Transmission

XMission's Company Journal

City Council Letter on Property Node Placement

Please note: As of January 1, 2017, XMission no longer sells DSL services.

To Ray Milliner regarding PLNPCM2012-00206: 651 N 200 W Utility Box,

Ray, I am unable to attend the public hearing on Thursday the 12th at 5pm as I will be out of town. Please pass my comments on to the council.

I live at (removed). Currently, my business XMission is able to provide DSL service to my home over CenturyLink facilities. CenturyLink and Qwest before them decided when deploying their faster data service, ADSL2/FTTN that they would not allow third-party usage. This is dismaying to me especially when they depend on public right-of-ways to deploy their services. There is no technical reason they could not wholesale this infrastructure to 3rd parties, as they are doing with their older product. The primary reason they do not wholesale their ADSL2/FTTN infrastructure to other data providers is that they wish to establish a monopoly on Internet service, much like what Comcast is doing.

I told this much when I received the initial request for a property node placement earlier this year. I wrote a letter back to Don Green and publicly posted it on the XMission blog.

Needless to say, Don didn’t respond back to me. Finding a sucker for $2000 to expand their service monopoly is a lot easier than working with local Internet providers.

It has also been our experience that the lack of proper shielding of their ADSL2 product causes interference problems for their older DSL product. So not only do I have to look forward to being forced to purchase Internet from the duopoly of Comcast or CenturyLink, if I don’t my existing Internet service is likely to decline in usability. Note that CenturyLink may twist the truth when discussing with this and say that local Internet Service Providers are welcome to sell CenturyLink service. This is not the same as being able to provide XMission data over CenturyLink infrastructure. It is like telling you that you can no longer call your mother over CenturyLink telephone lines, but they have hired substitution mothers for you to talk to instead.

Thank you,

Pete Ashdown
XMission

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2 thoughts on “City Council Letter on Property Node Placement

  • Peter says:

    This is bizarre! Why would a 3rd party ISP sell CenturyLink DSL? What’s in it for them besides haveing their name tainted by association with CenturyLink? Or is that the point — no one in their right mind would do that.

  • Pete Ashdown says:

    Peter, CenturyLink has access to most of the “last mile” transport in Utah. Unfortunately we have no alternative to reach customers other than that. We use UTOPIA where it is available, but unfortunately it is a small fraction of people who would like to buy our Internet service.

    The DSL itself does not provide you Internet service. It merely links you to a destination that does.