Google Fiber copycat to deliver 1Gbps broadband

C Spire is copying the Google Fiber business model by pre-registering residents in neighborhoods that will get its fiber to the home service.

(Credit: C Spire)

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If that's true, Google should be very flattered by the efforts of a regional wireless provider to bring a 1Gbps fiber network to Mississippi.

C Spire is using the Google Fiber business plan that the search giant has employed in building 1 Gpbs fiber networks in Kansas City; Provo, Utah; and Austin, Texas. C Spire is using the plan as a blueprint for building its own fiber-to-the-home network that the company hopes will eventually blanket Mississippi.

For a state such as Mississippi, an ultra high-speed fiber optic network, could be transformative. Mississippi ranks last nationally in many categories, such as education and health care. And it also has the lowest median household income, making it the poorest state in the nation.

What's more, Mississippi's economy is still struggling to recover from the last decade's recession, which has hurt the state's credit rating, making it even more difficult for the state to fund projects and programs that could help improve education, health care, and the economy.

C Spire executives are hopeful that a high-speed fiber broadband network could help improve Mississippi's credit rating and help turn things around for the Magnolia state.Last November, credit ratings agency Fitch Ratings Service downgraded Mississippi's bond rating from stable to negative. The agency noted Mississippi's reliance on manufacturing as well as its poor record in education and high rate of poverty for the downgrade.

Google's chief financial officer, Patrick Pichette, has already been singing the praises of what a Google Fiber network can do for communities. Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference last month, he said that Kansas City has received a higher bond rating as a result of Google's investment in an ultra-high-speed network in the city, according to the website Telecompetitor.com.

But Ben Moncrief, director of government relations for C Spire, said that Mississippi can't afford to wait for Google to come to town.

"Chances are that Google wasn't going to come to Mississippi anytime soon," Moncrief admitted. So he said that C Spire, a homegrown Mississippi company, needed to take matters into its own hands.

"We are a Mississippi company. And we wanted to make a difference in our own community."

Google Fiber as inspiration
Currently, Google is only committed to building its network in three cities. And even though the company said last month that it's considering building its fiber gigabit network in 34 other cities in nine separate regions across the nation, the truth is that Google Fiber will never be in every city or community in the US. It may not even offer its super fast fiber network in every state. And yet, President Obama and the Federal Communications Commission have emphasized the importance of building such high speed networks in more communities.

Despite the fact that Google can't build fiber everywhere, it has changed the conversation about these networks. And if the company is able to make money from its high-speed networks, Google could provide a roadmap for success that other companies can use to build their own networks, which might result in a Gigabit fiber renaissance.

"Google has been a change agent in the discussion about ultra high-speed broadband and fiber networks," said Heather Burnett Gold, president of the Fiber to the Home Council of North America. "Even if Google doesn't build its network in 34 cities, the fact that they are building a roadmap that other cities or companies can follow is just as valuable as the networks themselves."

C Spire's move to build a fiber network using the business plan outlined by Google is an example of how Google's broadband ambitions are having a much wider effect on the broadband market than the few cities it's chosen to deploy its network.

Indeed, last year at a Fiber to the Home Council event in Kansas City, where Google deployed its first fiber network, Milo Medin, vice president of access services for Google who is heading up Google's fiber projects, encouraged other cities and other companies to take a look at Google's business and replicate it elsewhere.

"We expect to make money from Google Fiber," he said in May. "This is a great business to be in."

Moncrief attended this meeting and walked away inspired. He said he already knew that C Spire had the assets to build such a network. But what the company lacked at that point was a strong business plan.

C Spire is a regional wireless operator that owns its own infrastructure. Since 2003, the company has invested more than $1 billion in network infrastructure improvements, including upgrading its cellular backhaul network with fiber to support 4G wireless services. As a result, C Spire has access to more than 4,000 route miles of fiber deployed to some 1,800 cell sites around the state, most of which are located in large population centers.

"We already had most of the fiber in the ground," Moncrief said. "What we needed was a business model that took enough of the risk out of building that last mile portion of the network. And that's what I came away with from my time in Kansas City talking to Google and others. The crowd-sourcing model can work."

The Google Playbook
The heart of Google's strategy is simple: Find communities that really see the value in an ultra high-speed broadband network. While this may sound rather elementary, in the past companies deploying capital intensive infrastructure such as these fiber networks, almost had to guess where demand for their services would be.

But Google has changed the way new entrants address markets. The company doesn't just research consumer demand, it actually asks city governments and citizens themselves to commit to the network as a condition of its construction.

C Spire is offering competitively priced 1 Gbps broadband, phone service, and TV packages.

(Credit: C Spire)

The second major piece of Google's strategy is to forgo offering several different tiers of service. Instead it offers a single tier of service: 1Gbps downloads. And the company offers this service at the affordable price of $70 a month with increased pricing for adding TV service.

This is the exact same strategy that C Spire is employing as it builds its fiber network in communities throughout Mississippi. Like Google, the C Spire service has a single broadband speed: 1Gbps for $80 a month or $70 a month if you're also a C Spire wireless customer. With a basic TV package the price goes up to $140 or $130 with a C Spire wireless contract. And since C Spire's roots are in the wireline phone business, the company also offers an IP telephony service over the fiber connection. All three services cost $160 a month or $150 if you subscribe to the company's wireless service.

"We took some of the things we like about the Google model, such as the crowd-sourcing information, and we applied it to our business," Moncrief said.

In many instances, the pricing for the broadband service is more than the average American pays for high-speed data service and a TV package. But the fact that people are getting 1Gpbs, which is often 100 times faster than service they'd get for a slightly lower price from a competitor, as well as the same, if not improved selection of TV channels, is the key to the offer, said Jared Baumann, who is heading up the C Spire fiber project.

"We've gone to town meetings where residents say, 'I pay more than that for the crappy service I get today,'" he said. "We've seen no resistance at all to the pricing."

How does Google do it?
The cornerstone of Google's business model is ensuring that the communities that are selected for Google Fiber are true partners in the deployment of the network. Specifically, Google looks to the city leadership for guarantees that access to public rights-of-way and permits needed for construction will be a quick and easy process.

C Spire has done the same thing in the communities where it's deploying its fiber network.

"We wanted to know that the city and town leadership would partner with us," Baumann said.

He said the top priority was ensuring that the cities would provide a streamlined permitting process. Baumann explained that in the past when it has laid fiber for its wireless network, C Spire has experienced permitting delays of more than a year.

Those kind of delays would kill the economics of this type of project, he said. To ensure a smooth process for its fiber-to-the-home build, C Spire negotiated a five-day permitting process with each city that was chosen to get the fiber network. In the case of disputes, C Spire's contracts with the cities require the issues to be resolved within a total of 15 days.

In another move adopted from the Google Fiber playbook, C Spire went directly to residents and asked them to commit to the service before construction even began. Each neighborhood or so-called "fiberhood" is required to sign up between 35 percent and 45 percent of households for the service in order to "greenlight" the project. Residents can sign up at "rallies" in person or online. And a $10 fee is required as part of a non-refundable deposit.

C Spire Fiber offers download speeds that are 100 times faster than competing broadband services.

(Credit: C Spire)

While a commitment of 35 percent of residents may not sound too hard to reach, let's put this in perspective. In New York City, which is considered Verizon Fios's biggest growth market, the company has 30 percent to 35 percent penetration in areas where it offers the service. And Verizon negotiated its Fios deal with the city back in 2008.

Having 35 percent or 45 percent of a market committed to a service, even before the company starts building it, is an impressive feat. And it should help ensure the success of the service.

Fiber networks are expensive to build, even when a company already has fiber in the ground, as C Spire had.

"You have to get creative about how you determine where the demand is for your service," Baumann said.

Nine cities in Mississippi will be getting C Spire Fiber as part of its initial roll-out. And C Spire has already qualified several "fiberhoods." The company expects to begin building the network in those cities this summer.

C Spire is not the only company that is exploring the Google Fiber business model. Baumann said he has received several calls from community leaders and businesses in other states that are also considering replicating the Google Fiber business model. He said he's confident that C Spire will make money from the service eventually. But he said it takes more than a business model to get such an ambitious project off the ground. And he credits the leadership at C Spire for taking the plunge.

"This is a long term investment in the community," he said. "It could take 10 years before we start to see a return on our investment. But our leadership is local, and we think it is important enough to Mississippi and our community to make this happen."

California court: Drivers can use smartphone maps

Texting or chatting on the phone while driving is illegal in California, but the law seems still to be catching up with technology when it comes to other aspects of smartphone use behind the wheel.

A court of appeals has reversed an earlier court decision that ruled map reading on a cell phone was taboo under the law, according to the Associated Press. The 5th District Court of Appeal said the law currently applies only to talking and texting on mobile devices and doesn't yet have legal language for app use.

The case came about in January 2012 after Fresno resident Steven Spriggs got a ticket for checking his iPhone 4 map when he was caught in a traffic jam, according to the AP. While he was searching for a better route on his phone, a California Highway Patrol officer stopped him and fined him $165.

The panel of appellate judges ruled in favor of Spriggs, saying California law stipulates that "listening and talking" on cell phones without a hands-free device is illegal, but it doesn't specify other ways in which phone use is unlawful, according to the AP.After losing a challenge to the case in traffic court, Spriggs appealed the ticket to a Fresno County Superior Court. He lost again. Undeterred, he brought the case to the district court of appeals.

While this is a clear win for Spriggs, and he'll be able to get back his $165, the case could be appealed by the state attorney general's office to the California Supreme Court.

Mobile World Congress 2014 IBM laying off up to 25 percent of 'hardware'

IBM has confirmed that it's laying off a portion of its workforce in order to focus on new priority areas, like the cloud, analytics, and cognitive computing. This means certain divisions of the company must see cuts.

"As reported in our recent earnings briefing, IBM continues to rebalance its workforce to meet the changing requirements of its clients, and to pioneer new, high value segments of the IT industry," IBM spokesman Doug Shelton told CNET in a statement. "To that end, IBM is positioning itself to lead in areas such as cloud, analytics and cognitive computing, and investing in these priority areas."

The company wouldn't comment on the number of people being laid off or what divisions would be most affected. However, one source familiar with the plans told CNET that the layoffs entailed up to 25 percent in the Systems and Technology group -- this is the group that makes IBM servers and is often referred to as the "hardware" division.

IBM announced last month that it sold its x86 server business to Lenovo for $2.3 billion, so layoffs within the hardware division seem to make sense. With the sale, about 7,500 IBM employees were expected to be offered jobs at Lenovo. In 2005, IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo, too.

IBM currently employs more than 400,000 people worldwide and says that its total workforce has remained stable over the past three years. Additionally, the company is investing in cutting edge projects like Watson, which was first developed by IBM researchers to show what was possible in combining cognitive computing and natural language processing.

"Already this year we have committed $1 billion to our new Watson unit and $1.2 billion to expand our Cloud footprint around the world," Shelton said. "In addition, just this week IBM announced a $1 billion investment in platform-as-a-service Cloud capabilities, as well as investments in areas such as nanotechnology which will bring hundreds of new jobs to New York state."

IBM employs tens of thousands of people across the US. According to Alliance@IBM, a union seeking to represent IBM employees, workers in New York, Minnesota, and Vermont will be among those hit hard by the layoffs, along with workers in other countries."This also creates new job opportunities at IBM," Shelton continued. "At any given time, IBM has more than 3,000 job openings in these and other growth areas in the US."

Vermont's Burlington Free Press newspaper reports that more than 100 employees will be lad off from IBM's plant in Essex Junction, Vt. And, New York's Poughkeepsie Journal writes that IBM agreed to keep at least 3,100 high-tech workers in upstate New York through 2016 -- however, the last official head count of the state's workers was estimated around 7,000.

Flexing fingertip 3D-prints himself a prosthetic

fter Christian Call suffered an injury on the job and lost the tip of his right index finger, he was determined to find a prosthetic. "Initially I was trying to acquire a life-like prosthetic, but none of them actually worked and the price was out of reach," he told Crave. A few years ago, Call might have simply been out of luck, but advances in consumer 3D printers put him on the path to finding a solution.

Call's journey to create a fingertip started on YouTube. He was browsing and came across a video of a massive 3D printer cranking out plastic wrenches. That got him started on a search for a 3D printer of his own. "I had to have a 3D printer," he said. "I felt that with a 3D printer I could explore a whole new level of creativeness."

An earlier prototype of Christian Call's fingertip design. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Christian Call)

After his injury, Call was let go from his 22-year job and had no insurance. Professionally made prosthetic options were well out of his price range. "I had no idea what a homemade prosthetic would cost but suspected that I could make something for much less than what was offered," he said. He took his skills as a master mechanic millwright and hobby machinist and combined them with his newfound interest in 3D printing.

The prosthetic fingertip was made using an Up Mini 3D printer, a sub-$1,000 machine. When Call squeezes the finger toward his palm, the device moves, so it behaves mechanically like a real fingertip. He created a version that includes a magnet on the tip for picking up metal objects.

Call has been working on the project for a year and a half. "Part of that time was spent wearing my different designs for weeks at a time to work out the problems with them and advance the design," he said. "The function and comfort is quite good. I model the cup part of the prosthetic as close to my actual finger as possible and if need be I can file the pieces for a better fit and function."

Other people in need of a fingertip prosthetic have gotten in touch with Call, and he has worked on outfitting them with his design. He has made other 3D designs available for free on sites like Thingiverse, but doesn't plan for this to be one of them.

He is open to creating prosthetic fingertips for more people, but he encourages them to try the process themselves, and to design and print their own solutions. "Even if it seems too hard to make, you will learn from it and do better next time. This is how I did it," Call said."In the beginning, I saw the attraction to giving away files for recognition and to help fire the interest in 3D printing, but now I think 3D printing needs no help and is surely here to stay," he said. "I feel my time is worth something and if I can help people with my skills and make a little money doing it, then that is what I will do."

Call's DIY philosophy may represent the ultimate fulfillment of the promise of 3D printers. It brings us closer to an imagined future world where 3D printers are as common as paper printers, and people just sit down, design, and create the things they need. The process may take multiple steps along a learning curve right now, but makers like Call are paving the road for widespread use of 3D printers for the greater good, one person at a time.