occurred on a relatively small, local level. Imagine what would happen to the (economy, security, prosperity, etc.) of this country if this meltdown was happening from coast to coast! Yes, letting businesses handle business tends to be the only way to get things done.

said by Matt:

Riiiight. So a national fiber to the home network can only be engineered successfully by a business?

said by espaeth:

If you want to compete on price, absolutely. It's the companies that can bundle multiple services to get the best bang-for-the-buck out of the access cabling that will drive the price of Internet access down. Trying to sell Internet access alone will never achieve the level off efficiency of those companies building multi-purpose networks where they can sell multiple services on the wire.

said by Matt:

Exactly my point. Take the last mile off the incumbents hands and make it transport agnostic. Let whomever offer whatever they want over it, just like mstar does over UTOPIA.

said by Matt:

Riiiight. So a national fiber to the home network can only be engineered successfully by a business?

said by Matt:

Calling UTOPIA a failure is also a bit premature. UTOPIA is doing it right, they are just in what is a bit of a technology backwater area. Only 2 of the cities served by UTOPIA have a population over 100,000 and are vastly spread out.

said by Matt:

The fact is, the UTOPIA model should be the Federal Government's broadband plan. Take the last mile out of the hands of the incumbents and let them compete on an even playing field.

said by wifi4milez:

Given that all muni efforts (fiber, wireless, etc.) in the US have failed miserably...

said by jhboricua:

That's your opinion and not a fact.

said by jhboricua:

Seems to me the biggest muni failures reported here so far are the ones given to Earthlink to build out, a private company that miserably failed to deliver what was agreed upon. Care to comment on those?

said by wifi4milez:

Firstly, Earthlink wasnt/isnt the best suited company to build a network of that scale.

said by wifi4milez:

Secondly, they were simply contracted by the given cities to do work; it wasnt their own initiative and plan. Rolling out your own network on your own dime is considerably different than being contracted to do so on the government payroll.

said by wifi4milez:

There is a big difference in a private business being contracted to do a job, versus them doing it on their own initiative.

said by wifi4milez:

As for Earthlinks engineers designing the network poorly, that part is true. HOWEVER, the two major reasons the network sucked so bad are as follows:

1) The city government had absurd requirements so the resources were stretched too thin.

2) The technology used (wifi) was never meant for metro deployments. The concept of using it (as requested by the moronic cities) simply made it doomed from the start.

So even though Earthlink deployed the network, the city called the shots and thats why it failed. A private company would likely have not used wifi, and certainly wouldnt have tried to cover the same areas.

said by wifi4milez:

Now, if you happen to know of a municipal system which is actually up and running, I suggest you immediately email Karl as it will surely be front page news for weeks.

said by factchecker :

There are quite a few muni/community networks that are working just peachy... There was one community fiber network in Europe awhile back.

said by espaeth:

There's so many of them working well that you can only give a vague reference to a project somewhere in Europe from "awhile back"?

said by wifi4milez:

Now, if you happen to know of a municipal system which is actually up and running, I suggest you immediately email Karl as it will surely be front page news for weeks.

said by marigolds:

»www.cfu.net/
»www.mpw.org/indexnonflash.htm
»www.smunet.net/

said by wifi4milez:

We dont have any financial figures to support how well they are doing, so its not really a fair comparison. A dying/dead horse is still by definition a horse, right? We also dont have information about what other providers are active in the area, or how the rollout was financed. Just because some small towns in the middle of nowhere are doing a muni-effort doesnt make it the right choice!

said by marigolds:

Read. All their financial figures are right there on their websites in their annual reports (or you can request their audit reports).

said by marigolds:

Spencer is a relatively small town in the middle of nowhere. But Cedar Falls (128,012) is a metro and Muscatine is not that tiny at 41,722 (and growing at better than 4%).

said by wifi4milez:

Based on this, my idea of what constitutes a large metro area is likely different than yours.

said by wifi4milez:

[We dont have any financial figures to support how well they are doing, so its not really a fair comparison. A dying/dead horse is still by definition a horse, right? We also dont have information about what other providers are active in the area, or how the rollout was financed. Just because some small towns in the middle of nowhere are doing a muni-effort doesnt make it the right choice!

said by wifi4milez:

YIKES! So you think meeting just 60% of a deployment goal should be the model for a federal system?? Are you actually implying that a system with a dismal 17% customer acceptance rate should be rolled out nationwide?

said by marigolds:

Cable internet had less than a 10% acceptance rate and could not even meet 20% deployment goals for its first 6 years of deployment.

said by wifi4milez:

So are you attempting to argue that Utopia is a success?

said by marigolds:

My real argument is that there is no successful model for broadband internet. No model, private or government, has ever succeeded in this country.

said by wifi4milez:

Smaller, private deployments that are based on profitability are clearly the way to go.

said by morbo:

be realistic: Utopia is failing in part because incumbents will do ANYTHING to kill off this model. it is a direct threat to their current business model.

said by openbox9:

Maybe UTOPIA and its ISPs should fight back. Charging each customer $1K upfront to connect isn't the way to compete with somebody who doesn't charge anything. Since some citizens in Utah have no problem floating bonds, why not pay more taxes so that they can provide free internet access via UTOPIA and ride Comcast and Qwest out of town?