[sllug-members]: Bad UTOPIA news - let's do something about it

[Chris Brown]

  I'm glad Warren mentioned the NDA, although not for the reason he did.

  Before I start what some might call a 'rant', though I would call it 
more of an explanation, I'd like to make it clear that I fervently hope 
that Utopia is successful and that it will become available at my 
downtown Murray home some day (with Xmission as the ISP, of course!). 
However my experience with Dynamic City/Utopia may explain some adoption 
issues from a provider's perspective.

  I'm under NDA with Dynamic City as a result of meetings with them for 
our CLEC to become a Utopia Service provider.  Because of the NDA it's 
difficult to explain some of the reasons we chose not to go that route.  
It wasn't because of shortage of capitol or ability to provide the 
service, we wouldn't have approached them without it.  Dynamic City 
places some very strict requirements on how to provide some services to 
customers. Codecs, hardware, service packages, etc that make providing 
dialtone/VoIP dialtone (our primary products) difficult and would 
require more than tripling the price we provide those services at now. 
They desire to "micro-manage" the provider's services and delivery 
methods, methods not involving the fiber network itself.

  The current price structure is such that a customer can get VoIP dial 
tone FAR cheaper over their Utopia connections if they get it from a 
provider OTHER than the ISP because the service provider would have to 
pay more to Utopia for the connection (and use different CPE).

  Another issue was the massive secrecy/NDAs required. A provider may 
answer customer questions on if a specific address has service, but is 
not allowed to provide information on areas planned to be built out, 
areas currently being built, or even what areas currently have service. 
One can of-course say "Murray", a certain percentage of a city, or the 
customer can play "Battleship" with you asking to check various 
addresses until they determine the boundries.  Secrecy makes me nervous, 
and companies that are as hyper-sensitive as Dynamic City has been make 
me hesitant to do business with them.

  Another issue is market penetration.  Only a limited portion of our 
existing customer base and/or target customers may be served by Utopia.  
Either because the area is not a participant (principally Salt Lake 
City, South Salt Lake City, unincorporated Salt Lake County, and Sandy) 
or because of Dynamic City's choice of where to build out in the 
participant communities.

  Hoping to avoid being flamed,

  Chris Brown

warrenw at xmission.com wrote:
> Quoting Steve <smorrey at gmail.com>:
>
>> Would it be feasible at all to price services at say $2/Mb below a
>> certain threshold of say 10Mbps?
>
> Not under the current model.  Its just too expensive to get fiber 
> inside a residence for just this shallow return (realize that we only 
> pay part of the market price in wholesale costs to the network).  When 
> I made this same proposal to iProvo, I was asked if I shared their 
> plane of reality.
>
> That said, concepts like this are on the table as PacketFront and 
> UTOPIA reorganize.  I'm not sure if I'm allowed by NDA to discuss some 
> of the changes in the works yet, but they should allow for service 
> like this, particularly when bundled with VoIP and/or video.
>
>
> Warren S. N. Woodward
> Director, Broadband Services
> XMission Internet
> warrenw at xmission.com
> (801) 303-0819
> (877) XMISSION  ext 119
> ______________________________________________________________________
> See http://www.sllug.org/ for latest SLLUG news, information, links.
> Join SLLUG and other UT LUG members on irc.FreeNode.net channel #Utah
> sllug-members at sllug.org
> http://www.sllug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sllug-members