re: ORCL, HP team with Utilities in Consortium to Fiber the Last Mile
infoworld.com
"...taking advantage of the deregulated telecom industry, the small, tightly knit consortium will initially offer digital voice, TV, and Web hosting over fiber, under the name SpectraDyne Services. It includes Sierra Pacific Power Company, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, and TelecommUnity Systems."
[Thread,
This is one story I don't mind spam'ing. The story below from InfoWorld actually speaks to many of the principles and strategies we've been discussing here and elsewhere on these boards over the past several years. It's pleasing and rather exciting to see the beginnings of it finally coming to the fore by real players. How will the incumbents react to this?
Let's just hope they do it right this time. Enjoy.
Regards,
Frank Coluccio]
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infoworld.com
Consortium to Power Up Broadband
By Ephraim Schwartz
THE RACE to deliver broadband services directly into businesses and
homes will heat up this summer when a new nationwide network created
in secret by an alliance of utility companies and computer industry giants
will offer voice, data, and television services.
Taking advantage of the deregulated telecom industry, the small, tightly
knit consortium will initially offer digital voice, TV, and Web hosting
over fiber, under the name SpectraDyne Services. It includes Sierra
Pacific Power Company, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, and TelecommUnity
Systems.
This alliance will be the first to connect and interact with all consumers,
retailers, medical facilities, libraries, schools, industrial companies, local
merchants, and local government over computers, telephone, or television
in their coverage area, said a senior executive at TelecommUnity
Systems.
The initial rollout of services in southern Nevada -- including Las Vegas
-- is set for this summer with projects and discussions under way between
the consortium and at least 30 other utilities.
Sierra Pacific, like all utilities, has access rights to every home and
business in its coverage area as well as a lot of so-called dark, or unused,
fiber connections already in place -- giving it a huge advantage over its
rivals in the network-provision market. It has been completing the fiber
installation right to the home in secret over the last two years.
The TelecommUnity executive put the initial broadband connection at
155MBps. He also said the bandwidth can be upgraded to terabytes per
second.
The potential multibillion-dollar revenues that the consortium could
generate will be divided up between the players with HP managing and
offering hosting services on its electronic-commerce platform.
"Once you have this high bandwidth connection, [HP can] put up large
hosting centers and gain a whole new series of revenue services," said an
independent source familiar with the project.
The operating technology will allow the utilities to do all the scheduling,
billing, credit work, and accounting.
"It will do all of the things that make a network operation function," the
executive said.
Most of those operations will be handled by HP, which is a significant
investor, upgrading its initial $100 million investment in the project to
over half a billion dollars.
"HP is showing its commitment by helping to finance the infrastructure
build-out," the source said.
HP is not alone in supplying technology to the effort. Oracle, working
alongside HP, is involved in creating the databases to maintain the
underlying infrastructure.
According to a source familiar with the project, there are a lot of "skunk
works" (joint projects associated with creating an e-commerce platform
on the system) activities going on between HP and Oracle.
Sierra Pacific anted up its half billion-plus dollars investment by selling
off its power-generation assets for $1.6 billion dollars -- believing like
many of the recently deregulated utility companies that beyond
electricity, the transport of digital voice, data, and television is where
their revenues will come from in the future.
To make the network nationwide, the consortium will use a two-tiered
hub system consisting of the Local Area Control Center (LACC) and a
national hub called the National Operating Control Center.
The LACC will contain the databases and servers that allow access to
any other commercial or industrial subscriber. It will offer all services,
everything from Web hosting and videoconferencing to telephone and
interactive TV on a single bill with a fee based on routing and the
duration of the network connection, the senior executive at
TelecommUnity said.
Broadband and a unified bill are compelling reasons for companies to
sign up, said one IT manager.
"We have dealers, and dealers have remote locations and independent
service providers, and communicating is a big deal. Modem access
doesn't cut it when transferring wiring diagrams," said Dan Palmer,
assistant chief engineer at Kenworth Truck Company, in Kirkland, Wash.
Palmer also says a simple $20 Internet bill can cost his company $150
because so many hands need to touch the bill before it gets paid.
"If we can combine those bills [IP, telephone, television] into a single bill,
it would save us money," Palmer said.
Savings to consumers from a single point of delivery may also be
substantial. According to sources the initial charge for a 10Mb connection
to the home will be $13.95 per month.
"That would be fabulous. With DSL [Digital Subscriber Line] you end up
paying $50 per month for less than a 1Mb connection," said Melanie
Posey, an analyst at International Data Corp., in New York.
However, Posey warns that it is one thing to have the right-of-way, the
fiber, and the infrastructure, but marketing is a major challenge.
"The ability to do it doesn't mean you will have success in doing it,"
Posey said.
And there certainly are other competitors -- as witnessed by this month's
multibillion-dollar AOL-Time Warner merger -- who are perhaps as adept
at marketing as they are at deploying technology.
Sierra Pacific officials would not comment beyond saying that the
company has been interested in offering telecommunications services for
some time and received a license to do so in Nevada from the Public
Utilities Commission of Nevada. |
