We operate in Mendocino county and boarder Humboldt county, and I've
been listening to this bullshit for years. Let me tell you straight up -
from the mouth of someone actually doing it - the 'problem' is not lack
of acces to fiber. The problem only is access to sufficient capital in
order to deploy the network in the first place. There is an expanded
plan that would get us all the way there, that does NOT include coddling
att/verizon and rewarding them for their willfull negligence in the
maintnence of their networks in these parts. Gregg Foster talks about
his perception for the need for redundancy in terms of fiber. But, boys
and girls, Verizon is not connected to fiber in these areas! And it
doesn't take natural disasters to wipe out Verizon's network, just
normal radio fade due to rain, ice and snow will do it. His comments
really underscore the complete lack of understanding around this whole
issue in our areas here. Folks, Verizon GOES DOWN on a regular basis,
all services dead, SS7 is unavailable and so there's no intra-city or
long distance calling. This is unacceptable for a monopoly provider,
that has all the money, towers, and liscenses necessary to make the
problem go away. The real problem was/is simple greed, which combined
with negligence, resulted in a crappy network that routinely goes down
and cannot scale to deliver new advanced services. And until I hung my
nuts out there in the wind and built my own backhauls into those
regions, we were leasing T1 and at the mercy of verizon's regular
network outages. But now that backhaul network does exist and we
continue working when verizon is down. And businesses notice and are
coming to me to get away from Verizon.
These fat and lazy monopolies, aided by the over staffed and
underwhelming vision and drive of the redwood technology consortium, may
have convinced the governator that broadband is just so impossible to do
without committees and meetings and studies and big concessions and
soforth. But I tell you what, I have been successfully bringing
broadband to these very rural communities now for almost 5 years, we
have a kick ass product and a proven track record of success, and we
didn't really need anything more than what us two guys already had -
some brains, some brawn, and the willingness to just get up off our
butts and go do it.
And what irks me the most, is that despite this proven track record, we
will never ever get the funding to really implement the plan, whereas
these groups and the monopolies can pull millions of dollars out of
public or private funds and then turn right around and say 'we'll look
into it...', AND NEVER ACTUALLY DELIVER ANYTHING.
I have fiber in my noc today with oc12 and 10 more pairs left over for
future use. I have a cooled server room with enough hardware to support
thousands of more users. I have a broadband distribution network hitting
large areas right now today, and I have an experienced installation
crew. I'm looking for money - not excuses - and I'll do this job 100x
better than I have done before, and 10000x better than any monopoly
telcom would ever dream of doing it. My phone # is online, I'm not that
hard to find.
<phew!>
Mike-
Dawn DiPietro wrote:
Ann Johnson-Stromberg/The Times-Standard
Article Launched:12/02/2006 04:31:50 AM PST
A month ago Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ended the public battle with
Caltrans over fee barriers to broadband deployment and now the North
Coast's position on the front lines of the fight are paying off.
The governor has appointed 21 people to his broadband task force and the
only two appointees from rural areas in California were from Humboldt
County. Humboldt State University President Rollin Richmond and Humboldt
Area Foundation Executive Director Peter Pennekamp were on this list
released by the governor's office late Thursday.
The task force was created to get public and private stakeholders in
broadband to collaborate on how to maximize and further broadband access
and deployment in California. Pennekamp said that he considers this an
incredible opportunity for the North Coast and was honored to be chosen.
”When they called me, personally I was slightly uncomfortable because
there are probably 100 people more up to speed on this,” he said. “But I
think the main point is that the issues that we face on the North Coast
are the issues that rural California as a whole faces.”
After nearly a three-year fight with Caltrans over fees to lay a fiber
optic line along a 21-mile stretch
of public roads between Pepperwood and Miranda, SBC (now AT&T) paid $1.4
million in fees and completed construction in November of 2003. In
April, the Times-Standard informed readers that Caltrans was in the
process raising those fees, practically stomping on any hopes that the
North Coast would be able to finance another project to bring in a
redundant fiber optic connection. Schwarzenegger put a halt to the
excessive right-of-way fees last month and announced a new cost-based
fee structure. State officials said that the hope is that by building up
broadband infrastructure, economic benefits will follow.
Gregg Foster, executive director of the Redwood Region Economic
Development Commission and board president for the Redwood Technology
Consortium, said that Humboldt representation on the task force is a
welcome development.
”I think we have some unique issues here that need to be addressed at a
state level, in particular the need for redundancy, sort of a more
robust network than our single fiber optic line,” Foster said,
explaining that he is concerned about what a natural disaster could do
to the region in terms of cutting off communications access. “I am
pleased we have two people appointed from here because we want to make
sure that issue is considered.”
Richmond was unavailable for comment by deadline.
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