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Community Broadband Bits 4 - Kevin Kryzda, CIO of Martin County, Florida
Provo's Publicly Owned Broadband Network Attracts 98 Jobs
Clovis-based Secure Customer Relations, Inc., plans to move its entire operation to Provo, Utah this month, resulting in the loss of 98 jobs. ... Secure Customer Relations operates a call center that specializes in appointment setting, client prospecting and other functions on behalf of the insurance industry. Overall, the cost of operations in Provo would be a savings over Clovis, Carter said, including labor costs. He added that Clovis does not have the same level of fiber optic infrastructure as Provo.Interestingly, Clovis is slated to get better access to broadband as part of the stimulus-funded Central Valley Next-Generation Broadband Infrastructure Project. Unfortunately, that is one of them any middle mile projects that will connect community anchors but not offer any immediate benefits to local businesses and residents. It is a middle mile project, not a last-mile project that would build a fiber-optic access network like Provo has connecting everyone. This is not to demean the middle-mile project, but such things are often misunderstood (sometimes due to deliberate obfuscations by those promoting them). And speaking of obfuscation, the Economic Development Corporation of Utah apparently wants the Utah state government to take credit for this company moving to Provo.
"We move a lot of data and need high capacity," CEO Carter Beck told the Journal last week. His company specializes in appointment setting, client prospecting and other functions on behalf of the insurance industry. The relocation of companies like Secure Customer Relations, Inc.
Greenacres Florida Connects to Palm Beach County Network
In June, the city council of Greenacres, Florida, voted to invest $42,550 to connect to Palm Beach County's fiber-optic network. Greenacres joins a growing list of Palm Beach County municipalities who have data-transmission agreements with the County. Other towns include Palm Beach Gardens, Jupiter, Juno Beach, West Palm Beach, Delray Beach and Riviera Beach.
Willie Howard of the Palm Beach Post covered the Greenacres story earlier this month:
Instead of paying AT&T and Comcast $33,360 annually for transmission lines, the city will pay Palm Beach County $8,400 annually.
"It's basically cost sharing as opposed to revenue generating," said Mike Butler, director of network services for Palm Beach County. "We're not in it to make money."
Thomas Hughes, Finance Director of Greenacres, estimates the savings to the City will amount to $124,800 over five years.
In addition to saving money, Greenacres will have the advantage of increased speed. Currently, AT&T and Comcast provide a 1.5 Mbps connections. The new arrangement will provide 10 Mbps from the County - six times faster at a little more than one third the cost. The City can also feel good about keeping the dollars local and will avoid the uncertainty in dealing with remote and giant AT&T or Comcast.
Palm Beach County sits just south of Martin County, where a municipal network saves the County and school district significant dollars for connectivity. You can download our recent case study on Martin County, Florida Fiber: How Martin County Saves Big with Gigabit Network, to learn more about that network.
Seattle's Short History of and Bleak Future for Community Broadband
TCI wouldn’t go down easily, of course. For the next year, as the City built out its system, the cable giant took advantage of the utility’s biggest weakness: All of its plans, from the kind of equipment it would buy to its construction schedule, were public information. So when Tacoma Power put in an order with its supplier for, say, coaxial cable, it found that TCI had already bought every foot of it. “But we started in one area of town and luckily we were able to get just enough material,” says Pat Bacon, Click’s technical operations manager. “We just inched our way through it and, before you knew it, we were a presence.” By July 1998, Click had its first cable subscriber, and the first broadband Internet user signed on in December 1999.A substantial portion of the article is devoted to the dynamics around open access between the utility and independent providers -- an important read for anyone considering the open access approach. Halverson did his homework on this article and I think he got it mostly right. I think the FiOS-wired suburbs do present a larger threat to Seattle than suggested, but it certainly does not compare to the approaching-existential crisis faced by Tacoma fifteen years ago. I wish I could disagree with his conclusion that Seattle is unlikely to get a community fiber network but unless the community rises up to demand it, elected officials are unlikely to see any benefit to making such a long term investment.
Fiber Optic ConnectArlington Moving Forward in Virginia
Arlington County, Virginia is taking advantage of a series of planned projects to create their own fiber optic network, ConnectArlington. The County is moving into phase II of its three part plan to improve connectivity with a publicly owned fiber network.
Some creative thinking and inter-agency collaboration seem to be the keys to success in Arlington. Both the County and the Arlington Public Schools will own the new asset. Additionally, the network will improve the County Public Safety network. Back in March, Tanya Roscola reported on the planing and benefits of the ConnectArlington in Government Technology.
Arlington County's cable franchise agreement with Comcast is up for renewal in 2013. As part of that agreement, the schools and county facilities have been connected to each other at no cost to the County. Even though there are still active negotiations, the ConnectArlington website notes that the outcome is uncertain. The County does not know if the new agreement will include the same arrangement. Local leaders are not waiting to find out, citing need in the community and recent opportunities that reduce installation costs.
Other communities, from Palo Alto in California to Martin County in Florida, have found Comcast pushing unreasonable prices for services in franchise negotiations. Smart communities have invested in their own networks rather than continue depending on Comcast.
Like schools all around the country, Arlington increasingly relies on high-capacity networks for day-to-day functions both in and out of the classroom. Digital textbooks, tablets, and online testing enhance the educational adventure, but require more and more bandwidth and connectivity. From the article:
Through ConnectArlington, Arlington Public Schools will be able to take advantage of Internet2 for distance learning. At no cost, students will be able to communicate with teachers and access electronic textbooks and online courses from wireless hot spots.
Speedtests, SamKnows, and Fantasy vs. Reality at the FCC
SamKnows has been awarded a ground breaking contract by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to begin a new project researching and collecting data on American fixed-line broadband speeds delivered by Internet Service Providers (ISP's) - until now, something that has never been undertaken in the USA. The project will see SamKnows recruit a team of Broadband Community members who will, by adding a small 'White Box'’ to their home internet set up, automatically monitor their own connection speeds throughout the period of the project.Unfortunately, SamKnows appears to be documenting fantasy, not reality. To explain, let's start with a question Steve Gibson recently answered on his amazing netcast, Security Now (available via the TWiT network). A listener asked why he gets such large variation in repeated visits to Speedtest.net. Steve answers the question as an engineer with a technical explanation involving the TCP/IP protocol and dropped packets. But he missed the much larger issue. Packets are dropped because the "pipes" are massively oversubscribed at various places within the network (from the wires outside you house to those closer to the central office or head end). What this means is that the cable company (and DSL company, to a lesser extent) takes 100Mbps of capacity and sells hundreds of people 20Mbps or 30 Mbps or whatever. Hence the "up to" hedge in their advertisements. The actual capacity you have available to you depends on what your neighbors (cable) or others in the network (DSL) are doing. Dropped packets in TCP result often result from the congestion of high oversubscription ratios. This gets us into why Speedtest.net and Sam Knows deliver fantasy numbers.
Farmington, New Mexico Exploring Fiber Options
Farmington, New Mexico, currently has 80 miles of fiber and has decided to consider the best way to get the most out of the investment. The City uses the fiber network strictly for its Farmington Electric Utility System but sees potential in maximizing the power of the unused strands. Earlier this year, they commissioned a study from Elert & Associates to investigate the technical possibilities. Front Range Consulting reviewed the financial pros and cons.
In February, both experts provided options to the City Council. While offering triple play services is a possibility, both firms recommended leasing available fiber to existing ISPs instead. Expanding to a triple play offering would require a $100 million investment to connect the 32,000 current Farmington Electric Utility System's customers.
Dick Treich, from Front Range Consulting, commented on the pushback to expect from Comcast and CenturyLink, if the City decided to pursue triple play retail services. From a February Farmington Daily Times article (this article is archived and available for purchase):
"They won't sit still for that," Treich said. "First they will challenge the legality of whether you can get into that option, possibly tying you down in court for a long time. They will also start the whole argument of public money being used for starting a private business. It would be a two-pronged attack."
The City Council also pondered the option of leasing fiber, which would require a $1.5 million infrastructure investment. Also from the article:
"Five companies have expressed interest," said Assistant City Manager Bob Campbell. "Assuming that those companies would each use approximately 10 miles of fiber, (they) would provide $170,000 annually leasing dark fiber."
Update:
Bob Campbell, Acting Director of the General Services Department of Farmington, emailed us this update: