Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
lessons learned
Content tagged with "lessons learned"
New Handbook on Next Generation Connectivity From Gig.U
Gig.U, a collaboration of more than 30 universities across the country has just released The Next Generation Network Connectivity Handbook: A guide for Community Leaders Seeking Affordable, Abundant Bandwidth. The handbook, published in association with the Benton Foundation, is available as a PDF online.
One of the authors, Blair Levin, has been a guest several times on the Community Broadband Bits podcast, last visiting in January 2015 to weigh in on public vs. private ownership of broadband networks. As many of our readers know, Levin was one of the primary authors of the FCC National Broadband Plan in 2010.
In a PCWorld article about the report, Levin commented on funding and on local control:
“Nearly every community we worked with saw public money as a last resort, when no other options for next generation networks were available,” he said. “But our group view was that the decision should be made by the local community.”
The report underscores the importance of local decision making authority, whether each community chooses to go with a municipally owned model, a public private partnership, or some other strategy.
Levin and his co-author Denise Linn also address issues of preparation, assessment, early steps, things to remember when developing partnerships, funding issues, and challenges to expect. They assemble an impressive list of resources that any group, agency, or local government can use to move ahead.
Add this to your library.
The Next Generation Connectivity Handbook: A Guide For Community Leaders Seeking Affordable, Abundant Bandwidth
Gig.U, a collaboration of more than 30 universities across the country has just released The Next Generation Network Connectivity Handbook: A guide for Community Leaders Seeking Affordable, Abundant Bandwidth. The handbook was published in association with the Benton Foundation.
The report underscores the importance of local decision making authority, whether each community chooses to go with a municipally owned model, a public private partnership, or some other strategy.
Blair Levin and Denise Linn also address issues of preparation, assessment, early steps, things to remember when developing partnerships, funding issues, and challenges to expect. They assemble an impressive list of resources that any group, agency, or local government can use to move ahead.
LUS Fiber "Ask Me Anything" July 14th 1:30 p.m. CDT
The community of Lafayette voted 10 years ago this month to create its own municipal FTTH network. In doing so, they created a standard that other communities have tried to emulate. On Tuesday, July 14th at 1:30 p.m. CDT, City-Parish President Joey Durel and LUS Fiber Director Terry Huval will host a Reddit Ask Me Anything about the initiative.
This is a great opportunity to learn about the community's vision, mobilization efforts, and the way it overcame challenges to create a highly successful municipal fiber network.
Prepare your questions and join the conversation at http://reddit.com/r/iama
Here is your video invitation from Terry Huval:
Lessons Learned from Community Outreach in Gilberts, Illinois
Earlier this year, we reported on the Village of Gilberts, Illinois, where voters defeated a measure to approve general obligation bonds for a municipal network project. Our story got the attention of Bill Beith, Assistant Village Administrator from Gilberts who contacted us to talk about the project and provide detail on their efforts to educate the voters prior to the election.
The project would have raised property taxes 1.8 percent or approximately $150 per year on a property with a $250,000 market value. Even though the network would have been a publicly owned asset, Beith believes the idea of any new taxes defeated the measure. As the community considered the project, voters stated repeatedly that Comcast or one of the other incumbents should pay for deployment of infrastructure. Unfortunately, the Village had approached incumbents who had no interest in building in Gilberts. They felt the investment would not pay off in a community that is home to about 6,800 people.
The proposed project was to be deployed along side a private fiber network. When the developer of a new housing development learned that fiber significantly increases the value of real estate, he chose to include it to each new home. He also chose to bring the network to a nearby school along with several public safety and municipal facilities at no charge to the Village.
The project on which voters denied funding would have extended fiber to the rest of the community. According to Beith, the developer still plans to continue his fiber build in an incremental fashion. In addition to the homes in the new housing development, he will focus on commercial connectivity in the Village of Gilberts.
Even though the measure failed in April, the Village will continue to explore ways to work with the developer. According to Beith, he and other advocates for improving connectivity in Gilberts walked away with some valuable lessons for the future.
The Challenge of Open Access - Lessons Learned Part III
Seattle, Gigabit Squared, the Challenge of Private Sector Cable Competition
Big City Community Networks: Lessons from Seattle and Gigabit Squared
Fibrant Network Gains Subscribers Despite Technical Difficulties
As we emphasize time and time again, communities build their own networks because they have to, not because they want to. North Carolina's Fibrant network in Salisbury is no exception and a recent technical headache is a reminder that no network is built without problems developing.
Fortunately, Salisbury's strong reputation for providing great, local customer service is helping as it deals with service interruptions that are the fault of the gear that runs the network.
According to an Emily Ford article in the Salisbury Post, there have been several outages this month. While some outages are attributed to unreliable access gear, the city is still investigating to determine what other factors continue to cause problems. The network currently serves 2,160 subscribers, with 220 of them being commercial customers.
A November 9th Post article on an earlier outage, noted the problem with faulty equipment. A statement from Fibrant General Manager Mike Jury also attributed the outage to a lack of redundancy, which has since been repaired.
While Zhone has been the access gear supplier, Fibrant is now testing Calix equipment. Calix has long been a favored choice among community networks and has a very solid reputation. This is a reminder to communities of the importance of due diligence in choosing vendors -- make sure to talk to other community networks about their experiences with vendors. All equipment is subject to failure, so a key question should be how quickly different vendors respond with solutions to problems.
This technical problem comes on the heels of political problems as Salisbury has been targeted by Time Warner Cable for attacks. Readers will recall how Time Warner Cable successfully pushed the Legislature to pass H129 in 2011, a bill to neutralize publicly owned networks.
Even though there have been recent outages, more people continue to take the service than to drop it. From the Ford article:
The week before the outage, 23 new subscribers signed up.
Lafayette Dealing with Expected Headaches
Competitors will pay less for programming than you do, and in turn play hard ball by lowering rates for customers. Good luck keeping up with technological advances, expansion needs and growth costs; it's a risky proposition for a public entity used to maintaining rather than adapting. Your opportunities will be limited because you can't provide services outside the city limits. You'll be criticized for offering programming such as adult movies, and you'll be told you really should be focusing on your core business: running power, water and wastewater plants.Terry Huval delivered that message in 2000, long before Lafayette committed to building their community fiber network -- a network that delivers some of the fastest speeds in the nation at the lowest rates and has already delivered hundreds of jobs. Nonetheless, LUS Fiber is behind the take rate goals they had set in the business plan. The expenses are higher than forecast because Lafayette was unfairly denied entry to a coop that secures lowers rates for television contracts for members. The only discernible reason for rejecting Lafayette is that Cox joined the coop after Lafayette committed to building its network. There is little doubt that Cox was influential in denying Lafayette's application, likely increasing LUS Fiber expenses for offering cable channels by more than 20%. This is just one of the many ways that the telecommunications market is rigged to benefit incumbents at the expense of all of us -- residents and small businesses alike. We will not have real choices in competition until government policy treats telecom like the essential infrastructure it is. Mike Stagg, a long time supporter of the network is quoted in the article, challenging LUS Fiber to improve its marketing:
Can they do better? Probably so. Part of it is the fact that, just from a mindset standpoint, LUS is a utility and utilities generally do not compete," Stagg said.
Granbury, Texas, Deploys City Owned Wireless Network
In the place where “Texas history lives,” the City of Granbury followed a fellow Texas city in delivering a Tropos wifi system that covers all 10 square miles of the city. Less than a decade ago, Granbury had no functional IT department and after hurdles with a private public partnership, established a functional and successful publicly-owned wireless network. Initially created to support city functions and mobile police, the network is available to the public, elevating the rural town outside of Fort Worth to the mobile age.
When Granbury hired IT Director Tony Tull in 2003, the technology capabilities of the city were dire: no staff, a budget of $6,000, and only two buildings with access. Tull quickly brought city and council officials on-board to his ambitious technology plan to deploy wireless WAN to all city buildings in partnership with their existing ISP, Texas-based Frontier Broadband (now acquired by KeyOn). The initial needs were to equip city personnel with mobile access which focused on police officers, firefighters, and city inspectors.
Other goals included general public and tourist broadband access, reading utility meters, perform live web casts, and connect to nearby governmental networks. After the City received a Homeland Security grant, $70,000 was earmarked to outfit over 10 police vehicles with wireless laptops. In 2004 Tull attended the Public Technology Institute’s National Summit for Local Governments in Corpus Christi where he reviewed the city’s 147 square mile wireless network by Tropos. Convinced the technology was right, Granbury deployed a test run of 40 routers across half the city and eventually 100 more to cover the roughly 10 square miles.