In the wake of Google's announcement that Portland could be one of the next communities for the Google Fiber network, CenturyLink is circulating an offer to select apartment buildings to apply for CenturyLink fiber.
This appears to be more than the standard fiber-to-the-press-release responses we often see from the big telephone companies that prefer to lobby, litigate, and lie rather than invest in next-generation networks. CenturyLink notes it has the "ability to do approximately 15 total" apartment buildings.
The promotional sheet claims CenturyLink will offer speeds "up to" 1 Gig for $79.95/month for 12 months. 100 Mbps runs $49.95 and 40 Mbps is $29.95 - each for 12 months. No mention of upload speeds but CenturyLink has demonstrated a real aversion to symmetry so users can expect far slower upstream than what modern municipal networks and Google fiber deliver.
The standard operating procedure in apartment buildings will be for CenturyLink to try to lock up the internal wiring to buildings and deny it to competitors. FCC rules make exclusive agreements with landlords unenforceable, but there are a host of tricks that incumbents use to prevent any competition and landlords getting a kickback often have little reason to encourage competition.
The CenturyLink copy notes that its fiber optic GPON option is "up to" more than 92 percent energy efficient than cable modem Internet access. I have to wonder how it compares to DSL energy efficiency and whether that number holds up better than the "up to" 12 Mbps claims they make on DSL circuits that seldom peak at 5 Mbps.
At any rate, it is more than we can expect in the many communities CenturyLink is serving where there the local government have done nothing to spur competition by investing in publicly owned assets that could form a municipal network or be used to entice independent service providers to enter the market. In particular, I would be curious where else CenturyLink is rolling out fiber to buildings without any upfront charges.
Advocates for better Internet access are breathing a sigh of relief in New York as the State Assembly nixed a budget bill amendment that would have undermined the state’s municipal broadband grant program.
Joplin, Missouri has announced a new broadband public-private partnership (PPP) with ALLO Fiber that should help boost competition and lower rates across the city of 52,000. The partnership poses a particular challenge to regional cable giant CableOne, which currently enjoys a monopoly over broadband access across a whopping 83 percent of the city.
The city-owned utility in Chicopee, Massachusetts has adopted the “fiberhood” approach to broadband deployment as it expands affordable access to city residents under the Crossroads Fiber brand. Chicopee Electric Light launched Crossroads Fiber in the summer of 2019 and since then the utility has been expanding access steadily to the rest of the city.
Massachusetts and New York officials hope to entice affordable housing property owners with new grant programs that would pay the retrofitting costs to expand high-speed Internet connectivity into decades-old affordable housing developments. Given that many of these multi-dwelling units (MDUs) were built before the advent of the Internet, a significant number of low-income tenants are living in buildings that are not wired to support reliable broadband connections or where residents can’t afford monopoly provider prices.
Longmont, Colorado’s community-owned NextLight broadband network has now crossed north of Colorado Highway 66, outside of city limits. Longmont officials say this latest expansion is being financed entirely by subscriber revenues and money set aside for capital projects, with no bonding or other supplementary funds involved.
Selma, Alabama – and parts of 16 other communities in eight different counties – will soon be connected to a new, $230 million open access fiber network that aims to bring affordable broadband to historically marginalized sections of the Yellowhammer State. The deployment comes courtesy of a public private partnership (PPP) the city has struck with Meridiam Infrastructure and Meridiam-owned YellowHammer networks – an agreement that will launch the expansion of fiber access across Alabama’s Black Belt region.