The Site > Old Forums > Technology Law & Politics > Municipal/Community Broadband

Municipal/Community Broadband

Good idea. The FTTH forum does get into the topic of deployment -- but details are spotty. If you happen to follow that forum you've noticed a good bit of performance talk with only some deployment talk.

I'm game to share what 'lil I've learned about deployment -- as a budding independent. I have learned that with the rare exception of SureWest, in Sacramento, FTTH is mostly a Municipality and Independent's game. Incumbents have little or no incentive to jump-in.

Municipalities have the luxury of floating bond-issues -- and amortizing a full-up "triple-play" FTTH system. Independents must pare away at cost -- and finally deliver data-only systems -- and only in close proximity to cheap Backbone providers. FTTH vendors are useless to independents -- their technology is just too expensive. Even worse, Municipalities can offer their systems at-cost. Independents can't do that.

So, even though its clear that the task of FTTH has fallen to municipalities -- very few have realized it. The opportunity for independents is immense -- but not because they can offer cheaper more robust systems. Ironic isn't it?

said by ronpin:

---

So, even though its clear that the task of FTTH has fallen to municipalities -- very few have realized it. The opportunity for independents is immense -- but not because they can offer cheaper more robust systems. Ironic isn't it?

---

quote:

---

On the other hand, perhaps 75 is exactly what you meant by 'very few'.

---

reply to tomsprat
On April 14 Milford NH Selectmen signed a memorandum of understanding to allow Merton Group perform a FTTH feasibility study.

Ideally many towns in the area will join together, the more towns the more cost effective the venture. Hopefully we will be able to learn from the experiences of other municipalities to make this happen.

First baby step on a long road to broadband nirvana.

Before you reach the broadband nirvana you will meet the incumbents who want to keep their customers at all costs.

As a member of the citizen group who pushed muni broadband in the Tri-Cities in IL. I can tell you that you will certainly have some hard work ahead of you. Be ready for one hell of a fight.

If you find you need help when you are further down the road please do not hesitate to ask for help and guidance from those who have experienced this type of fight. You may visit our citizen website at www.tricitybroadband.com and see some of the obstacles we faced. I am always available to answer any questions.

Thanks for your support. I was disappointed at the Tri-City result and the dirty tricks campaign waged by the incumbents. We watched that process and hope to learn from your experience.

We intend to fund the project using Revenue rather the General Obligation Bonds. Hopefully that will eliminate concern over taxpayer liability even though it will make the project more expensive.

The plan is to build a wholesale FTTH network, retail service is provided by competition service providers.

We intend to forgo wireline telephony. This bypasses a huge regulatory morass and reduces network deployment cost. The trend over the last few years has been a loss in the number of wired phone lines. We expect citizens to use either cellular of Voice over IP telephony.

More info is available on the town of Milford's website.
[text was edited by author 2003-04-17 12:33:42]

We are continuing our citizen group (Fiber For Our Future)and hope to see our efforts pay off next year by getting this on our ballots in April or Nov. 2004. If/When we do our job correctly we should see this pass the second time around! Nothing could've prepared us for the fight we got here. Sure, we knew there would be a fight, but not the dirty, nasty WAR that was waged on us.

Sounds like you will be doing things a little bit differently all the way around out there. I certainly wish you guys the best of luck. If you need background information to make any aspect of your job easier out there just let me know. I have a lot of information that may (or may not!)be of use to you that is not available on the website.

Annie, thanks for the offer. We are in the process of setting up a citizen's committee with neighboring towns.

Send me an email so we can contact you: tom@tschmidt.com. As soon as things stabilize on our side we can get together. We are very interested in both the technical/business aspects of the Tri-Cities project and the dirty tricks campaign waged by the incumbents.

My wife and I are originally from Chicago we were excited to see towns in Illinois leading the FTTH charge. Hopefully next year you will be able to win big.

reply to tomsprat
See »americancityandcounty.com/ar/gov···ndex.htm

reply to tomsprat
Great article for insight into the rural broadband problem.
As the [budding] Independent FTTH overbuilder in this thread I would only add the following. As an indie FTTH overbuilder I can go into any "cluster" of 1000-2000 homes -- semi-rural or suburban -- if there is source of cheap* backbone connectivity nearby*. I recruit, train, invest-in and franchise a local proprietor/builder/sys-admin.
(*nearby = less than 2 miles for initial cluster)
(*cheap = $3000-$5000 per 100mbs)

Muni's need not build the whole FTTH system -- just provide a cheap source of backbone connectivity so that independents can afford to step-in. Otherwise I must stay/start relatively close to urban office-parks where companies like Cogent,MFN, L3 are available. RBOC ATM backbones are off the cost scale for "boutique" broadband. I'm finding that many surburban ISD's and Muni's have wasted fiber bandwidth -- outside of school or office hours. Of course if Muni's really want to do the whole thing...good luck.

If you have the backbone -- I've got the plan.

reply to tomsprat
Please let me be more clear.

Municipalities can attract an independent FTTH overbuilder by offering to resell their existing backbone connectivity -- if any. A cheap source of a backbone connection is the one major show-stopper for an independent overbuilder. To date its usually meant no independent overbuilds outside of metro areas.

I'm finding that many school districts and city networks already have backbone quality fiber connections (OC3 + ). Its vastly under-utilized (i.e. wasted) outside of work-hours -- the very time that the local students and citizens are home.

The City could actually "give" the bandwidth away -- after hours -- and not be out one-cent! It makes fiscal sense to recoup some taxpayer money though since the independents who would hookup to it are a for-profit entity. The price must be similar to Cogent or MFN ($3-$5K per 100mbs).

If your town has OC3 or better connections for city or school use, its just obscene not to recoup some of the cost while enabling the citizens to benefit from the bandwidth from their residences.

reply to ronpin
ronpin, can you send me mail? I would like to discuss your deployment model.

ronpin, I'm at ebusinessmedia@hotmail.com

reply to tomsprat
Cable TV plan approved by TM (The Concord Journal, May '03): Concord MA plans to upgrade their light plant, so it can carry the cable system. The town's Communications Infrastructure Committee issued this Final Report in March '01. Interim reports and minutes from the committee can be found here.

[text was edited by author 2003-05-02 15:44:41]

reply to tomsprat
In Jan '03, Union City CA approved a study to determine feasibility of a muni cable system:
Union City studies whether to set up cable TV on its own

Today's Argus reports that Vice Mayor Ben Elias still considers muni a possibility:
Comcast may get canceled

Hey I hope I don't draw to many flames by drawing from a post I made on a dead thread in another forum.

I was thinking about the loss to the big guys in the tri-cities referenda, and while I think a significant part was played by it being an off year election where turnouts are abyssmally low, I was trying to think of a way to even the odds a bit when local grassroots groups are challenging the entrenched incumbents with plenty of money and other resources to spend on scare tactics.

What if there were some kind of central nationwide interest group to raise funds to help advocate local initiatives around the country be they local govt or some quasi-private local co-ops. This national group raise funds at a very high level, and then manage the funding of local political campaigns, media, lawsuits, etc so that smaller local players have a chance against these big guys. My thought is that whats needed is an organization structureed something like the NRA or ACLU - which are organized nationally but often act locally to lend support local issues, the difference being this organization's cause would be to support the proliferation of broadband. I know there are already groups lobbying at the higher levels of government to prevent laws against municipal broadband and such, that's not what I think this organization's mission would be. Those groups seem to be doing their job as well as anyone could hope given the current climate.

What I'm seeing is many communities are being left behind, and not getting broadband, but since they are scattered throughout the country their campaigns are largely homegrown and are limited in their ability to raise funds and campaign talent to their local community. What if all (or at least a bunch) of the concerned citizens in these places could agree to some common principles (like the universal availability of high speed internet or something like that, as well as some other things), and use those principles as a nationwide platform to solicit support from larger corporations, individuals, and other concerned parties. It seems to me that the current pace of broadband deployment is holding back many other industries like chipmakers, computer hardware manufacturers, software makers, service providers etc. If there was a national group that committed itself to exerting its resources to break down the barriers to municipal and other creative public and quasi-public means of getting the country wired, don't you think they'd be willing to wager relatively small amounts of money to get a potentially large increase in the numbers of users connected to broadband?

Am I crazy here or do you think people would be interested in supporting such an organization? I think if you got indviduals to contribute, plus even sort of neutrality and minor financial support from some interested corporate parties you could raise millions in a hurry. I guess what you need is a cadre of political fundraisers,campaigners, and a few lawyers like Jim Baller to make this happen. If this group already exists I haven't heard of them, maybe someone else knows.

Ok bear with me I'm thinking out loud here, and polling the readers of this forum for thoughts. What if grassroots organizations like the tricities group (FFOF)I think if they had a few more dollars, access to some fairly experienced professional media and ad people, and could have gotten their message out in a more eye-catching way like the big guys did you could have seen a very different result on 4/1/2003 in that referendum.

I quite strongly believe that local broadband initiatives will happen without the dedication, blood, sweat, and tears of dedicated folks like the people in FFOF (sorry for not mentioning other by name, these are people I've seen in action). I also believe that these concerned citizens shouldn't have to do it alone, and have their campaigns get totally overshadowed by the lies, misinformation and slick media employed by scared incumbents.

I'll yield the floor now, I'm anxious to hear others thoughts.

Rob
--
Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!!

Rob:

Off the subject here, a list of munis providing some sort of telco services can be found at »www.tricitybroadband.com/city_owned.htm

Peace

batageek,

you guys really have a great site there, I have continued to be very impressed by the amount of good information you have assembled there.
--
Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!!

reply to Rob Froelich
Rob, I’m in favor of anything that help municipalities deploy FTTH. The biggest issues is technical rather then financial. There are several organizations focused on this area:

Muni Consortium
Smart Communities
National Association of Telecommunication Officers and Advisors
Rural Broadband Coalition
FTTH Council