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The History and Mission of UC Telecommunications Company
A quick biography of UC Telecommunications Company
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U.C. Computers, Inc., a well-known Berkeley computer hardware and software store on Telegraph Avenue,
began offering dialup internet service direct to the public in early 1996,
and by mid-1996 was the first ISP in the Bay Area to offer anything faster than dialup -- Centrex ISDN.
The store became the first Internet Café, either in the US or at least West of the Rockies,
and was always the only Internet Café with T3 (45mbps) access to the Internet.
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In June 1997, U.C. Computers had established a 440kbps DSL line (again the fastest thing in the Bay Area)
between its premises and a local business further up Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, the first such service in operation,
and actually advertised DSL service to the public a month ahead of Pacific Bell; in fact, the advertisement in
Computer Currents probably forced Pacific Bell's entry into the market.
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Of course, Pacific Bell wouldn't allow U.C. Computers to use the lines needed to operate the service (making the papers,
August 1997, SF Chron business section) -- they told us to become a telephone company.
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So we did - form a telephone company. UC Telecommunications Company was formed in 1998 to operate the ISP business
and the telephone company, which came into existence in the Spring of 1998.
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By then, however, Covad had already secured
funding to implement their DSL plans and had done deals with Pacific Bell to get started (doing something we had sketched
on napkins in the store nine months earlier.) We were the 7th company to sign up with them, and Bay Area pricing for DSL
was set between two companies in the Bay Area -- U.C. Computers and The Well (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) -- for more
than a year.
Stymied by the telephone company for its copper in 1997, U.C. Computers looked for a way around the telephone company
and discovered wireless gear that outperformed DSL anyway, and by early 1998 had commenced commercial Wireless Internet service,
again the first such commercially available service in the Bay Area, and as fast or faster than anything the telephone company --
or anyone else -- had. By April 2000 we had introduced 5mbps wireless service -- again the fastest thing going anywhere.
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In 2002 we relocated to Oakland, and then our market began to fail. We tried to introduce wireless with speeds above 10mbps but
could not find wireless equipment providers who could do the job for a reasonable cost. By then the "DSL wars" had commenced,
and just as the bottom fell out of the IDSN market when DSL arrived, the cheap DSL dropped the bottom out of the "expensive WiFi market".
And so our business has been in the doldrums for the meantime. We focused more on the ISP and colocation business and still host
bookfinder.com, the preeminent new-used book search service on the Internet, among other prominent and worthy clients (we host for free
the Berkeley PTA and websites for all the BUSD schools, as BUSD does not offer such services!)
By now we are a tough little industrial ISP with a famous history and the intention and will and capacity to make more history
providing the fastest service anywhere using a business model that will also make history ...
The Problem We Shall Solve:
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The Telephone company (in any market) has no copper competition and so owns all pre-existing last-mile in the country. Then there is the Cable company,
which is again a monopoly in any given market. Meanwhile, the airwaves are dominated by the endless advertising done by these companies. These companies
make a show of introducing new services, but the fact is that they have no incentive to compete in a genuine way, because they continue to reap large profits
without having to do so.
The FCC under Michael Powell had no problem allowing the telephone companies to stop having to discount services to competitors. But the unbundling rules
were in effect in order to enable competition in the market, and when the FCC gave the telcos their wish, the telco monopolies ended up putting an enormous
number of small ISPs out of business, very undeservedly. We small ISPs were why you could in fact get T1 service cheaper than the phone company would give it
to you. We were willing to share, and they were not.
All the "telco" works for is its own enlargement: for example, SBC bought Pacific Bell and then bought AT&T, and changed its name. Now all profits
go to Southwest Bell under the name "the new AT&T", yet while gigabit service is available to residential users in Slovenia, AT&T is still peddling
6-megabit service for high rates years after it was introduced. That is neither competitive nor just.
Optical Fiber is the only credible way to transport large amounts of data not only at incredible speeds, but reliably and cheaply, and the cost of fiber
has dropped to the point of general affordability now. It is not Dirt Cheap; but it is Cheap Enough. The price per residence to bring Fiber To The Home has
dropped beneath $700 and continues to decline. Despite this, the telcos and cablecos are not much interested in developing fiber, as it will cost money and
their profit margins will decline! Meanwhile, gigabit fiber to the home (FTTH) is available in Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, and even Slovenia,
but not in the United States.
Quite simply, we intend to build the network that the telcos refuse to build.
We're going to build a "gigabit Internet" from the inside out.
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The preferred model for our telecommunications future is outlined at http://communityfiber.org, namely that telecom should be made into a public utility
the same as water and power. Getting communities to address the issue seriously is an uphill battle and will take time and media exposure. Our business model
occupies that niche between now and the future, now when good, fast services are hard to find, and the future, where the people of any given community are
the owners of their own network infrastructure. We will build one or more "Gigabit Fiber Neighborhoods", and in time interconnect them, in the expectation of
extending Gigabit Fiber to 'the whole City', and hopefully to your city.
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