Ontario County, N.Y. has completed its 200-plus mile fiber ring and is now open for business… at least for area businesses that want commercial accounts.

But the county’s Office of Economic Development has no intention of building a 21st century fiber network that consumers can’t use — it wants fiber-to-the-home service for every resident.

The formerly rural Finger Lakes county has become an economic growth spot in western New York, with urban sprawl from nearby Rochester and new high-technology businesses attracted by the area’s relatively low taxes and pro-technology attitude.

The high tech fiber ring is the most recent example of the county’s growth-oriented philosophy.

Axcess Ontario, a public-benefit corporation established to oversee the project, built the ring well under its $7.5 million budget.  In the end, the whole project ended up costing just $5.5 million.

The project benefited from faster than expected contracting work and the installation of a natural gas pipeline, through which some of the county’s fiber travels.  Much of the rest is attached to utility poles that stretch across the county’s rural farmlands and small cities, towns and villages.

Now complete, the project is capable of delivering ultra-fast service from cities like Geneva and Canandaigua to the wine-growing region of Naples, to the outer ring towns like West Bloomfield, Victor, Manchester, and Phelps.

Ontario County, N.Y.

“Our mission from the outset was to ensure that every community in Ontario County had access to fiber, no matter how remote that community might be, geographically speaking,” said Geoff Astles, chairman of Axcess Ontario’s board of directors. “We’re proud to say that not only have we accomplished that piece, but we’ve done it under budget.”

The county says the network is open to all-comers, and eight companies are currently using the network themselves or reselling access to commercial businesses that need the capacity fiber brings.  Among them — Verizon Wireless; TW Telecom; Finger Lakes Technologies Group and its sister company, Ontario Telephone Co.; WavHost; Clarity Connect; OneStream Networks; Layer 8; and Integrated Systems.

But nothing prevents a residential service provider from hopping on board, if they’re interested in providing wiring from the fiber ring to individual homes.

“We’re working with several service providers who now have plans to bring fiber to each individual residence,” Michael Manikowski of Ontario County’s Office of Economic Development says. “That’s a little bit down the road. It’s a fairly complicated technical thing that we have to attract other partners to come to the county to help us.”

“The concept of ‘fiber to the home’ is the ultimate game-changer,” said Axcess Ontario CEO Ed Hemminger. “Once residents have fiber to the home, everything changes. Someone who wants to work from home or start a home-based business can do so with ease. Not only will they have instant access to the online global marketplace, but they’ll also have confidence that their home-based Internet connection will be as fast, as reliable and as competitively priced as any office-based system. Imagine conducting videoconferences on your iPad with business partners halfway across the world, all from your living room or your back deck.”

“This project is going to make a difference in the lives of residents and business-owners for the next 25 years,” he said.

Among those reportedly interested: Frontier Communications, which runs limited fiber to some of the county’s new housing developments, but currently does not leverage that technology to deliver broadband faster than traditional DSL accounts the company sells elsewhere in the region.  Time Warner Cable also covers the more populated areas of county through its Rochester/Finger Lakes division.

Individual communities inside the county could also decide to build their own community fiber service for residents, if they are willing to wire individual homes.

Residential fiber service has rarely attracted commercial service providers, convinced the technology is overkill for most consumers.  Some also balk at the capital costs, which are considerably higher than existing copper phone wire or running coaxial cable to homes for traditional cable service.  But many communities suffering from very low speed DSL service and not well served by cable-TV find doing it themselves can deliver service that commercial companies may never provide.  Without the immediate need for quick returns on investment, towns and villages clamoring for faster broadband can finally have it, without the expense of building and running their own fiber ring.

Axcess Ontario threatens to deliver service better and faster than what is on offer further north in much larger Monroe County, which includes Rochester.  That’s because Ontario County’s advanced fiber network could ultimately scrap Frontier’s obsolete copper wire landlines and call out the incremental, slow upgrades from Time Warner Cable.

The Ontario County fiber ring is a nationally recognized broadband model. Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the John F. Kennedy School of Government this fall recognized the fiber ring as a “Bright Idea” — a promising, innovative solution that can assist other communities as they face their own challenges. And earlier this year, county officials met with the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C., to educate FCC officials about the fiber ring and how it can be implemented elsewhere in the country.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WHAM Fiber Ring in Ontario County 12-29-10.flv[/flv]

WHAM-TV in Rochester reports Ontario County’s new community-owned fiber ring could eventually deliver fiber to the home service to every resident in the county.  (2 minutes)

While Time Warner Cable and Sinclair Broadcasting duel to the Dec. 31 deadline, some Time Warner Cable customers are using the dispute to their advantage — demanding, and winning price concessions on their cable service.

Time Warner Cable has fielded so many calls about the dispute, it has added a message to its customer call-in lines to share its side of the dispute.

Listen to the announcements Time Warner Cable is using around the country on its customer service lines to address the Sinclair-Time Warner dispute. (7 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

Some customers tired of being put in the middle have decided to take their business elsewhere.  Others are just threatening, which brings forth customer retention deals to keep customers from cutting Time Warner’s cord.

“I scored a one year extension of my new customer deal — $99 a month for every kind of service the cable company offers,” writes Scott from Syracuse, N.Y.  Time Warner Cable is expected to drop WSYT (Fox) and WNYS (MyNetwork TV) late Friday night.  “I told them their rate hike notice was bad enough, but dropping two stations from my lineup without offering me a refund was too much.”

Scott was prepared to switch to Verizon FiOS, but Time Warner offered a price he’ll take for some inconvenience.

“I threw my Time Warner rate hike notice in the trash — it doesn’t apply to me for a year,” Scott says.  “It took ten minutes on the phone with the cable company and now I’ll save hundreds a year.”

In Texas, Time Warner Cable customers trying to exit the cable company for a competitor found the cable company’s term contract harder to walk away from.

“They are playing hardball with me, telling me I’ll have to pay an early termination fee if I switch,” says Stop the Cap! reader Rod who lives in San Antonio.  He’s preparing to say goodbye to KABB (Fox) and KMYS (MyNetwork TV).”

“I told them with their attitude, it would be worth paying the fee to see the back of them,” Rod says.  “Besides, when you tell some of their competitors about the cable company’s exit fees, they sweeten the deal as a sign of goodwill, something I am not getting from the cable company.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Sinclair TW Dispute 12-30-10.flv[/flv]

Sinclair stations across the country are airing various news reports about the upcoming signal blackout on both Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, which uses Time Warner to negotiate programming contracts.  Virtually all are biased towards Sinclair’s position, and ignore the fact Time Warner plans to import Fox network programming regardless of what happens.  (25 minutes)

In Rochester and Buffalo, the cable company is willing to extend their $99 triple play promotion to customers threatening to drop service over the Sinclair dispute, especially when customers also mention the company’s recently announced rate hike.

“If the first person you speak with doesn’t offer you a better deal, hang up and call back,” advises Susan, our reader in Amherst, N.Y.  Both she and her mother in Cheektowaga are saving $35 a month for the next year all thanks to Sinclair and Time Warner’s money fight.

One of the stations impacted in the dispute

“We would have never thought about doing this before we started reading Stop the Cap!,” she says. “We had no idea we could get these kind of deals.”

“We’d lose WUTV (Fox) and WNYO (MyNetwork TV), but Time Warner promises all of the Fox network shows will still be aired and losing MyNetwork TV is hardly a loss at all,” Susan shares.  “Just call them and use the word ‘cancel’ and see what they offer.”

Sinclair stations are notorious for running local news operations on the cheap, when they bother to run local news at all.  So many viewers remain blissfully unaware of the dispute because many of the affected Sinclair stations are low-rated afterthoughts.  Of the 35+ impacted stations, fewer than six have serious local news operations, and many of those are in last place in the local ratings.  That’s a point Time Warner Cable had reportedly raised in their negotiations, noting the stations are not worth Sinclair’s asking price.

But the cable operator is also not saying a whole lot about the dispute on their various local news channels.  The company has instead taken out full page advertisements in newspapers alerting viewers to the upcoming signal disruptions and pushing customers to visit the cable operator’s national carriage dispute website: RollOverOrGetTough.com.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Time Warner News Sinclair 12-30-10.flv[/flv]

Time Warner Cable briefly mentioned the dispute between the cable company and Sinclair Broadcasting on a few of their local news channels.  (2 minutes)

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WHAM Rochester TW Sinclair Dispute 12-30-10.flv[/flv]

WHAM-TV in Rochester took a third party look at the dispute and explained it to western New York viewers.  Special bonus: A brief interview with Scott Fybush, editor of Northeast Radio Watch who understands western New York media like few others.  (3 minutes)

Pagliughi

Avalon mayor Martin Pagliughi wants answers about why Verizon left hundreds of residences and businesses on the Seven Mile Island with intermittent phone service for more than a week, with no notification or explanation forthcoming from the telephone company.

The service outage, which began Oct. 28, extended all the way until Nov. 8, forcing customers to endure incomplete calls, one-sided conversations, and other problems.

Verizon blamed a piece of failing equipment for the outage — a technology card installed at a switching office in central New Jersey.  The result was disrupted service for residents of both Avalon and neighboring Stone Harbor, and Verizon officials never realized it.

Verizon officials claimed technicians missed the failing card because an alarm on the card never sounded.  Dozens of complaints from customers were ignored by Verizon customer service representatives.

Pagluighi wants to know how this could have happened.

“It was very troubling to me that in an era of mass telecommunications and putting men on the moon that Verizon could not be aware of a big problem in Avalon and Stone Harbor while dozens of complaints were coming into their representatives,” Pagliughi told the Cape May County Herald.

He added that many residents told the borough that when they contacted Verizon to complain about the lack of telephone service, Verizon reps told them their complaint was the first one from Avalon.

“This outage is not only about an inconvenience to our community, it’s really about a critical public safety issue,” Pagliughi said. “It’s time for utilities that make a lucrative business in our communities to have a greater level of accountability for the services they are paid to provide,” he said.

The mayor met with public safety officials and representatives from Verizon to create a plan to prevent a repeat occurrence.  Had the winter storm that barreled up the east coast over the weekend struck at the same time as the phone outage, public safety could have been at risk.

The newspaper reports the parties agreed to take the following actions:

• A total replacement of the technology card that failed during the telephone outage. The card will be replaced by technicians sometime during January 2011 with no anticipated interruption of telephone service;
• Verizon will draft a plan that will result in greater recognition of a community-wide problem along with proper notification of emergency management authorities in the affected region;
• A special practice “drill” will be conducted involving county and municipal emergency management officials that will test Verizon’s new contingency plan to notify a community when a phone outage occurs;
• Verizon will arrange a field trip during the first quarter of 2011 so local officials can talk with staff at a local field office to discuss communication efforts between the utility and local emergency management officials.

AT&T customers looking for better service need to put down those cellphones and turn off the computer and pick up a good book.  AT&T recommends Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America From Washington, written by Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Perry’s book, which compares Social Security and FDR’s “New Deal” social programs with a Communist takeover is so popular with the Big Telecom, it purchased over 700 copies to hand out for free to state legislators, lobbyists and activists attending a conservative policy summit luncheon.  Oh, and the company paid for the lunch, too.  Total cost?  More than $13,000 — all ultimately paid for by AT&T’s customers.

AT&T made sure every guest had their own personal hardcover copy of the governor’s book, something that didn’t go unnoticed by former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, who thanked AT&T from the microphone for paying for the books.

“Governor Perry has written a book – a book that all of us very kindly have been given by AT&T,” Cruz said. “Thank you, AT&T.”

AT&T’s gladhanding of conservative state politicians doesn’t come accidentally, reports the Dallas Morning News.  With hundreds of millions in revenue at stake, AT&T’s investment in the state’s Republican dominated legislature guarantees the company’s voice will be heard on important legislative matters.

AT&T has spent as much as $9.3 million to lobby Austin lawmakers and regulators, according to Texas Ethics Commission data. AT&T’s political action committee has donated $494,740 to Perry during his nine years in office, according to Texans for Public Justice.

The latter group told the newspaper AT&T doesn’t get into the book club business lightly.

“It does raise concerns. AT&T has a lot of business before the state of Texas and Texas regulators,” said Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice, a group that tracks money in politics. “They are generally the largest lobby in the state. They can reach out and touch every lawmaker simultaneously.”

Elected officials who write books routinely find some of their biggest sales come from lobbyists, who buy books in bulk and hand them out at public speaking engagements, or simply shove them into the nearest storage locker.  It’s not about the book, it’s about the access companies like AT&T gain from the goodwill earned from buying copies.

Perry does not profit directly from the book sales, but his political interests do.  Proceeds of the book sales go to the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Tenth Amendment Studies, a group dedicated to protecting corporate interests and “state’s rights.”

AT&T’s corporate interest is protected by the Policy Foundation’s opposition to Net Neutrality, but the group generally opposes broadband stimulus funding, some of which is likely to end up in AT&T’s pockets.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Texas Public Policy Foundation Net Neutrality.flv[/flv]

The Texas Public Policy Foundation invited two Republican FCC commissioners — one current and one former — to bash Net Neutrality and broadband reforms before a stacked panel and audience of like-minded thinkers.  (1 hour, 50 minutes)

An upset borough president

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz is calling on New York City’s telecommunications workers to be pressed into service to cope with the snow emergency created by a weekend blizzard that left more than two feet of snow in parts of New York and New Jersey.

Markowitz told WABC-TV news the mayor’s response to the storm was a “royal screw-up” and he’s angry Manhattan streets are bare while outer boroughs like his contend with roads that have not seen a plow since the storm began.

“Verizon, Cablevision, Time Warner — we need men and women that are healthy and able-bodied,” Markowitz appealed on air.  “Twelve bucks an hour — that’s a lot of money — up to fifteen bucks an hour, to be able to help our Sanitation Department clean out streets.”

“We need every available vehicle you’ve got to help clean this place up,” said Markowitz. “I want as to look as good as Broadway in Manhattan — clean it like Broadway in Manhattan, no more and no less.”

These Verizon trucks won't be of much help, stuck in an intersection in Queens.

Much of the city remains under difficult driving conditions because of abandoned vehicles left in the middle of streets and a lack of plowing.  Disruptions to electric, phone and cable service have been reported because of accidents, damage done by snow removal vehicles, and moisture-related equipment failures.

Pressing companies like Verizon and Time Warner into service may not provide much assistance, considering vehicles belonging to both companies were themselves stuck in many locations around the city.

For residents upstate, already dealing with record-breaking snowfalls in December, the chaos downstate is mystifying.  Residents in Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse have another word for the holiday blizzard: Sunday.

The three cities continue their annual competition for the Golden Snowball Award for the upstate community left with the most white stuff:

Golden Snowball Totals for the 2010 – 2011 Snowfall Season
Updated  12/27/2010

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WABC New York City Copes With Storm Aftereffects 12-28-10.flv[/flv]

WABC-TV provides the views of Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, as well as a roundup of the lightning-hot anger being felt by an increasing number of New Yorkers stuck at home because of unplowed streets. (17 minutes)