April 2009 Archives

Allied Fiber spent most of the last week in DC visiting with Members of Congress, Senate and staffers. It was an interesting and educational experience to say the very least.

Allied Fiber has engaged Bingham McCutchen and ML Strategies to represent AF in Washington DC and assist us in getting the good word out. Things are going quite well and we submitted our formal comments to the NTIA by the April 13th deadline.

The timing and process of the NTIA, RUS and FCC Comments has been terrific for Allied FIber. Without us having to do anything several groups, associations, cooperatives and the like all throughout the US submitted for public record their perspectives on what is needed in the US to stimulate broadband awareness, use and deployment. With very few exceptions their Comments included provisions for "middle-mile" and "backhaul" requirements in order to link the last-mile networks with the major interconnection points in the Country. Continue Reading...

The Australian government has decided that the country's best interests are served by a National Broadband Plan. See the news in Telegeography.This shows that at least some people believe that it is a good idea to have a plan before you throw money on the street. It helps to know what the end result should be so that you can properly gauge what the applicants are saying they will do against what really needs to be done. That way you can also tell if they can actually pull it off, or if it is just more of the same that got you in to the current situation in the first place.

Two other interesting points

1. They have a $30+ Billion plan (not $7.2 Billion)
2. Continue Reading...

Things are going quite well and we expect to have our formal comments submitted to the NTIA by April 13th.

The timing and process of the NTIA, RUS and FCC Comments has been terrific for Allied FIber. Without us having to do anything several groups, associations, cooperatives and the like all throughout the US submitted for public record their perspectives on what is needed in the US to stimulate broadband awareness, use and deployment. With very few exceptions their Comments included provisions for "middle-mile" and "backhaul" requirements in order to link the last-mile networks with the major interconnection points in the Country. 

This is obviously something we know a great deal about and have based our plan on it. Nothing could have been better for Allied Fiber and its business model and philosophy. Essentially our model was validated by all of those that are trying to make the NTIA, RUS and FCC aware of the lack of and hence need for these critical network components (dark fiber, neutral colo huts and neutral cell towers) and at the same time we collected several very clear, indirect endorsements of our plan from strong sources in the industry.

More to come... Continue Reading...