John Kindrick, product manager for WinFirst, discussed the company, where the company was and where it is headed and the technology and services it offered. Kindrick brought company literature about the company, (now known as SureWest Broadband), including answers to frequently asked questions regarding the SureWest acquisition, current service areas, and current service options. WinFirst is the only company in Northern California offering fiber-optic connectivity to residential customers.
[Note: See Milt Hull's President's Thoughts column for more details on WinFirst. -Ed.]
WinFirst provides three services: telephone (local and long distance), digital cable television, and Internet access. The basic service chosen by most people runs $99.95.
The phone service comes with all the whistles and bells as standard—caller ID and blocking, call waiting, speed dialing, 3-way conference, etc., at far below their competitor's cost. Long distance service includes 100 free minutes per month, six cents/min after that. You must use a number provided by WinFirst (can't keep your current number, despite the monthly fee you're paying for number portability) and additional numbers are available at reduced rates.
The Digital Choice cable TV package, the least expensive TV choice at $38.70/mo, comes with all local channels, over 80 digital channels— the lineup is the same as with other cable TV service providers basic package—plus 40 additional channels not found on any other basic lineup. This package also includes 45 channels of DMX music.
The technology used by WinFirst permits TV viewers to have a "home page," an onscreen menu and navigation tool. The page leads the viewer to secondary pages that have 12 simultaneous picture-in-picture views of live video streams.
The viewer also has an on-demand "video store." Over 400 titles are available—new releases at $3.99 and current releases at $1.00 in all genres— available 24 hours/7 days, playable at your command. Unlike other pay-per-view systems where the movie starts at a given time and runs straight through, WinFirst's technology allows the viewer to pause, rewind, bookmark, and restart the movie again and again within a 24-hour period.
WinFirst's high-speed fiber-optic Internet service, WinSpeed, is rated at up to 10 Mbit/sec burstable, upload and download, and is unmetered— no throttling, no limits. IP addresses are dynamic but static numbers are available at extra cost. Each service account has six e-mail addresses and 10 MB of personal Web space at $49.95/month with free installation (no annual contract required and WinFirst will run CAT5 cable from the home wiring junction box to the office where the computer is located, if necessary, at no additional cost).
Downloading a five-minute movie trailer takes five seconds. Downloading by dial-up would be 18 minutes, cable modem would be 4 minutes, and DSL would be 6 minutes. Eric Clapton's life-time of work can be retrieved in 37 seconds.
Be sure to visit their Web site for current coverage areas.
Q: Is the service routable?
A: The service is based on a designated MAC address. If you were to install a router that can spoof a network card's MAC address, then your home LAN can share the service.
Q: Is the service shared with my neighbors? Will I experience a slow-down?
A: Yes, but you won't see it happen. In fact, Milt's DHCP server was assigning IP addresses to his entire neighborhood. Milt installed a firewall to remedy that situation. In each neighborhood, a "cajun" server is connected to more bandwidth to the company's head-end than what the combined residences connected to that server can suck out of it. Each residence has a dedicated fiber line to this server. The latest measurements put average throughput at 8.5 Mbit/second, which takes into account all Internet traffic conditions and constrictions. You will not see a drop in performance during evening prime-time hours. WinFirst can supply all of the Greater Sacramento Area, even taking into account projected growth, for a long time before any question of bottlenecks need be dealt with.
Q: Do I need any additional or different equipment?
A: No. A converter switches the digital signal to analog so that your current telephones and computer networking equipment will work fine. We give you a digital cable box similar to what you might already be used to. If you need a network card in your computer, we'll install that. Some of the very old telephones might not work, but that's rare. Some of the older homes have inadequate RG-59 cable that will need to be replaced.
Q: Will the cable TV converter work with TIVO?
A: Not yet. TIVO does not (yet) have the infrared protocol necessary to control the WinFirst cable converter box.
Q: When will my area of Sacramento get wired?
A: Details change daily but SureWest is projecting the entire Sacramento region to be wired by 2006.
