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)

Crowell

Fibrant, Salisbury, N.C., community-owned fiber to the home network, shares advice to other communities considering building their own self-reliant, locally-owned broadband networks: work together and outsource the headend.

Christopher Mitchell from Community Broadband Networks alerted us to a video from TelecomTV interviewing Michael Crowell, Fibrant’s Director of Broadband Services.  In it, Crowell shows off Fibrant’s GPON fiber network and explains what the city has learned from the experience of building its own network.

Ironically, a significant part of Fibrant’s network came cheap thanks to Windstream.  It seems what the residents of Salisbury won was also a loss for those living in Concord, N.C.

Crowell explains Concord was served by a small independent phone company — Concord Telephone.  They had decided to build their customers an advanced fiber to the home network similar to Fibrant, until the company was sold to Windstream.  Windstream has no interest in delivering world-class fiber broadband to Concord (or anywhere else), and left Concord with dismal DSL, selling the fiber network equipment to Salisbury dirt cheap — for around 10 cents on the dollar.

But not everything has come so easy to Fibrant, says Crowell.  One of the company’s largest expenses is its headend, which receives, monitors, and distributes the hundreds of video channels Fibrant customers receive.

“What we think would be a better model going forward is for the other cities and counties to do what is called an open access network.  They build and maintain the fiber but get other providers to provide the service,” Crowell said.

Crowell proposes allowing the state’s two largest municipal broadband projects — Wilson in the east and Salisbury in the central-west part of the state, handle the headend, as well as customer service calls and billing on behalf of other communities interested in building their own municipal fiber networks.  Both cities can deliver bulk feeds of video channels to different parts of the state and that saves other communities from spending money to hire employees to monitor redundant, expensive equipment.

That is more or less what is happening further south in Opelika, Ala., where work is underway constructing a fiber to the home network.  But in Opelika, city officials have decided to let cable overbuilder Knology run the network.

Knology’s network is already up and running in nearby Auburn, according to Royce Ard, general manager for Knology.  Ard told WRBL TV:

“We met our scheduled date for installing our first Auburn test customers and the test is progressing nicely. We will begin adding our first paying customers by the end of October,” Ard said. “Initially, our services will be available in a limited number of neighborhoods, but as we build out our network we will contact homeowners and let them know when services are available in their area.”

Knology projects being able to offer service to its first Opelika customers by the second quarter of 2011.

“Knology is very excited about entering the Opelika market,” Ard said. “The technology that we are deploying in the Auburn/Opelika markets will allow us to offer consumers a much better product than they have today. This, along with Knology’s commitment to customer service, will greatly improve the overall experience for consumers in Auburn and Opelika.”

[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Salisbury Discusses Motivation Behind Fibrant on TelecomTV 12-16-10.flv[/flv]

Fibrant’s Michael Crowell, interviewed by TelecomTV, walks viewers through Fibrant’s fiber network and discusses community-owned fiber networks.  (7 minutes)

Time Warner Cable is one of many cable companies that try to convince their customers Verizon FiOS and other true fiber-to-the-home providers offer nothing special.  After all, they proclaim: “we’ve got fiber, too!”

Time Warner Cable put this "special notice" on its website for cable subscribers.

More innovation from the late 70s.

In California’s Southland, stretching from the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valley across the Inland Empire to deep within Orange County, the cable operator just finished installing 361,149 miles of fiber, telling the LA Times it has enough fiber to wrap around the equator nearly 15 times.

Unfortunately for residential subscribers, the cable company can’t manage to stretch some strands your way.

Most of the $120-million expansion program is designed to benefit area businesses — some 125,000 across the Southland that could potentially tell the phone company to take a hike.  The Business Class expansion delivers service to business parks and campuses across the sprawling region that the cable operator has not wired before.

While Time Warner likes to say they are running “an advanced fiber network,” for many customers it’s the same technology cable companies have been using since the 1990s.  Once it reaches your neighborhood, classic coaxial cable brings service the rest of the way, and some of that coax has been around since the late 1970s.

That makes at least part of Time Warner’s network as fresh and innovative as — the Sony Walkman.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Time Warner Cable Fiber Ad.flv[/flv]

A Time Warner Cable ad implying the cable company delivers a fiber optic experience to customers in southern California.  (1 minute)

Verizon’s chief operating officer thinks industry calls for Internet Overcharging schemes like metered billing and usage capped-broadband will harm providers trying to convince customers their multi-service packages represent the best value.

Bob Mudge told Bloomberg News Verizon has little interest heading down the road to charge customers based on what they use, particularly on its FiOS fiber to the home network.  Although Verizon does limit usage on its wireless network, to enforce limits on its fiber network could harm the company’s “value proposition” to consumers.

“The way we’ve structured our pricing is we have a great value proposition with the best speeds in the industry,” Mudge said.  “What we’re thinking about here is to make sure that if you are an Internet user, the total triple or quad play will have so much value and flexibility to you it will prevent you from becoming a niche buyer or seeking to cut the cord.”

Mudge believes customers want to be able to access content across several different device platforms, from home-based televisions, to computers around the home, to wireless devices while out on the go.

Despite Verizon’s enthusiasm for FiOS, the company has continued to put further expansion to new areas on hold.  Only communities already holding signed franchise agreements from Verizon will see fiber to the home from the company anytime soon.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Mudge Says Verizon Is Expanding Its Fios Service 12-7-10.flv[/flv]

Bloomberg News interviews Bob Mudge from Verizon about FiOS and Verizon’s future plans.  (5 minutes)

The Free UTOPIA website reports that a provider-backed front group is once again trying to pack meetings with their members to oppose UTOPIA – Utah’s municipal broadband network.

Several UTOPIA member cities are gearing up to start taking votes on the new Utah Infrastructure Agency designed to help fund new construction of the network. The Utah Taxpayers Association is trying to get people to show up at these meetings to protest the UIA and try and kill it. In their effort to do so, they continue to distort, twist, and outright lie in their efforts to rile people up.

First off, the UIA bonds are not an unconditional loan. They are funds that will be secured by payments from subscribers. If there aren’t enough subscribers to secure repayment, the money doesn’t get touched. You would think that such an arrangement would be acceptable to an organization that purports to represent taxpayers as it clearly shifts the burden from the taxpayers as a whole to the subscribers. Attempting to characterize the UIA as a big grab-bag is a big lie.

UTA claims UTOPIA is currently running a $20 million deficit, but Free UTOPIA points out part of that “deficit” may include the original seed money required to construct the network, which came in the form of bonds.  Like any start-up venture, UTOPIA’s initial infrastructure costs create operating losses until those costs are paid back.  A financial feasibility study prepared by Design Nine and released last week projects UTOPIA could report positive net income by 2018, with revenue increasing dramatically going forward.

UTA receives financial support from both Comcast and Qwest.

As fiber advocates have noted, start-up costs and the time it takes to pay them off are one reason why so few commercial providers want to invest in fiber.  Commercial providers often demand a return on investment within five years, while many municipal projects consider fiber a longer-term investment that can pay additional dividends for communities that may not always appear on a balance sheet.  Dividends like high technology start-ups, better paying jobs, better health care and education, and eventually additional revenue for the community that stays in the community.

The UTA has repeatedly claimed the UTOPIA project is veiled in secrecy, yet the project’s feasibility study is published on UTA’s own website.  What is secret is exactly how much money Comcast and Qwest pay UTA and its president Howard Stephenson.  Neither company will disclose exactly how much they have spent on UTA beyond contributions directed to Stephenson himself, documented here.

Provider-backed front groups like UTA routinely misinform their members about the benefits of municipal broadband, often to the point of demagoguery not supported by the facts.  Free UTOPIA reports broadband evangelism can make dramatic inroads among opponents of such public works projects:

The Utah “Taxpayers” Association thought it would get an upper hand with a BBQ in Orem just before the city council voted on a new construction bond. Unfortunately for them, the plan backfired when UTOPIA made a surprise appearance at the event with their “mobile command center” and started actually talking directly with the meeting attendees, many of whom had no opinion of UTOPIA yet and came to get more information. According to my sources, about half of the 250 or so attendees ended up registering their interest in UTOPIA services, a major coup for the network that upstaged their most vocal opponent.

Apparently what convinced a lot of the undecideds was the UTA’s refusal to disclose who pays their bills. That lack of transparency translated directly into looking like they have something to hide (hint: it’s Qwest and Comcast dollars) and left many looking at their fantastic claims skeptically. I’d like to say that there were some talking points to address, but an eyewitness account called it so much kool-aid drinking, a series of incomprehensible rants filled with insinuation, innuendo, insults, and no concrete addressable facts. In contrast, UTOPIA discussed their new business plan with individual residents and offered demonstrations of how well the service can work. Truth has power and it wasn’t on the UTA’s side.

Judging from comments left on UTOPIA’s website, the most controversy seems to be why it takes so long to extend service to more neighborhoods:

“Please finish laying fiber in Orem! We live virtually a quarter mile from the cutoff. We are stuck with Comcast’s horrible routing, and inconsistent speeds, Qwest’s DSL which doesn’t work due to damaged lines they are unwilling to repair, or wireless that never works. Please save us. I have been waiting for years.”

Utah fiber advocates are strongly encouraged by Free UTOPIA to repeat earlier successes and attend upcoming town meetings to present a more informed view about the benefits of fiber networks.

Centerville meets tonight (October 19) at 7PM, Orem is October 26 at 6PM, and Payson is October 27 at 6PM.

All meetings are at the city halls of each respective community.