Friday, December 20, 2013

Target Credit Card Breach

Target's national point of sale system was compromised and carders stole magstrip data and PIN numbers for 40,000,000 credit and debit cards.

This isn't some online store hack where all they got was the credit card numbers.  They got complete mag strip data and PIN numbers.  Everything they need to clone the cards and use them.

This means that bad guys can print a duplicate card then use the PIN to take cash from victim accounts at ATM machines.

They can also clone the cards and use them as credit cards to purchase stuff from the Internet and in person.

If you purchased anything at Target between November 28 and December 15, you need to report your card stolen and get a new card.

The data is already hitting carder markets and bad guys are stealing funds.

I had to cancel my USAA card because I bought my daughter's new scooter on Dec 3 at Target.

Please take this seriously.  Don't be a victim of data theft.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Finals Week

It is finals week this week.  Here at Wicked Broadband we know that means lots of stress and seemingly endless suck.

We always make a concerted effort to keep our service un-interrupted, but this week we are all going to be putting in extra effort to make sure your studying isn't interrupted by Internet outages or slowdowns.

If you have problems with your Internet, please don't hesitate to call us (785) 371-4214 or send me a note.  I check my email constantly (some might even say obsessively).

joshua.montgomery@wickedbroadband.com

Thanks, we have enjoyed serving you this semester and look forward to your return in January.

BTW: We have lots of network upgrades/changes/clean-up planned for winter break, so you'll return to an even faster, more reliable network.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Why can't I get ESPN3 on Wicked Broadband's Network?

From time to time I get this question.  Why can't I get ESPN3 or WatchESPN on Wicked Broadband's network?

To get access to selected ESPN websites for our customers Wicked Broadband would have to pay ESPN for every single subscriber on our network whether they use ESPN3 or not.  That means that every single customer's bill would go up to help pay ESPN for a few customers to use the ESPN website.

This type of thing happened in the Cable TV industry in the 1980's and 1990's.  It is how your cable bill got so huge and your cable package got so bloated with channels that you don't watch.  ESPN and other content providers forced cable providers to pay for their content whether the customer wanted to watch it or not.

Imagine what would happen if Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube insisted that your Internet service provider (ISP) pay them directly?  Your Internet bill would get ENORMOUS as every popular website on the Internet demanded a payment from the ISP for every single subscriber whether that subscriber wants to use their website or not.

You, the customer, would be left trying to choose between different ISPs based on which websites the ISP chooses to pay.  So one ISP might allow you to use Google and MySpace.  A competing ISP might only allow you to use Bing and Facebook.  An ISP's success would hinge on what kind of deals they could negotiate with content providers.   This would give huge advantages to large ISPs like WOW!, Time Warner and Comcast at the expense of small ISPs like Wicked Broadband.

In my mind, ESPN's actions should be illegal.  Unfortunately the FCC is being lead by the former top lobbyist for the Cable TV industry.  I'm not holding my breath for intervention by FCC any time soon.

Bottom line, we refuse to contribute to an Internet that "works" like Cable TV.  We don't think that ISPs should be in the business of choosing which websites work and which ones don't.  If ESPN wants your business then they will allow you, the customer, to purchase their content directly.  If they don't want to sell you their content that is their problem.

There are customers who feel that their ISP should be allowed to choose which websites work.  There are customers who will tolerate their ISP monitoring, intercepting and manipulating their web traffic (I'm talking about AT&T).  There are customers who want to do business with companies that are against an open Internet.  Those customers should find another ISP, Wicked Broadband isn't going to engage in these types of business practices.

Customers who want to learn more about why your cable bill is so high, why Internet speeds in the US have lagged behind the rest of the world and why you can't get the TV channels you want a la carte should read this book:  Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age


Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Wicked Broadband mentioned in Wired Magazine

We got another mention in Wired Magazine today.  Toward the bottom of the article right next to Google Fiber.
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/12/verizon_fios/

It is pretty neat to see our little company mentioned by the technology industry's premier news source.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Locate your loved ones.......

This week a member of the Lawrence community went missing for several days before being found deceased by law enforcement.  One of the symptoms of hypothermia is "mild confusion", so when someone gets very, very cold it is easy for them to become lost, disoriented and fatigued.  In severe cases this can lead to death.

I couldn't help but think what I would do if my wife went missing for some reason on a freezing cold night.

It occurred to me that one easy way to locate someone is to have their mobile phone send back its GPS coordinates, so after reading about this local tragedy Kris and I have decided to install location software on our phones.  This software allows me to locate her phone and vice versa.  After looking at the options, we selected "Where's my Droid" because it is free, easy to use and is well recommended by the Android community.

We changed the default text commands to random stings, locked the front end with a PIN and stored the PIN and strings in our secure password vault.  This allows either Kris or I to locate the other person's phone in an emergency.  

Please note: This technology can be used in a seriously creepy way, so if you decide this might be a good idea, be sure you only give the keys to someone who you trust completely.

Monday, December 2, 2013

New Customers

Last month was very, very busy for us.  We added five new greek houses to our little Wicked Broadband family.  We'd like to welcome the 130 men of Sigma Chi and Delta Tau Delta to our network.  We'd also like to welcome the 310 women of Gamma Phi Beta, Delta Delta Delta and Alpha Gamma Delta.

You might not know it, but we are the preferred ISP of the Greek houses at the University of Kansas.  We provide service to 4 out of 5 houses at KU.

Friday, November 29, 2013

ISP Advertising

So some ISPs that I shall not name have started using a transparent HTTP proxy to replace/inject advertising into the webpages that their users are accessing.

This means that they are watching what their users are viewing, intercepting the traffic and adding more (and unauthorized) advertising to the web pages that their users are reading.

We don't do this.

Monday, November 25, 2013

ProxMox

So we use a ProxMox virtualization environment to host some of our virtual servers.  We had to reboot it today after 513 days of operations.  It came right back up, but it is still sad when you have a system that is working that well and needs to be restarted.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Capacity Upgrade

 We are almost out of capacity at our Law Enforcement Center site at 11th & Mass.  This site serves most of NE Lawrence including downtown.

The site is reaching peak throughput around midnight every day, so this shouldn't be effecting business customers.

We are adding another link to this site on Sunday (weather permitting) which will double our capacity and should give us room to continue growing in that area.  Fiber would help also, so we are working on that as well.

Monday, November 11, 2013

3 TB Per Day Reached

On Janary 9, 2012 our network reached 2 TeraBytes of daily traffic for the first time.  16 months later we doubled that throughput and reached 2 TeraBytes of data per day.

This past weekend we welcomed Delta Delta Delta and Delta Tau Delta to our network.  This increased the number of daily users by around 150 people.

Today we reached 3 TB/day.  That is a 50% increase in network traffic in 6 months time.  Not too shabby for and ISP that started out eight years ago with a 6 Mbps DSL line..........

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Funny Story

So I was talking to the manager of one of the non-profit sites where we provide free service.  I guess a salesperson from the local cable provider went over and tried to sell them broadband.

She told them she got service from Wicked Broadband for free.

He told her that they would beat Wicked Broadband's price.

"So wait," she said, "you will PAY me to use your service?"

She turned them down anyway.  Apparently they used cable in the past and our service has been substantially more reliable.

I got a chuckle out of that.

Also: I need to update this more often.  I'll work on it.

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Lightning Damage

The electrical storm last night fried a bunch of our gear north of 6th St.  We also lost gear near 23rd and Louisiana.

We are working on the problem and will have the network back to nominal shortly.

UPDATE: The network has been returned to normal.  Also: since we have already been at work all day, we decided to call off the scheduled maintenance for tonight, so for all of those uses who are downloading stuff between 2:00 AM and 6:00 AM on a Sunday, enjoy it.  We'll be sleeping.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Government Shutdown = Scheduled Maintenance

So since the government shut down, Army Specialist Lionell Brown and Air Force 1st Lieutenant Joshua Montgomery (that's me!) don't have drill this weekend.  That kind of sucks ( we both enjoy drill weekend ), but as a bonus we can spend the weekend doing something else.

So we decided to upgrade the fiber bus at our 2100 Harper POP this weekend.

You may have noticed we've been opening maintenance windows pretty regularly lately.  This is because a lot of our original equipment was 100 megabit per second Ethernet.  Since we are moving more of our infrastructure to 1,000 megabits per second, these sites need to be upgraded to accommodate the additional capacity traffic.  We are swapping out a lot of switching and routing gear.

Usually it goes smoothly, but sometimes things break, so we are doing it on overnights.

Anyway, the gist of this post is that we are taking down the network (the whole network) on Sunday morning at around 2:00 AM.  It should be back up by around 5 AM......no later than 7 AM if we go out for pancakes.


Monday, September 30, 2013

Precinct 39 Wins Wicked Fiber Pre-Registration Contest




For Immediate Release
October 1, 2013

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Kris Adair
Phone: (785) 840 - 7989
Email: kris.adair@wickedbroadband.com


PRECINCT 39 WINS WICKED FIBER PRE-REGISTRATION CONTEST

Lawrence, Kan.October 1, 2013 - Wicked Broadband is pleased to announce that Precinct 39 has won the Wicked Fiber Gigabit Pre-Registration contest.  Precinct 39 crossed the threshold Monday with 10% of the households in the neighborhood pre-registering for Wicked Fiber service.

Because this precinct has only 746 addresses, Wicked Broadband has expanded the pilot project to include Vermont St. and two small neighborhoods in central and west Lawrence.  With the addition of these areas the pilot project will pass just over 1,000 addresses.


Figure 1: Wicked Fiber Pilot Neighborhoods

During the five month pre-registration period, over 500 households from all over Lawrence pre-registered for service.   Lawrence residents expressed their desire for to the same ultra high speed service that is available in Kansas City-KS, Chattanooga-TN, Lafayette-LA, Provo-UT and Austin-TX.

Neighborhoods with Wicked Fiber’s gigabit service will be able to access the Internet at 100 times the speed of the average American household.  Customers using the service can stream multiple HD video streams and download full length movies in minutes.  Since the service is bi-directional (i.e. upload speeds similar to its download speeds) customers are also able to upload photo albums, videos and other large files in the blink of an eye.

In keeping with Wicked Broadband’s commitment to community service, the company has pre-approved nineteen non-profit and government organizations in the pilot neighborhood for free Gigabit service.  Pre-approved non-profits that express interest and return the application form will be provided with free gigabit service as part of the project.

Chamber of Commerce
City of Lawrence
Douglas County
Douglas County Casa, Inc.
Douglas County Community Foundation
Douglas County Sheriff's Office
Downtown Lawrence, Inc.
Fire Station n No 1
Habitat for Humanity
Headquarters Counseling Center
Hillcrest Elementary School
Hobbs Park
Just Food, Inc.
Lawrence Arts Center
Lawrence Community Building
Lawrence Police Department
Lawrence Public Library
New York Elementary School
Van Go, inc.
Figure 2: Non-Profit Organizations Pre-Approved for Free Wicked Fiber Service

This list is by no means comprehensive.  Other non-profit organizations and government agencies with facilities in the pilot neighborhood will be able to apply for free service by downloading and returning a form available on the company’s website: http://wickedfiber.com

The next step in the process is to secure funding for the project.  In Kansas City-KS, Google received millions of dollars in subsidies in the form of $10 pole attachment fees and free co-location of equipment at City owned sites.  In Provo-UT Google received $40 Million in municipal owned fiber.  Chattanooga and Layfayette both built their own networks at a cost of tens of millions of dollars to taxpayers.  Wicked Broadband has applied for a $500,000 matching grant from the City of Lawrence to make the pilot project possible.  This grant matches the $500,000 Wicked Broadband is investing in the Lawrence pilot project.

Once the matching funds are in place, Wicked Broadband will begin designing and installing its common carrier fiber network in the pilot neighborhoods.  The goal is to have the pilot network completed and operational within 18 months of project funding.

The company is currently planning two follow-on phases to the project.  The first expansion phase is a 10,000 household expansion to begin in 2015.  This project will be funded by Wicked Broadband through an equity funding round.  The final phase of the project will complete the Lawrence network by bringing fiber to the remaining 20,000 households.  This final phase will start in 2017 and will be funded through a traditional bond offering. 

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Fiber Speedtests

So, speedtesting a 1 Gbps link is tough to do.  You can use iperf and do it through the old CLI, but most users want a visual meter.

Anyway, here is a speedtest from our newest fiber customer.


We are going to need a faster speedtest server........

Thursday, September 19, 2013

If you are not getting............

If you are living the KU residence halls and you aren't getting speeds like these:


You should ask your resident hall director why......'cuz we'll build it if they'll call us.

Speed test taken from a 100Mbps switch port Kappa Delta sorority tonight at 7:17 PM CDT.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Maintenance Window Delayed to Friday

Due to a number of last minute delays, we've decided to move tonight's maintenance window back one day.  We'd rather do the work right the first time.

We are going to be doing maintenance on the network Friday starting at 2:00 AM.  We plan to be done by 8:00 AM.  We are adding capacity to central and north-west Lawrence by changing some of our equipment from a 100Mbps bus to a full Gigabit bus.

Service will be effected for about 1/2 our our members during this time, so expect outages and delays if you are up that early (or late).

Where we suck and how we are improving it.........

Google changed their mapping API last week (or finally disabled the version we were using), so I ended up reaching into our website's signup software and the member side of our management portal.

They really suck.  Not just a little.  They suck a lot.

There are a number of things we need to improve.  We need to allow our members to update their information easier, pay past due bills online, upgrade or downgrade service.   We need to provide better information about our products and limit the amount of time it takes us to provision and set up service for our members.

As a Wicked Broadband member you shouldn't have to call us unless you want to chat with Lionell (who is very friendly and wants to chat with you too.)

So, over the next three weeks I am going to re-code the entire thing from the ground up.  I don't know if I can get it done, tested and delivered in this time frame, but I'll give it my best shot.  If not, we'll get it out as close to this date as we can.

Sorry for taking so long to notice this issue.  I'll work to do better in the future.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Competition for Wicked Fiber Heats Up as Precinct 39 Takes the Lead

Lawrence, Kan. – Sept 5, 2013 - Wicked Broadband’s pre-registration contest is heating up.  The company recently pre-registered Poehler Lofts bringing 48 new registrations to precinct 39.  This puts historic East Lawrence in the lead.

District 39 is now only 17 pre-registrations away from being selected as the first neighborhood in Lawrence to receive gigabit Internet service.  Precinct 39 has taken the lead from precinct 27 south of the University of Kansas campus.


An interactive map of the top 5 precincts can be found at:  http://wickedfiber.com/progress

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Re-imagining Transportation with the Interweb

Google's recent $258 Million investment in Uber could be a substantial opportunity for Lawrence if local government pursued the issue.

As I see it, the eventual goal of this deal is to merge Uber's smart phone car service with Google's autonomous car technology in order to develop a "smart cab" service.

By reducing the cost-per-mile of using taxi service, this type of technology would make it possible for many of us to stop using our cars entirely.  For local transportation many of us would use this "smart cab" service.  I know I would.

For out of town trips you would catch a "smart cab" to a rental agency and hop in a rental car.  My guess is that the rental agencies would rapidly realize that making frequent rentals very easy (i.e. hop in the car, scan your ID and go), they could rent more cars, making this type of trip simple.

Imagine a world where to get to work you simply pull out your phone and press a button.  A few seconds (not minutes) later, a clean driverless car pulls up outside your home.

You get in, tell it to go to the coffee shop and off the car goes.

During the trip you order your drink on your smart phone and start responding to e-mail, check your bank account balance, Facebook your mom, text your wife.

You arrive at the coffee shop and the car drives through.  You pick up your late mocha grande vente iced cappuccino (I don't drink coffee) which you already paid for.  You groan in ecstasy as the caffeine hits your system and tell the car to take you to work.

You arrive at work a few minutes later rested, relaxed and already engaged in a phone call with your first customer of the day.

All for $1 or $2 per ride.

There are going to be several benefits to this.

1. There are going to be a lot fewer cars on the street.  Because cars are constantly be in use, there won't be a need to have one car per person.  Fewer cars doesn't mean less traffic, but it does mean the community would need substantially less parking.  One car per 10 people might well be enough to get people from place to place on demand.  The question that needs to be asked is "what percentage of automobiles are parked at any given time?".  A lot, and most of them would become redundant.

2. Many of these cars will be electric.  When their charge gets low they will simply go to a designated charging station and re-charge.  No gasoline necessary.

3. The space currently used to park cars will be be re-purposed as green space, bike paths, running paths or for new buildings.   Building new buildings where we currently have acres of parking will increase urban density and create efficiency in everything from heating and cooling to telecommunications.

4. Your total cost for transportation (Vehicle Purchase, Insurance, Maintenance, Fuel, Parking), will likely be significantly reduced.  This will make more money available for important purchases like soccer league memberships, locally grown produce and, of course, beer.

5. People will be able to use their time in the car to accomplish other tasks.  Most people talk on the phone now, but with a driverless car you will be able to text, send e-mail, surf the web, watch TV, whatever.

6. Traffic fatalities, especially from distracted driving and/or drunk driving will fall substantially.  Simply put, a computer can handle a car better than a 22 year old co-ed who is texting, doing her makeup and singing along with Robin Thicke.

7. Those of us who decided to ditch our cars will all of a sudden, have several hundred square feet of garage that could be re-purposed as an entertainment room, workshop or home gym.

8. You will be able to e-hail the type of vehicle of your choice.  Need a pick-up for a trip to Home Depot?  Hail a pick-up truck.  Need a cargo van?  Done.  Need a car with two child seats?  Might take a couple more minutes, but that too will be available at the press of a button.

9. Reductions in required parking would make it possible to sell many municipally owned parking lots, develop existing private lots and invest funds in alternative transportation.  If managed properly, this could be a boon for the municipality's bottom line, allowing our leadership to lower taxes or re-purpose funds to recreation, education and beautification.

So how does Lawrence capitalize on this up and coming trend?

1. Create a regulatory environment that welcomes this technology.  While other communities are fighting to keep Uber out of their community in order to preserve revenue for existing cab services, we can implement taxi ordinances that are friendly both to Uber type services and to autonomous vehicles.

2. Actively pursue the companies that are developing these technologies and work to become a test site.  If our municipality, county and local university make themselves easy to work with, I can see Lawrence as a great community to test these technologies in.

3. Make some of the subsidies we are spending on services like the "T" available to autonomous cab companies.  If we are subsidizing "T" rides to the tune of $2 per ride (I don't know how much our subsidy is, but I expect it is in this range), make those same subsidies available to autonomous taxi operators.  I bet this alone would garner great interest from these emerging businesses.

This technology is coming.  I'd love to see Lawrence as a leader.  For once it would be nice to see a technology come to Lawrence before it comes to a place like Palo Alto.








Wednesday, August 28, 2013

1 Million Cups Lawrence

It was a pleasure for us to present our vision for Wicked fiber at 1 million cups today.  I think Lawrence has the seeds of a real start-up community, provided we can find the funding to water these seeds and make them grow.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Power Outage

The power went out in SE Lawrence today taking power down for the primary Point of Presence (POP) where data comes into Lawrence.

As planned, the site went on batteries for an hour.  When the hour was up, we put the site on its generator.  During the switch to generator power, the site "blipped" and all of the switches rebooted.

Unfortunately, since I am an idiot and forgot to save the configuration after we upgraded capacity on Wednesday, the switch came back up in its old configuration.  Dan was quick to get the new IPs and routes back into it (remembering to "write memory" when he was done), but it still took the entire network down for 10 min.

My apologies for that mistake.  We've corrected it and have the generator and UPS configured to prevent this type of glitch in the future.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Maintenance Complete!

The overnight maintenance window went very smoothly.  We were only offline for a couple of minutes.

There is one more maintenance window scheduled for August 30 from 5 AM to 6 AM.  After that maintenance window is complete, we'll have doubled our network's capacity.

Hopefully this hasn't inconvenienced too many people.  Our minimum usage is between 4 and 5 AM so we are trying to do major work during this window.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Network Maintenance

We are doing maintenance on our upstream link at 5:00 AM tomorrow, August 21.  Internet connectivity will be spotty (or non-existent) from 5:00 AM to 5:30 AM.

Thanks for your patience as we work to ensure we have the network capacity to serve you.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Network Upgrade Complete!

We completed a capacity upgrade today.  This increases our carrying capacity by 50% and will make substantial additional bandwidth available for our new fiber customers (Delta Gamma, Delta Chi, Chi Omega and Beta Theta Pi).

The original upgrade was scheduled for August 30, so I'd like to give a special thanks to Libby Purnell, Lamon Bibbs, Stephanie Smith and the team at Century Link for working with us to increase our capacity before the students return.



Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Scheduled Maintenance

Due to increased demand, we are upgrading our capacity on Thursday August 15, 2013.

Network wide outages are to be expected from 3:00 AM to 6:00 AM on this date.

This should improve network speeds during peak hours (9:00 PM -> Midnight).

Monday, July 1, 2013

Forbes Feature on Wicked Broadband

We've been mentioned in Forbes before, but here is a nice feature article about our fiber project:

Who Needs Google Fiber? A Kansas Engineer Sets Out To Give His Neighbors A Gigabit Network Of Their Own

Friday, June 28, 2013

Recent Intermittent Outages

We recently upgraded the firmware for both our tower sectors and our subscriber equipment.

The new firmware appears to have some bugs that affect stability and up-time.  This has caused several intermittent rate lockups and outages for both our business and residential customers.

The fault for this lies entirely with me.  I should have tested this upgrade more thoroughly before rolling it out network wide.

We are going to roll back upgrade overnight tonight at 1:30 AM.

My apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.  Those of you who have been with us for a while know that this is a-typical of our operation.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

A Little Trouble

We are having some intermittent throughput problems at our tower site at 2100 Harper.  We are working to identify the cause of the problem and resolve it.

Customers in SE Lawrence can expect some brief outages as we chase the issue.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Scheduled Maintenance (Redux)

We are adding another maintenance window tonight to get ready for the City.  The network will be offline from 0230 until we get the new routing scheme stable.

Needless to say, Saturday's attempt at this was a dismal failure.  The wind and lightning on Sunday didn't help matters.

Here are the scheduled maintenance windows for the next couple weeks as far as they stand now.

Tuesday May 21 @ 0230 - Routing changes to accommodate City of Lawrence.


Tuesday May 21 @ 0900 - The City is moving a fiber bundle at 15th & Iowa.  In theory this will not cause any outages, but be prepared for 1 hour or more of down time should the operation go south.

Sat June 1 @ 0300 - We will be making changes to our primary Internet route.  Service may be offline for several hours.

Friday, May 17, 2013

Scheduled Maintenance

We are opening a couple of maintenance windows in the next two weeks to accommodate construction and architecture adjustments.

Sat May 18 @ 0300 - We will be swapping out one of our core routers.  This will take the entire network down for around 15 Min.  This is being done to accommodate construction at 15th & Iowa.

Tuesday May 21 @ 0900 - The City is moving a fiber bundle at 15th & Iowa.  In theory this will not cause any outages, but be prepared for 1 hour or more of down time should the operation go south.

Sat June 1 @ 0300 - We will be making changes to our primary Internet route.  Service may be offline for several hours.






Sunday, May 5, 2013

2 TerraByte/Day Threshold Crossed

On Jan 19, 2012 we crossed the 1 TerraByte per day mark.  Today we crossed the 2 TerraByte per day mark.

Congrats to Dan and Lionell for their hard work expanding our capacity.

With the new fiber going in and a substantial expansion of our upstream on order we expect to cross 3 TB/day some time this fall.  Hang on, things are going to continue to speed up.

Monday, April 22, 2013

Gigabit Fiber Comes to Lawrence Kansas



For Immediate Release
April 22, 2013


Contact: Joshua Montgomery
Phone: (785) 813-1538
Email: joshua.montgomery@wickedbroadband.com



GIGABIT FIBER PRE-REGISTRATION PERIOD OPENS IN LAWRENCE KANSAS

Lawrence, Kan. – April 22, 2013 - Wicked Broadband is pleased to announce that residents of Lawrence can now pre-register to receive Wicked Fiber Gigabit Internet service.

This marks the first time that a company other than Google Inc has deployed a gigabit fiber network using a process similar to the one pioneered by Google Fiber.

Like Google, Wicked Broadband is campaigning to pre-register customers for gigabit fiber service.  The neighborhood with the highest percentage of pre-registrations on June 15, 2013 will be the first to receive the ultra high speed service ( 1,000 Megabits Per Second ).  Other neighborhoods will be deployed later provided they’ve reached the company’s pre-registration threshold.

Wicked Broadband’s current customers and newly pre-registered customers are already hosting yard signs, promoting pre-registration on social media and talking to neighbors about what gigabit fiber will mean to them.

Neighborhoods with gigabit service are able to access the Internet at 100 times the speed of the average American household.  Customers using the service can stream multiple HD video streams and download full length movies in minutes.  Since the service is bi-directional (i.e. upload speeds similar to its download speeds) customers are also able to upload photo albums, videos and other large files in the blink of an eye.

As the “TheStreet.com” pointed out today[*], one added advantage of this type of ultra-fast Internet service is its role in advancing a la carte television programming as the viewing norm.  Customers who subscribe to ultra-fast Internet will be able to cut the cord and cancel expensive subscription television services.

Wicked Broadband isn’t just borrowing plays from Google’s playbook.  The company is also innovating in several new and novel ways:

  1. Wicked Broadband is installing four fibers at each subscriber location, but the company is only using two.  The remaining capacity is available on a wholesale basis to competing carriers who might want to deliver Internet, telephone, television or other telecommunications services in the future.

  1. To encourage entrepreneurship and innovation, Wicked Broadband is offering a unique business service that combines dedicated bandwidth for essential applications with best effort bandwidth for Internet browsing and day-to-day access.

  1. Each subscriber’s home will host a battery back up good for 8 hours along with a Wicked Broadband controlled WiFi access point.  This combination allows for emergency network access during power outages and weather emergencies.

Wicked Fiber will be posting the first results from the first four weeks of the pre-registration period on May 15, 2013.  Results will be posted daily thereafter.  Tune in to http://wickedfiber.com to see which neighborhoods are leading the pack in the race to get the gig.

About Wicked Broadband:

Owned and operated by founders Kristie Adair and Joshua Montgomery, Wicked Broadband is the only locally owned Internet service provider in Lawrence, Kan. The company provides broadband Internet services using a variety of technologies including directional microwave, WiFi and fiber to the premises. Wicked Broadband is staffed by military veterans, active reservists and military spouses. For more information, visit http://wickedfiber.com

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Wicked Fiber Announcement Presentation

We are pleased to announce the launch of Wicked Fiber..


A whole new Internet experience

Wicked Fiber brings the Internet to you at speeds of over 100 times faster than a typical connection. With Wicked Fiber it takes just seconds to download music and movies. And since the up speed is the same as the down speed, you can upload videos and photos just as fast.
The secret to bringing these speeds to your neighborhood is the installation of fiber optic cable. Our Active Ethernet technology runs on single mode fiber and brings a stunning 1,000 Mpbs of service to your home or business. Read More......

Friday, April 5, 2013

New - Faster - Bandwidth Management Coming Soon

After several thoughtful e-mail exchanges with one of our customers we have decided to change our bandwidth management rules.

It has been a couple years since we updated our bandwidth management software (how I love you iptables and tc), so after our customer brought the subject up, we examined them and we feel they are too restrictive.

We will be developing a proposed strategy for managing egregious usage (i.e. you can't cap your connection 24x7 for $38.98/Mo, it will trash everyone's Internet), then we'll trot it out to our members and see what you think.

The goal is to make more bandwidth available to everyone.

Implantation is dependent on how much time I have to chase through the changes.  I'm going to aim for July 1, but please don't hold me to it.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Thanks to Everyone

Thanks to everyone who helped Kris win her school board race.  I am confident that she will do everyone proud by providing responsible leadership for USD 497.

Thank you for your support.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

School Board Candidate

One of Wicked's very own is running for Lawrence School Board. The election is April 2nd so we thought we would share her short bio. Remember, you have three votes for School Board and Kristie is only asking for one:



My name is Kristie Adair and I am a mother to two young girls as well as the wife to a 1st Lt. in the Kansas Air National Guard. My husband and I also own a small business called Wicked Broadband where I manage the company books. I was born and raised in TulsaOklahoma and worked for Tulsa Public Schools teaching English to first graders. We moved to Lawrence in 2005 and I took a position with USD 497 at East Heights in the Pre-K program. Those years in education were rewarding and I only left to finish my education. I have a history degree from Washburn University.  I am interested in serving on the Lawrence School Board because I believe education is the foundation to any good community. John Dewey said, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.

Check out my website, www.kristieadair.com or join me on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest