Geneva Fights 'Project Lightspeed'Defeated muni-fiber city now fighting AT&T ( old news - 10:46AM Tuesday Apr 18 2006) tags: Fiber · competition · municipalGeneva, Illinois was at the center of a debate over municipal broadband, when AT&T (then SBC) ran an expensive PR campaign to turn public opinion against two local plans to offer fiber and IPTV service (once with taxpayer funds, once without). Both Comcast and AT&T circulated push-polls, asking local residents questions such as "Should tax money be allowed to provide pornographic movies for residents?"Going before a neighboring city council to fight the project, SBC exec Kirk Brannock told locals fiber was an "unproven technology", insisted slower DSL was enough, and asked them "What are you going to do with twenty megabits?" (see video) Fast forward to 2006, and AT&T has started offering fiber to the home to a 3,000 home development just down the road, though locals only see 3-6Mbps, with no IPTV. "As we build out, fiber to the home will become standard," recently noted Virgil Pund, vice president and general manager of AT&T Illinois. Now ironically, while AT&T works to deploy VDSL & IPTV to other areas, Geneva stands in opposition. According to the Beacon News, the city has put a freeze on "Project Lightspeed" deployment, upset that AT&T is dodging the local franchising process (and associated fees). AT&T insists their network upgrades are not cable-technology, so older franchise agreements do not apply. AT&T has been suing municipalities who dispute this assessment, including several cities in California. "This is broadband-Internet-based," AT&T spokesman Rick Fox tells the Beacon. "It's not a cable service, so cable television franchise agreements don't apply."Update: Peter Collins, the Information Technologies Manager for Geneva, adds his thoughts to the comment section below.
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ronpin
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April 18th, @11:04AM
| Really? Is ATT really avoiding fees? -- or just the legal blackmail and extortion that Franchising Authorities have enjoyed thus far? Isn't it really about the free infrastructure and perks for City Gov.? -- all things that exact a "hidden tax" on you.
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marigolds
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| Re: Really? said by ronpin  :Is ATT really avoiding fees? -- or just the legal blackmail and extortion that Franchising Authorities have enjoyed thus far? Isn't it really about the free infrastructure and perks for City Gov.? -- all things that exact a "hidden tax on you. That's certainly part of it, but it is also about the city being able to control where and when AT&T places fiber in city right of ways and whether or not the city can use dark fiber (as well as whether or not the city is required to turn over conduit and dark fiber to AT&T).
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TK Junk Mail
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| Re: Really? said by marigolds : whether or not the city can use dark fiber (as well as whether or not the city is required to turn over conduit and dark fiber to AT&T). Dark fiber is generally owned by whoever laid it. And that is almost never the city. It could be an old Bell company, or a railroad, or a 3rd party speculator. And AT&T, or the city, or Verizon, or Comcast would have to lease(owners almost never sell the dark fiber) the dark fiber from the owner. Unless the city felt it could assert some eminent domain rights(but they would have to pay the owner), they have no say in the matter, except for work permits disrupting street traffic.
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marigolds
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| Re: Really? said by TK Junk Mail :said by marigolds : whether or not the city can use dark fiber (as well as whether or not the city is required to turn over conduit and dark fiber to AT&T). Dark fiber is generally owned by whoever laid it. And that is almost never the city. It could be an old Bell company, or a railroad, or a 3rd party speculator. And AT&T, or the city, or Verizon, or Comcast would have to lease(owners almost never sell the dark fiber) the dark fiber from the owner. Unless the city felt it could assert some eminent domain rights(but they would have to pay the owner), they have no say in the matter, except for work permits disrupting street traffic. That's not true at all in the midwest. Smaller midwest cities often own the vast majority of dark fiber in their boundaries (have to remember that many midwest cities owned their telephone and railroad companies and include their school districts as part of city government). As this is public property, other companies within the city can require access to the dark fiber (for fair compensation).
As well, if the ROW franchisee lays dark fiber, many franchise agreements give the city some level of access to that dark fiber (or even require the franchisee to lay dark fiber for the city) and requires the franchisee to give ownership of the conduit to the city.
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| Re: Really? "Smaller midwest cities" does not include those around here. Some have their own electric utility and most run their own water, but schools are a separate unit of government and none have their own telephone or railroad.
The bottom line here is money. They don't want to let go of sixty grand a year in antiquated franchise fees. Funny thing is that the money could still be coming in via a statewide agreement. AT&T is ass-backwards about a lot of things but this one isn't it. These suburbs are little fiefdoms and they often are rather sleazy about their money. They've been known to take each other to court over the right to annex farmland, and have no problem suing their own residents who dare to point out illegal acts.
This isn't about AT&T or Lightspeed. It's about what Comcast will do.
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marigolds
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| Re: Really? said by RadioDoc :"Smaller midwest cities" does not include those around here. Some have their own electric utility and most run their own water, but schools are a separate unit of government and none have their own telephone or railroad. Funny, it looks an awful lot to me like Geneva has a community school district.
You should do some research on community railroad. The Chicago area had extensive public railroads in the past (and still does have public railroad in most communities in the form of Metra). I am not talking about existing companies, but rather turn of the century companies that established public-private right of ways under which existing fiber is installed (same way old private railroad ROWs are used to install fiber now as Tkjunkmail referenced).
Water company and electric company rows are used in similar ways, and Geneva owns both of those too.
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| Re: Really? And Joliet has a railroad company:
Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Ry. Co., Track miles: 186.5, Locomotives: 58, Freight: 4,440, Miscellaneous: 7, Caboose: 12, Total: 4,517. Joliet, IL. [courtesy of The Pocket List of Railroad Officials, 2nd Quarter 1999]
And Metra service. | |
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RadioDoc
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| I'm not going to sit here and argue silly nonsense with you, since it's not the turn of the century. I happen to live in the area, along Metra in fact (BNSF owns the tracks and runs the commuter train under contract, by the way).
Yes, Geneva has its own water and electric. They're raising rates... Not many suburbs are in that boat.
A community unit school district is a unified grade-middle-high school district, not necessarily attached to the municipal government. They are definitely a separate taxing body. Many others around here are separate K-8 and High school districts.
None of it is relevant to this discussion.
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Geneva, IL | In Geneva's case, we actually own fiber - that we put in ourselves - as well as our electric utility. We are a little unique. | |
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marigolds
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| True, what is relevant is that this particular city does own a lot of dark fiber and AT&T will be putting fiber into the right of ways.
Thus the various articles about dark fiber access that would be in a franchise agreement are important in this specific case. Without such an agreement, there could be significant problems related to the dark fiber of the two entities.
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rudnicke
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clubs: | Sick I'm so sick of AT&T. I just really think it's a crappy company. | |
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pnh102
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| Idiots First this town wants to impose the costs of deploying a broadband network on its citizens. Now it wants to stop a private company from deploying such a network at no cost to its citizens. What is wrong with these people?
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| Re: Idiots said by pnh102 :First this town wants to impose the costs of deploying a broadband network on its citizens. Now it wants to stop a private company from deploying such a network at no cost to its citizens. What is wrong with these people? How do you figure "at no costs to its citizens"? Any use of public right of way (over, under or through it) has a cost to the citizens. | |
| | | Cod
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Greensboro, NC
| Re: Idiots said by claudeo :How do you figure "at no costs to its citizens"? Any use of public right of way (over, under or through it) has a cost to the citizens. What exactly is that cost? Not disputing your claim, but perhaps you could elaborate. | |
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marigolds
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| Re: Idiots said by Cod :said by claudeo :How do you figure "at no costs to its citizens"? Any use of public right of way (over, under or through it) has a cost to the citizens. What exactly is that cost? Not disputing your claim, but perhaps you could elaborate. Well, for one, since this is Illinois the city will be required to map out and digitize the location of all the fiber with no reimbursement (depends on the size of the city, but easily a six figure cost with about $20k/year recurring costs depending on how often AT&T adds infrastructure).
Also, the city will be required to provide (normally through a contractor) locating services on that fiber and be liable for any cuts from bad locates.
Lastly, the ROW that AT&T uses will not be available for other services and if the city wishes to place any services into that ROW (such as sewer and water upgrades) they will have to pay AT&T for that access.
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| Re: Idiots said by marigolds :said by Cod :said by claudeo :How do you figure "at no costs to its citizens"? Any use of public right of way (over, under or through it) has a cost to the citizens. What exactly is that cost? Not disputing your claim, but perhaps you could elaborate. Well, for one, since this is Illinois the city will be required to map out and digitize the location of all the fiber with no reimbursement (depends on the size of the city, but easily a six figure cost with about $20k/year recurring costs depending on how often AT&T adds infrastructure). Also, the city will be required to provide (normally through a contractor) locating services on that fiber and be liable for any cuts from bad locates. Lastly, the ROW that AT&T uses will not be available for other services and if the city wishes to place any services into that ROW (such as sewer and water upgrades) they will have to pay AT&T for that access. No offense, but I would take some issue with all of your points.
First, I believe it is the responsibility of the company placing the facilities to map the location of their facilities. If the city govt is keeping digital records, they should already have most of the cost built in to track where the public utilities are placed.
Second, I know it is the responsibility of the owner to locate their own facilities or contract a company to do it at their own expense. The owner(or contracted company) is also responsible for cuts due to bad locates.
Third, generally private utilities like phone,gas,electricty , and cable are put in at about 1'-5'. Water and sewer are usually placed much deeper.
I don't know if these points apply outside of Illinois, but since the story is about a city in Illinois, this should apply in this case. | |
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RadioDoc
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Chicago, IL | Re: Idiots Take issue with all of them. He's not really up to speed with this area.
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marigolds
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| said by gao16 : First, I believe it is the responsibility of the company placing the facilities to map the location of their facilities. If the city govt is keeping digital records, they should already have most of the cost built in to track where the public utilities are placed. Second, I know it is the responsibility of the owner to locate their own facilities or contract a company to do it at their own expense. The owner(or contracted company) is also responsible for cuts due to bad locates. Third, generally private utilities like phone,gas,electricty , and cable are put in at about 1'-5'. Water and sewer are usually placed much deeper. I don't know if these points apply outside of Illinois, but since the story is about a city in Illinois, this should apply in this case. All of that depends completely on the state.
In Illinois:
Cities are required by law to map private infastructures in ROWs (common for midwest states). I don't know of any state actually that places the responsibility on the private company beyond supplying paper records. Even if the city has a full GIS department, the cost is pretty significant for creating the layers (if they do not have a full GIS department or have to do the mapping in CAD, the cost gets much bigger). To take an example from Geneva, they recently contracted out the electric utility GIS conversion maintenance (not mapping, but conversion), and the cost of maintenance alone was $86k. They choose to contract act because the conversion would have required 100% of staff time for a full year.
»www.geneva.il.us/minutes/PDF_min···0822.pdf
Cities are required to operate or fund the locating service, not the utilities, but can collect franchise fees from utilities to fund this (but AT&T is refusing to pay franchise fees) (might only be true of Illinois, but in other midwest states cities are liable for cuts in their ROW if the locate is bad). Geneva might not be a big enough city to be required to provide a one-call service, yet since they have multiple municipal utilities (water, sewer, garbage, electric) they probably do have their own one-call service. Also, statewide one-call bears no liability at all in Illinois.
As you said, water and sewer are placed deeper than utilities like fiber lines. That means that the city will have to get access through that part of the ROW to do water and sewer upgrades.
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| Re: Idiots I will say that I am unsure of the obligations of cities in Illinois to map private infrastructure in the ROW, and the costs involved. Your example of costs incurred by the city of Geneva is flawed, however, because they own their own electric utility.
In Illinois a service named JULIE operates as a one call center for excavators to provide information to all utilities.
JULIE is a non-profit company that does not do their own locating, their costs are covered by the member utilities as are the costs to locate the facilities. JULIE covers the entire state except for the city of Chicago. You can find more detail at »www.illinois1call.com/about_us/c···file.htm. | |
| | | | | | | | BVT
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Mount Juliet, TN
| Re: Idiots Tennessee One Call is similar. There is a centralized service that directs the member utilities & underground ROW owners to mark their property themselves.
If they miss mark or do not show up, they shoulder the costs of any damages. They also have to bear the costs of marking their ROW.
A contractor can jerk the utilities around by calling in an emergency order. Then, for whatever reason, let their excavation permit lapse & go get another. Then all utilities have to remark the ROW. | |
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pnh102
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| said by claudeo :How do you figure "at no costs to its citizens"? Any use of public right of way (over, under or through it) has a cost to the citizens. Say AT&T deploys this service in your area but you decide you don't want to use it. Does AT&T send you a bill? Of course not.
As for using the right of way costing people money, if we followed your example, every time I crossed the sidewalk I should have to pay a tax. When any company comes and tears up a street to do any kind of work, its that company that has to pay to fix it, not the government.
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G_Poobah
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Schenectady, NY
| Re: Idiots for example : "every time I crossed the sidewalk I should have to pay a tax"
Well, DUH, that's exactly what AT&T wants. Remember, the whole '2-tier' internet. You can't use the crosswalk unless you pay AT&T. Of course, you could walk 8 blocks out of your way, and maybe get across the street, but AT&T has decided that you need to pay an AT&T 'crosswalk' tax to use 'their' crosswalk.
AT&T wants to install all these crosswalks, but they don't want to do it in a way that benefits the citizens. AT&T is allowed to put in a crosswalk, but it's using the towns streets to do it. And it's the citizens of the town that use the sidewalks, that may or may not use the crosswalk. The town has said "yes, you can put in a crosswalk, but no, you can't make all the laws involving that crosswalk, because we the citizens will determine whats the best public interest use of that crosswalk. It's not to say you can't make money with the crosswalk, it IS to say that you will live by the rules we make when 'operating' that crosswalk'.
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| Re: Idiots said by G_Poobah :Well, DUH, that's exactly what AT&T wants. Remember, the whole '2-tier' internet. You can't use the crosswalk unless you pay AT&T. Well yea... no one is saying AT&T is supposed to offer the service for free and no one is saying that subscriber fees won't be used to offset the costs of the rollout, but the major difference between what AT&T is doing and what muni people wanted to do is that AT&T is not expecting the people who aren't subscribing to the service to pay them for anything.
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marigolds
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| Re: Idiots said by pnh102 :The major difference between what AT&T is doing and what muni people wanted to do is that AT&T is not expecting the people who aren't subscribing to the service to pay them for anything. Um, muni utilities are built with revenue bonds, not GO bonds.
The muni people are not expecting the people who aren't subscribing to the service to pay them for anything either.
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| Re: Idiots said by marigolds :Um, muni utilities are built with revenue bonds, not GO bonds. The muni people are not expecting the people who aren't subscribing to the service to pay them for anything either. It doesn't matter how the government tries to pass them off as not costing people money, they do. EVERY municipally run broadband operation is either subsidized by taxes or by siphoning funds from some other municipal service. In the end, non-subscribers in such a model are are paying for service they do not use.
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| | | | | | | | axus
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Washington, DC | Re: Idiots Isn't this how school districts are funded? Not everyone has school-age children, and not everyone uses broadband, but they are worthwile things to spend for the benefit of society as a whole. | |
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pnh102
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| Re: Idiots said by axus :Isn't this how school districts are funded? Not everyone has school-age children, and not everyone uses broadband, but they are worthwile things to spend for the benefit of society as a whole. No one is debating that governments have to spend money on things. The debate is... why would you spend money on things that are being provided at no cost to the government (such as privately funded broadband) at the expense of other things that the private sector won't provide (universal education)?
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rahlquist
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| Re: Idiots While I see and hear your arguments I find it flawed to say that no municipal programs like broadband can work. The simple solution in my book would have been to let the city do its rollout, include a performance mandate to be met. If they couldnt provide the profits needed to be self sustaining then require them after X period of time to shut the network down and sell the fiber to the competition. If anyone at AT&T had half a brain in their head this is what they would encourage if its truly impossible fore muni broadband to make a profit.
Instead the minute they feel threatened they roll out the steamrollers and smash every little iota of competition in their path. No worries though because at the current rate AT&T will be on big fat #@$#@$ Ma Bell again soon and cities will have little choice other than to allow them to do whatever they want. Otherwise AT&T can simply offer to pull out and let the city handle their own infrastructure.
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| said by pnh102 :First this town wants to impose the costs of deploying a broadband network on its citizens. Now it wants to stop a private company from deploying such a network at no cost to its citizens. What is wrong with these people? quote:
Geneva, Illinois was at the center of a debate over municipal broadband, when AT&T (then SBC) ran an expensive PR campaign to turn public opinion against two local plans to offer fiber and IPTV service (once with taxpayer funds, once without)
Obviously, the local gov't/voters (or at least a portion of them) disagree with that assumption. | |
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L Supreme
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Lowell, MA | Re: Idiots That video was priceless. "What can you do with 20mbs?its like a race car with no track" lol. Their tune sure changed. | |
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See 22 replies to this post | |
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Brianv
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Keyser, WV | Freakin A! You go boys!  | |
| | Odie97
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Oak Creek, WI
| Re: Freakin A! It's when we all start saying "Freakin A .. were not taking this anymore" that things might start to change. The USA is so far behind the rest of the broadband world because our heads are in the sand, our politicians have all been paid off and not enough of us are taking steps to change.
Read the book "The World is Flat" ... scary sh_t
Try SKYPE ... very cool ... only thing is you need broadband for it to work. I do several international calls a week and pay "zero" ... every time I use it I smile for my international phone bill used to be well over $100 ... used to all go to AT&T ... now they get zip! | |
| AJ_CHICAGO
join:2002-12-10
Bartlett, IL
| Putting some things into context Not sure if this was ever posted in this forum. Thought it interesting that this city council had second thoughts, and the article puts into context why AT&T would gladly pay an agreed upon fee, but would not gladly eat the cost of long delays if forced into a franchise negotiation with every village. AT&T's suits against villages enacting delaying moritoriums and trying to label them a "cable company", subjecting them to cable regulations is exactly what I would want them to do if I were a stock holder. You can thank your congressmen for passing the Communications Act of 1996 and all of the other applicable law that paints a foggy picture of what company is a telephone company and what company is a cable company and what law applies. The suits are expected and deserved. There must be a ruling on whether AT&T needs to follow cable regulations and whether a village can take away AT&T's "right to extend their reach of services and upgrade their networks wherever they want to as long as it doesn't interfere with the public well-being." I am not a lawyer.
Mar 2, 2006
Lodi's council weighs AT&T fee
LODI - The Lodi City Council was scheduled Wednesday to rescind an ordinance it passed in December to require telecommunications giant AT&T to pay a franchise fee in order to deploy a new fiber-optic television service within city limits.
AT&T, formerly SBC Communications, is suing Lodi in San Joaquin County Superior Court over the Dec. 21 ordinance that would allow the phone company to bring fiber-optic Internet and phone service to Lodi, but would require a fee to deliver TV or video service.
Lodi City Attorney Steve Schwabauer recommended the ordinance, expecting the TV service to be regulated in the same manner as cable television companies, which are required to pay franchise fees to cities.
Lodi will collect about $233,000 from Comcast Cable in 2006.
On Wednesday, Schwabauer recommended the resolution be rescinded based on a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in January in a possibly related case.
In Sprint v. The City of La Canada Flintridge, the city attempted to deny the construction of wireless communication towers based on their aesthetic appearance.
The appeals court ruled that telephone companies, under a state public utilities code and the federal Telecommunications Act, have the right to extend their reach of services and upgrade their networks wherever they want to as long as it doesn't interfere with the public well-being.
"We need to take some time to think about the case and possibly revisit the ordinance," Schwabauer said.
AT&T's fiber-optic network, which it calls Project Lightspeed, is set to deploy test services in Lodi and other cities in California this year.
Lightspeed spokesman Gordon Diamond said the company is upgrading its service to provide competitive service and is doing so within its rights.
Diamond said AT&T is not opposed to paying cities up to 5 percent of gross revenues or providing public access channels and emergency services, but it needs to upgrade its network in a timely manner first.
"If we had to get a decision from every city and enter into a franchise agreement, it would take seven years," Diamond said.
The California Cable & Telecommunications Association did not return a phone call Wednesday, but its Web site, www.calcable.org, does present an argument for all TV services to be regulated the same. A Comcast spokeswoman declined to comment. | |
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