Maine Businesses Look at FTTP Oxford Networks helps speed things up Maine, the slowest of all New England states when it comes to Internet speeds, has been hoping that FairPoint can come to the rescue if its deal with Verizon goes through. The businesses in the state aren’t holding their breath since no one knows how that deal is going to pan out. In fact, some areas of the state are moving forward with other options. The downtown area in both Bangor and Brewer will be getting FTTP through a provider called Oxford Networks. Construction begins before the end of the year and service is expected to be ready by May. Residential customers may still be waiting.
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 | | profits to be made?? Maybe RCN should have a look @ Maine?
They specialize in micro deployments. | |
|  | Madmick
join:2002-12-12
East Northport, NY | Re: profits to be made?? The problem in Maine is the people for the most part are "New England" cheap (meaning most don't spend money on frivolous things Broadband) and the population is very rural too. Lots of expense and not a lot of profit. Good luck getting any company willing to deal with that type of market. | |
| | | | | Re: profits to be made?? I don't think I'm going to be told about New England by someone from New York.
The reality is that a majority of people here would pay 50$ a month for Internet. I work with a rural wireless ISP and they can't install customers fast enough when a new market is deployed.
The problem has a lot to do with the State Government.
Augusta handed 12 million bucks out the back door to Verizon for DSL service for a potential 35,000 customers (knowing they're leaving next year). That 12 million dollars should have gone into the ConnectME fund so companies (namely those deploying broadband in rural areas) could make proposals to deploy services that would benefit people past the 3 mile mark including those served by a Central Office 10+ miles away. Any of these Wireless-based ISPs could deploy most of the non-cable and low-DSL areas of the state with that kind of money as well as cover operating costs for a while.
As far as high speed services over copper, If you take a look at Great Works service map (www.gwi.net), you will see 20mbit DSL is available in many points in Maine, including those of lower population (such places as Norway, Presque Isle, Millinocket, Skowhegan, etc). A service that wasn't available to much of the US, but we've had ADSL2+ technology here for years. Yes, it's based on distance from CO, but price/perf rivals or beats cable. Cable is only available to something like 60% of the state.
With no promise of FTTH in major metro markets (Bangor, Portland, and some points between), Fairpoint would likely push things backwards. They're the most disliked carrier for rural telco in the state, which probably won't change by taking over the Verizon markets. Most of their infrastructure (especially for broadband) is outsourced. Also, they charge 79.99 for 1.5/1.0 mbit DSL service. | |
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 mouseferatuToo many cats, Too many micePremium,MVM
join:2004-03-16
Im not sure
kudos:3 | FairPoint gives us no reason to hope for the best... Old wisdom nags that you should hope for the best, but plan for the worst. FairPoint makes planning for the worst seem like a very good idea.
Nothing in the proposal that they have provided to the northern New England states looks very promising or vaguely realistic. Their proposed backward conversion of fiber to DSL or dial-up is archaic, and the proposed forward conversion of dial-up to DSL is also archaic, and doesn't take into account huge stretches of northern NH, ME, and VT.
FWIW, they haven't set the bar all that high... while the rest of the country goes to fiber, the northern New England states will slowly receive outdated DSL for a percentage of customers, at a high cost.
»thephoenix.com/printerfriendlyB.···id=46012
Most significantly, FairPoint seems to have truly no idea of how huge the state of Maine is, and of how remote some areas such as Aroostook county are. Comparing North Carolina to Northern Maine doesn't cut it, and FairPoint isn't making any corporate waves for innovation there, either.
IMO, if Verizon chooses to pull out of northern New England, they should be forced to drop the Rhode Island/Massachusetts operation of (the former) New England Telephone, as well.
With that profitable piece of the company and its fiber on the table along with the less desirable, it stands to reason that we might end up with a viable solution that doesn't shaft the northern New England states again.
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crispy and good with catsup." | |
| |  Romney2012Defeat Obama 2012-Chg we can believe inPremium
join:2002-03-03
USA
kudos:4 | Re: FairPoint gives us no reason to hope for the best... said by mouseferatu:Most significantly, FairPoint seems to have truly no idea of how huge the state of Maine is, and of how remote some areas such as Aroostook county are. Comparing North Carolina to Northern Maine doesn't cut it, and FairPoint isn't making any corporate waves for innovation there, either. And why should anyone want to try and wire an area with so few people and no chance of profit? At best they will have to make do with satellite broadband or Wimax if that proves feasible.
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| | | | | Re: FairPoint gives us no reason to hope for the best... WIMAX wouldn't really work in many of these rural areas due to the mountains, etc.
The solution is to add remote COs and do DSL (since copper telco is readily available), or use 700 or 900mhz wireless-based networks.
There's always Broadband over PowerLine too, but as a ham operator I'm pretty much against that idea because of the amount of destruction to the radio bands it provides.
Satellite is a great last-ditch when nothing else is available. However - I was a former DirecWay customer and it serves nothing for people who would want to play video games online or want to download anything of value (including rentable movies from Vongo, Netflix, Amazon Unbox, etc.). They throttle the speeds of the customers that download excessively (excessively being the benchmark of 100-200mb in the course of a 4 hour period, if memory serves). | |
| | | mouseferatuToo many cats, Too many micePremium,MVM
join:2004-03-16
Im not sure
kudos:3 | said by Romney2012: And why should anyone want to try and wire an area with so few people and no chance of profit? At best they will have to make do with satellite broadband or Wimax if that proves feasible. I do not disagree with you on that- But, respectfully, I think that you miss my main point.
Northern New England is accustomed to "making do" with whatever they can get- I know, as I have a remote three season home in Camden, Maine that is no way, no how, going to be on any main HSI service in the foreseeable future. I knew that many years ago, though, and don't feel in any way slighted.
What I take exception to is another Verizon dump. They bought former New England Telephone to get the profitable areas including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Southern New Hampshire. They are keeping those, with the exception of Southern New Hampshire.
It is an absurd intention to sell the rest of the area to FairPoint, a utility that is in dubious condition, appears to be completely unable to serve the overall area, and can not maintain the fiber that serves many thousands in Southern New Hampshire. That New Hampshire area is primarily in the Boston commuter range, and will be in a world of hurt if FairPoint reverts the fiber to currently non-existent DSL as planned.
FairPoint hasn't presented themselves well at the hearings- I have been to a number in both Maine and New Hampshire. Their promises seem empty, as most of their answers seem to be in the "just take our word for it, it will happen" category.
I am tired of seeing large players like Verizon come into the area, skim the cream, and move out and leave the rest of the area worse off than they were before they showed up in the first place.
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crispy and good with catsup." | |
| | | | | | Re: FairPoint gives us no reason to hope for the best... Well said mouse  | |
| | | | | | Camden does have some wireless ISPs that may actually serve your remote home area on 900mhz. Midcoast.com is one such company that serves there, you may want to try them if you haven't already.
I do think that Verizon will keep and maybe even expand FIOS through Southern New Hampshire the rest of the way and then claim, "We're not the dialtone guys, we're just the FIOS guys". Similar has been done in AT&T markets in So Cal, where Verizon offers FIOS, but has never had a copper plant.
In other words, Verizon can have their cake AND eat it too. They don't want a copper business anymore, but this way they'd not be forced to upgrade places to fiber, they just could if they decided they wanted to.
I do agree with your thoughts that Fairpoint's plans seem empty. Also - Fairpoint has made it known they intend to use/keep their rural exemptions in their existing markets as well. That means the largest choice in those markets is "Fairpoint (max 1.5/1.0 DSL) for 79.99". No competition in data or in voice services on those copper networks.
If Verizon wanted to sell these markets to AT&T (though I'm not an AT&T fan in the least), then that might be something to entertain. However, selling to essentially a 'two-men and a truck' telco that is well disliked in the tri-state region completely defies logic.
I have yet to see one Fairpoint customer anywhere in the US that is content or happy with their service. However, I've seen many posts from people in FL, VT, ME that absolutely hate their Fairpoint service.
The standard shouldn't be the empty promises. It should be what Fairpoint has done up to this point. If their past performance is the standard, this acquisition shouldn't be allowed. | |
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Check out the progress that is being made on WiMax and Satellite. They speeds that they currently enjoy are about as fast as the slowest DSL connection. And they haven't been able to reduce the price of installation enough to even start to compete against wireline installations.
WiMax will never get off the ground in mountainous states because too many towers have to be installed to be useful. And satellite is too expensive to cover all but flat areas of the country. | |
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| | Time warner It should be noted that some towns in western and southern Maine are luck enough to get Time Warner High Speed Internet. Adelphia was foolish enough to wire many small towns (this may explain why they went bankrupt). As for other alternatives, gw and oxford networks both have done a very good job expanding their available services. But Maine is a tough state to wire and it would be great if verizon invested more $$ for cheap dsl. | |
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