Today's Top Stories Cincinnati Bell is responding to a possible Google Fiber (NASDAQ: GOOG) threat by moving ahead with its plans to debut its own 1 Gbps fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service in September. In March, Cincinnati city officials began lobbying Google Fiber to be its next fiber city. Cincinnati previously made an unsuccessful bid to become one of the Internet giant's targets. The service provider is gearing up for the Sept. 8 debut of its 1 Gbps FTTH Fioptics residential broadband data service with its "Light up Cincinnati" campaign. Cincinnati Bell said the "Light up Cincinnati" initiative is all about touting the service provider's movement to expand its Fioptics suite of broadband Internet, voice and video services for its mix of business and consumer customers throughout Cincinnati. In tandem with the expanded FTTH offering, Cincinnati Bell plans to expand the availability of its Wi-Fi service at free hot spots throughout the city and at community events such as the Cincinnati Bell/WEBN Fireworks on Labor Day weekend. Ted Torbeck, CEO of Cincinnati Bell, said in a Cincinnati Enquirer article that the campaign is designed to drive home the idea that the service provider is transforming itself from being just another sleepy wireline voice provider to one that's focused on providing IP and broadband-based services. "It's creating awareness that this is the new Cincinnati Bell," he said. "We're a high-tech company." Today, Fioptics passes about 40 percent of potential customers in Greater Cincinnati, and Cincinnati Bell has set a plan to cover 60 to 70 percent of Cincinnati with the service by 2017. Torbeck told investors in June that the telco plans to spend between $80 million and $85 million on rolling out FTTH throughout Cincinnati this year. At that time, the service provider said it would focus 75 percent of its attention on fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and the rest on traditional copper-based technologies, including DSL, and hybrid fiber-and-copper methods, such as VDSL2. At the same time, the telco has been realigning its focus by reaching an agreement in April to sell its wireless-spectrum licenses to Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) for $210 million. When the deal is completed, the service provider said it would be able to more effectively dedicate time to expanding its wireline-based Fioptics broadband offerings for consumers and small and medium-sized businesses. Regardless of what's driving its FTTH build, the focus on Fioptics is paying off for Cincinnati Bell. The telco reported that in the second quarter Fioptics revenues jumped 45 percent year-over-year, to $34 million, a rise that was driven by an increase in the number of Fioptics video and Internet subscribers. For more:
- Cincinnati Enquirer has this article Editor's Corner: Cincinnati Bell's wireless sale enhances its fiber-based broadband, business push Related articles:
Cincinnati Bell extends 1 Gbps fiber service to The Brandery, sets plan for broader rollout
Cincinnati Bell sheds wireless assets for $210M, sharpens Fioptics, business service focus
Cincinnati Bell's Fioptics revenue jumps 45% to $34M
Cincinnati Bell's Torbeck: We'll spend $80M-85M on FTTH this year Read more about: Broadband, Cincinnati Bell, Fioptics
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AT&T (NYSE: T) has added the city of Jacksonville to its growing list of former BellSouth markets where it is going to deliver its 1 Gbps-capable GigaPower fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service. Similar to other markets where it has announced it will provide FTTH service, AT&T is deploying additional fiber and electronics to the existing network in Jacksonville. Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown hailed the telco's move as a way to make it a more attractive destination for residents and businesses. "Having access to these very high speeds will help us strengthen Jacksonville's competitive position as a digital crossroads and communications hub," Brown said in a release. "We want Jacksonville to be on the leading edge of technology and innovation." The service provider said it would reveal specific rollout locations and pricing at a later date. AT&T has begun offering the GigaPower service in its Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth markets. It has also announced that it would bring the service to Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh-Durham and Winston-Salem, NC; Houston; Miami; Nashville, Tenn.; Overland Park, Kan.; and San Antonio. Separately, AT&T has said that upon approval of its proposed acquisition of DirecTV (NASDAQ: DTV), the company will expand GigaPower to an additional 2 million customer locations. For more:
- see the release
Related articles:
AT&T will deliver 1-Gbps GigaPower service to Miami
AT&T begins upgrading Austin customers to 1 Gbps service
AT&T deepens U-verse presence in California, names Greensboro as next 1 Gig stop
AT&T promises to bring 1 Gig to Overland Park, Kan., Houston
AT&T extends 1 Gig service to Charlotte, N.C. Read more about: AT&T, Fttp
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Telstra is playing into its global customers' mobile nature by introducing a cloud-based unified communications (UC) service that it said can enable business customers to communicate and collaborate regardless of their location. The new UC service will be delivered via Telstra's cloud infrastructure, which now extends to seven locations throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific. Beginning at the end of August, the service will be available to customers on a monthly, "per worker" basis. Enterprises can assign four worker usage types: essential, office, information or mobile. Because it's a cloud-based managed service, enterprises could potentially reduce operational and management costs, since they won't have to manage or buy a premises-based PBX or voice system. "With Telstra Cloud Collaboration, businesses can roll-out extensive collaboration and communications tools to staff throughout the world, scale user profiles and functionality up and down depending on business requirements and ensure employees working remotely have identical resources to those working in the office – all while minimizing traditionally significant upfront investment models," said Nathan Bell, director of marketing, portfolio and pricing for Telstra, in a release. Building on the global platform it launched in Australia last year with vendor partner Cisco, the service is now available in 25 countries on four continents and is delivered over the service provider's worldwide network extending to more than 2,000 points of presence (PoPs). In March the service provider said it would use Cisco's global cloud platform to provision cloud and network services in real time to improve speed, security and performance for its customers. For more:
- see the release Related articles:
Telstra accelerates into the cloud with Cisco technology
Telstra Global enhances cloud service with Cisco Master Partner certification
Telstra furthers pact with Ericsson, Ciena to get ready for SDN, NFV
Telstra strengthens its optical network ties with Ericsson Read more about: Enterprise, Telstra Global
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Alaska Communications is upping the ante of its residential broadband products by serving up new 30 Mbps and 50 Mbps speed options for its customers in Anchorage. Customers who sign up for the 50 Mbps tier will get upload speeds up to 10 Mbps, giving them a better usage experience for activities such as video chats, gaming, photo uploading, file backup and online storage. However, a few questions remain. Alaska Communications has not revealed the price for the new 30 Mbps and 50 Mbps offerings or specified what parts of Anchorage will be the first to get the service. The introduction of these new speed tiers follows its move to introduce a 15 Mbps offering throughout the state of Alaska in May. Previously, the service provider only offered speeds from 1 Mbps to 10 Mbps. Consumer broadband overall has been a factor for Alaska Communications' consumer revenue mix. In the second quarter, the service provider's consumer broadband revenues grew 11.4 percent, to $6.24 million. Although its number of consumer broadband connections declined to 39,022, from 39,468 in the previous quarter, its consumer broadband ARPU increased from $49.46 to $52.51. For more:
- see the release Related articles:
Alaska Communications serves up 1 Gig for business, ups consumer broadband speeds
Alaska Communications bolsters IT capabilities with TekMate acquisition
Alaska Communications extends hosted VoIP service to Southcentral Alaska
Alaska Communications gets CE 2.0 certification nod from MEF Read more about: FTTH
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The FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau has gotten approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to move ahead with the process of reviewing data from ISPs and service providers on the state of the special-access market. Now that it has the OMB's blessing, the FCC said on Monday that it would begin collecting data on special-access trends. Competitive service providers such as TW Telecom and BT use special-access services, including a mix of traditional copper- and fiber-based facilities, to transport voice and data traffic from cell phone towers and buildings and to carry transactions from ATMs and credit-card readers.
By collecting data from buyers and sellers of special-access service, the regulator said it hopes to determine how competitive the marketplace is.
"Special access service has become increasingly important in the digital economy, enabling businesses large and small to connect to their customers around the globe," said Tom Wheeler, chairman of the FCC, in a statement. "Consistent with the terms of OMB's approval, we will move forward with data collection and fact-based analysis that will help the Commission better understand competition in this marketplace, and the impact on consumers as we pursue the Commission's statutory mandate to ensure special access services are provided at reasonable rates and on reasonable terms and conditions." The NoChokePoints Coalition, which represents a group of enterprise customers, competitive broadband providers and communities that rely on high-capacity "special access" lines, said they hoped the FCC's latest analysis will illustrate how AT&T, Verizon and other incumbent telcos hold a comfortable monopoly on the market. "The last time the FCC collected data on special access, in 2007, that data showed that AT&T, Verizon, and other incumbents' control over these lines cost companies and consumers more than $10 billion annually in over-earnings and generates a profit margin of over 100%," said the NoChokePoints Coalition, in a prepared statement. "These indefensible rates and accompanying anticompetitive terms and conditions are a tax on economic growth and significant burden on our already cash-strapped local governments." BT, which operates in the United States as a CLEC offering services to large multinational corporations, echoed a similar sentiment. "BT is pleased that the Office of Management and Budget approved the mandatory data request in the FCC's special access proceeding," said BT in a prepared statement. "This will pave the way for last year's FCC order on special access to continue. We hope things can now move forward quickly. This is important both in helping get a fair deal for consumers of US communications services, and in fostering fair competition for business and other services. We continue to support NoChokePoints in their efforts on this important issue." Special access continues to be a thorny issue for CLECs, which have relied on special-access circuits to extend services in areas where they have not built their own network facilities. In December, the FCC announced that it was halting AT&T's (NYSE: T) request to stop offering long-term contracts and the associated discounts on TDM-based special-access circuits it sells to CLECs and wireless operators, at least for five months. At that time, AT&T said it would no longer offer new plans with terms longer than 36 months for tariffed TDM services, including DS1, DS3, analog private line and DS0 services. For more:
- see this release (.pdf) Related articles:
Special access, end of PSTN no secret to wireline marketplace
AT&T's special access proposal faces fire from CompSouth
FCC delays AT&T's special access request
tw telecom joins CLEC battle against AT&T's special access proposal
Windstream asks FCC to investigate AT&T's special access increase proposals Read more about: AT&T, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler
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