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Syracuse Community Broadband Initiative Changes Name
The folks in Syracuse who are organizing for a community-owned network have changed their name from the Syracuse Municipal Broadband Initiative to Syracuse Community Broadband Initiative:
Syracuse Community Broadband Initiative is the new name of the project. This was done because the use of "municipal" seemed to create a number of misconceptions in the minds of some institutional leaders. We used the term "municipal" generically to mean community-owned, and community ownership and control is what we wish to emphasize. Moreover, the form of business entity we favor is not a municipal authority but a 501(c)(12) utility service, a special type of consumer cooperative designed for, e.g., telecommunications, power, and water utilities (there are over 2,000 such utilities in the U.S. today). We hope the new name will better convey the nature of the project.
In talking to people and journalists, I have also found some confusion around the term "municipal." Some assume this means a muni network would only serve city departments, schools, libraries, etc.
Making a network a coop rather than being owned by the local government may help win some support from those who are hostile to the government owning anything, but there are downsides as well. Local governments have hundreds of years of experience building infrastructure and therefore have more financial tools available. Funding a new coop can be a daunting challenge.
We are very supportive of both approaches in our efforts to ensure broadband networks are structurally accountable to the communities they serve. As groups like these folks in Syracuse find solutions to these problems, we hope they will share their successes as well as lessons learned.
Axcess Ontario Middle Mile Network Wins Award
Three Counties in New York Building Southern Tier Network
Local governments, educational institutions, health care organizations and other commercial/industrial businesses also stand to benefit greatly, said Marcia Weber, Southern Tier Central executive director. Possible applications include “distance learning” between college campus branches and “telemedicine” between rural clinics and major hospitals, Weber said. … The project has been a top priority for Southern Tier Central in recent years. Weber, who called it “her passion,” was very disappointed when a major federal stimulus grant was narrowly missed last year. The counties’ share (Steuben, $1.23 million; Chemung, $790,000; Schuyler, $188,000) will fund a non-profit, to be called Southern Tier Network, that has been created to oversee and maintain the network.The project starts this year and expects to be finished by 2013. In 2014, the project is expected to become self-sustainable -- being funded by the fees it charges for access to the infrastructure. A fact sheet on the project [pdf] explains the governing structure:
Southern Tier Network is a new not-for-profit, local development corporation (LDC) established to own, build and manage a $12.2 million regional fiber optic backbone that will enable access to the highest speed broadband connectivity available in Chemung, Schuyler and Steuben Counties. Articles of Incorporation for Southern Tier Network have been filed with New York State, and a board of directors is in place, comprised of representatives from the three counties and other community stakeholders.
Connecting to Each Other: Upstate New York
In the ongoing effort to better network us network-type people, I wanted to note a site, Agrilan Rural Broadband Blog, that is working toward better rural broadband in upstate New York. I plan to put up short posts like this from time to time in hopes that people will get a better sense of who is near them (or has similar interests) for coalitions to advocate for broadband networks that are structurally accountable to communities.
Axcess Ontario Officially Complete
Ontario County was working on a publicly owned solution to Middle Mile long before the broadband stimulus approach made it popular. And now, before most of the stimulus money has been disbursed, they have completed an expanded version of their initial plan.
To date, Axcess Ontario has signed master agreements with eight telecom and broadband companies, including Verizon Wireless and national broadband provider tw telecom. Axcess Ontario is in continual discussions with other service providers, and is working aggressively on its next goal of luring a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service provider to Ontario County. With the fiber ring complete, businesses and municipalities now have access to faster and less expensive broadband, as well as bandwidth equal to global broadband leaders. Businesses can gain access to the ring simply by contacting any of the eight service providers that work with Axcess Ontario. Residents do not yet have access to faster and less expensive broadband, but they will once a FTTH service provider is secured. Axcess Ontario has been working to lure a FTTH provider for more than a year, including submitting an application on behalf of Ontario County, NY, to Google's "Fiber for Communities" ultrafast broadband project earlier this year. More than 1,100 communities nationwide responded to that project, and Google just announced last week that it was postponing its selection of winning communities to early 2011.
We will be interested to see if they can lure a FTTH provider -- though middle mile can lower the operating costs of providing such a service, the capital costs are not significantly changed. And with the robust middle mile already connecting community anchor institutions, a new FTTH provider cannot count on those high-revenue customers. We have seen this previously in Alberta, Canada. Axcess Ontario is an example of a good public-private partnership - as noted in Telecompetitor:
Nonprofit Fiber Helps Businesses in New York's Finger Lakes Region
We recently determined that our bandwidth was insufficient due to our growth and we went about the process of bringing in additional bandwidth. We contacted a local company, Finger Lakes Technologies Group and were pleasantly surprised to discover that the ring was now totally accessible to our location and after a few simple conversations, we committed to the installation of a local link to the new fiber optic network that was now approaching maturity.In short, this is yet another non-profit putting community needs first and building the infrastructure we need.
Ontario County Open Access Middle Mile Network In the News
Unlike numerous similar attempts in other parts of the country, Ontario County funded its network without dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Those who created Axcess Ontario were insistent the project shouldn't rely on the availability of outside funding, according to Edward Hemminger, CIO of Ontario County. The network's startup costs were $7.5 million, which the municipality generated through the Ontario County Office of Economic Development/Industrial Development Agency. The organization is a quasi-government agency created by the state to generate economic activity.
Cable Cos, Wi-Fi, and Limiting Competition
I, a Cablevision customer, can now use all of Time Warner’s and Comcast’s hot spots in these three states. If you have Time Warner’s Road Runner service at home, you’re now welcome to hop onto Cablevision’s Optimum hot spots wherever you find them, or Comcast’s Xfinity hot spots. And so on. It’s as though all three companies have merged for the purpose of accommodating your Wi-Fi gadget, hugely multiplying the number of hot spots that are available to you. The companies call this kind of partnership “the first of many.” Now, I think this development is fantastic. It hits me where I live. It’s free. It’s fast and reliable. I love it.He goes on to ask, what's in it for them? Apparently, David Pogue has little understanding of how dominant firms work together to cement their power and limit competition. He then put up a post with an answer from an insider:
“David, widely available WiFi makes our service better, and more useful and valuable,” he wrote. “And we don’t compete directly with TWC or Comcast for high-speed Internet customers; we compete with phone companies that offer a wide array of services, including data plans over increasingly over-burdened and sluggish cellular networks for an extra $60 per month."Bingo. Big cable companies do not compete with each other - one suspects these companies have tacitly divided the national cable market with an understanding that they will not overbuild each other. The barriers to entering the cable/broadband market are already substantial: any new network requires a massive upfront capital expenditure. This Wi-Fi partnership with cable incumbents makes that barrier even larger. Let's imagine that a city wants to build a publicly owned network that will compete with one of these companies. Customers of the private incumbent have Wi-Fi access all over the place, across three states - and probably more to come. The incumbent gets the benefit of investments from other cable cos in the partnership. Any guesses on whether the publicly owned network will be invited to join that partnership?
Verizon Against the Public Interest
Roundup: Lafayette, Syracuse, Incumbent Bailout, and MAIN
- Lafayette's groundbreaking network is exciting the folks at Governing.com - they say, "The Future of the Internet is in Lafayette, Louisiana."
Ellen Perlman hints are future coverage of the network as well:
To put it in perspective, that's 10 times faster than already very fast Internet. And more than 100 times faster than the Internet "starter" plan that, for example, Verizon is offering. Basically, Lafayette will have a city Intranet, the way universities and technology companies do. So residents will have a very fast connection within the city-parish "campus." Critics wonder why residents need such speeds and why the city had to build its own network. An August story in Governing will get into detail about that.
- Green Party Candidate for the Syracuse City Council speaks out on the need for a publicly owned fiber network in the city:
Hundreds of US cities have municipal ownership of their broadband utilities and their customers pay 30% less on average for cable TV, internet, and phone. Time Warner’s cable franchise is up for renewal. Now is the time to municipalize our broadband utility for (1) lower fees, (2) community control of available channels (from Democracy Now to the NFL Network), (3) quality Public Access, Education, and Government (PEG) programming, (4) universal access to high-speed internet, and (5) up-to-date public access video and web-based media creation centers. Every Syracuse should have first-class, affordable access to internet, cable, and phone communications. The Syracuse economy needs first-rate affordable broadband to progress. The profits now exported to Time-Warner can stay in the community for our own benefit through municipal cable.
Advocates for such a fiber network in Syracuse have a website loaded with resources.