 tschmidtPremium,MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
kudos:4
 ·Fairpoint Commun..
 ·Hollis Hosting
| reply to Rob Froelich
Re: Municipal/Community Broadband said by Rob Froelich:
In the interest of not getting anyones hackles up, because I was going to post that I disagreed that technical issues are often bigger ones than financial, I won't post a big long contradiction to tschmidts previous post. I don't however disagree entirely, because I can think of many areas where broadband service via dsl and cable is readily available that FTTH from a local public or private overbuilder is both technically and financially unfeasible.
I didn't mean to trivialize the financial issues - especially since we have not progressed to that stage yet. Seeing the wide diversity of systems already deployed indicates it is financially feasible in a wide variety of situations.
The technical and business issues seem daunting I assume once we resolve that getting the money to build it will be relatively easy.
I think a brokerage service would be extremely valuable. In many cases Ronpin's turnkey approach would be very attractive since towns typically do not have the technical or manpower to manage the project. This allows the town to treat FTTH almost the same as a CATV franchise. |
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| reply to Rob Froelich
Rob,
I am so with you on this one. Why? I lived through the war in the Tri-Cities and organized the citizen group. Had there been such an organization of which you speak we would have been able to focus more on providing vital facts to our community instead of fund raising, getting the vote out, designing advertising, marketing, and proving the incumbents were lying to our communities in many mailings and advertisements we had no money to counter etc....
For those communities requiring a referendum (or vote)before bonds can be issued to provide broadband services I say this- you cannot possibly imagine what the "tornado" will be like from the incumbents until you have been through it. Fortunately I have lived through the "tornado" and now know what it takes to build citizen groups, market a Muni broadband campaign, know the tactics incumbents use to attack Munis, know how to counter attacks made by incumbents, how to talk to the press and have press conferences etc....I've said it before, in these instances where a campaign for votes is required the govt. cannot market itself. They need a citizen group. I can certainly provide the know-how for those Muni's how to set-up a citizen group or work with an existing citizen group as to what to expect etc....
I have heard from several Munis around the country who are very interested in this type of information-as they should be. BE PREPARED! (Build a basement before the tornado hits your community!). This fight needs to be taken to the streets-sort of. I have several, very specific ideas as to what a non-profit national organization could do for supporting citizen groups and campaigns to deploy broadband. If anyone is interested in forming such an organization please contact me via this board. I have already contacted several leading Muni broadband experts and have been encouraged to go ahead with my plan.
Annie Collins |
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| Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there some sort of organization for Muni's that run cable services that collectively bargains on behalf of them for the programming rights?
It would seem to me that this might be a place to jump off from in creating some kind of Municipal Broadband Support Organization.
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Click here to visit Tri-City Broadband |
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| Are you referring to the NCTC? They provide programming to about 1000 small cable co's around the country, not just municipal, but anyone wanting to start a cable co could join them and buy programming through their master contract.
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Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!! |
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