Rio Rancho pulls the plug
Rio Rancho has pulled the plug on its muni wireless network in a dispute with its service provider, Azulstar, over $33,000 in unpaid electrical bills dating to 2005. According to a report in the Albuquerque Journal, the city has asked Azulstar to remove its equipment and does not plan to seek a new provider.Rio Rancho has pulled the plug on its muni wireless network in a dispute with its service provider, Azulstar, over $33,000 in unpaid electrical bills dating to 2005. According to a report in the Albuquerque Journal, the city has asked Azulstar to remove its equipment and does not plan to seek a new provider.
The Journal’s report cited a September 20 letter in which the city contracts administrator terminated the city’s contract with Azulstar. Under that contract, the city was to pay the Public Service Company of New Mexico for the electricity used by the network and be reimbursed by Azulstar. The letter said that, in addition to Azulstar’s failure to reinburse the city for the charges, Azulstar has not come up with a satisfactory business plan nor has it presented proof that it has the financial ability to continue service in the city.
Last month, Azulstar submitted a plan to the city about how it would address complaints about its service. Rio Rancho sent its letter following a lengthy review of that plan.
Back in April, Azulstar appointed IBM’s muni wireless point man, Yorke Rhodes III as its new CEO. At the time, I wrote that it looked like the company was upping its ante in the muni market and might give EarthLink a run for its money there. That appears to have been prophetic, though not in the way I thought at the time. Azulstar’s difficulties in Rio Rancho, following close on the heels of EarthLink’s restructuring, underscores difficulties in the private provider/subscription-based models. Munis that contract with companies in exchange for giving them entry to their markets attach the future of their networks to the success of the provider’s business model. It underscores why providers have begun insisting on anchor tenant commitments from cities before progressing with deployments.
Here’s a link to the story in The Albuquerque Journal. There is a subscription charge for access but the newspaper allows a single session free trial.
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We stated time and time again that you cannot run two systems in the same market. It is proven true here. We sent letters to the City of Rio Rancho outlining this. The interference of two systems was apparent as part of the failure. Using indoor meru radios with amplifiers as an outdoor access point was a major design flaw. Rio Rancho attempted to create a monopoly for Azulstar by attempting to sue us into oblivion but that did not work, we have won every case in the courts of New Mexico. RWSI has put the peace pipe out again to build a real and quality network but to no avail. Rio Rancho is a rural city sparsely served by DSL our cable tv thus leaving large Internet connection problems. There are huge areas of the City that have NO phone lines our cable tv built to them. Thc City does not do the citizens justice by playing games of denial to the broadband Internet networks.
For those who don’t know, Road Runner is a Time Warner cable company. In most parts of the US, there is a DSL-cable duopoly that keeps the price of broadband very high, compared to many areas in Europe where there are a lot of service providers competing for customers’ business. The wireless service touted by Road Runner in New Mexico is expensive and slow: for $39.95 per month, you get 1.5 Mbps downstream and an upstream speed of 256 Kbps. It is not surprising that Rio Rancho tried, but failed, to get a wireless broadband provider to compete with Road Runner’s service. Rio Rancho should be commended for trying to bring some competition in the market for broadband service. It’s a shame that Azulstar could not deliver.
Updating comments RWSI “Roadrunner Wireless Services” has no affiliation in New Mexico with Time Warner. We are a local company doing wireless Internet only. Prices starting at $19.99 for 256k.
We can supply services as free or up to 10meg via wireless wifi. Nobody can do that thru DSL.
“Nobody can do that thru DSL” — the sorry state of American broadband.
Has anyone heard if Azulstar has gone belly-up? Currently I am a user with a subscription that gets wide flux in signal strength. In the last three weeks, signal has been little to none, and I often receive messages that the server cannot be reached. Despite multiple attempts to reach a service rep, they fail to respond to email, and the helpline phone number is constantly busy- you cannot get through at any hour of the day.
Azulstar was supposed to be gone Dec 31 2007 but the City gave them a reprieve to attempt to make their system work once and for all. Of course that didn’t happen, the Azulstar system got no better. Guess what it got worse. Azulstar spent more money attempting to make work and adding access points and upgrading equipment. As of Apr 1 2008 the City of Rio Rancho has decided to tell Azulstar to leave and remove all equipment from City facilities.