Our state has a rural connectivity program that is part of our state's utility commission and is preparing for the potential for federal funding. They were interested in mapping, data, and projects. They asked ISPs in the state for our suggestions...
Here's what I sent in: The ISPs around the nation are following the topic with interest and seeing how it sorts out. Personally, I'd been hoping for the 10-20% federal tax "rebate" for new broadband infrastructure that had been in a version of the stimulus bill two days before it was finally signed. That would have improved our ability to invest in infrastructure and projects and have less taxes result, as those investments are typically taxed over a depreciate schedule. If the state were able to do something with the same effect and simplicity, it would reduce the costs of new broadband deployment, it would be technology neutral, and be fair and competitively neutral to all broadband providers, whether incumbent telcos, wisps, clecs, cable companies, etc.. We'd investigated RUS projects before, but the additional associated tasks and initial and ongoing paperwork were not worth the savings of two percent interest rate reduction for example. With the low interest rates now, I don't see RUS loans as terribly attractive. As far as mapping, I doubt there is a uniform method for getting granular details of availability. The FCC has been trying to get more information for their 477 filing, and has delayed it's due date as companies are trying to figure out which census boundaries all their customers are in. We will have to modify our database software to keep track of this. If the state comes up with some sort of system, it's reporting requirements should ideally be minimally burdensome, as it could be difficult for ISPs to generate something custom in a short time interval. As far as wireless goes, coverage is typically estimated on a map, and the accuracy varies tremendously. Fairly accurate maps can be done with software called 'radio mobile', it is difficult to use and quite a bit of confidential information can be deducted from the coverage patterns it produces. It's sort of advanced software that I would not expect all WISPs to have or use. There are companies that make these graphs for people, and one is looking to get in on mapping needs for stimulus projects. http://www.wirelessmapping.com/National%20Map.htm shows a national map made with zipcodes of provider's service areas. http://www.wirelessmapping.com/sample_maps.htm shows some of the types of coverage maps this company can provide. A company like this might be of interest to your mapping needs. For cable coverage, towns may get street level maps during franchise negotiation, but you'd probably have to file FOI requests with each town and hope for the best. As far as consortium style projects, there are several needs common to lots of ISPs. We are basically at the mercy of Fairpoint for fiber within the state to connect towns together. This is a major reason why so many ISPs, Clecs, and other organizations were following the Fairpoint transaction last year so closely. While the fiber is reliable from them, it's not inexpensive or a competitive solution to bringing faster broadband to non-urban areas. Basically, bandwidth between cities and towns in Maine is obscenely expensive, more so than bandwidth between states, when you consider a fiber installtion might serve a smaller magnitude of end users for the cost. Interstate fiber bandwidth is cheap because there is both competition and volume. Maine might utilize some federal broadband funding in conjunction with federal infrastructure construction projects to fund fiber and/or conduits be put in with road reconstruction, rail rehabilitation (e.g. Sprint gets it's name from South Pacific Railroad as the railroad used it's rights of way to provide private line networks and long distance bypassing the monopoly AT&T), bridge rehabilitiation, and any other projects improving or disturbing public rights of way where it would be beneficial to install fiber. The fiber would then be available to municipalities, ISPs, telcos, cell companies, businesses, government uses on an open access sort of basis for basically any installation or management costs and without guarantees. Where fiber is needed will of course vary from ISP to ISP as our markets both differ and overlap, but there are other potential users as well, such as the education, municipal, business, etc.. Fiber can also be used now to measure temperatures over it's course, so perhaps there are scientific or weather/environmental opportunities as well. As far as the business angle of this, right now, we pay $X for worldwide Internet bandwidth in Rockland. It probably costs 1/3x in Portland, but the cost of getting it to Rockland is a major expense, and would be more so if companies like GWI hadn't worked hard to maintain access to it over the years. Fletcher at GWI I'm sure has additional resources on these types of projects. The matching funding would likely be the cost of users extending those fibers or conduits to where they are needed. For WISP activities, there are a variety of state towers and buildings that have varying amounts of suitability for aiding wireless ISPs to provide broadband. Some funds could be used to inventory/inspect what assets are usable and what is not, and publish those results and details to ISPs and communities. For example, in Rockland, the state built a courthouse addition onto the county courthouse. The county's insurers have deemed the roof/cupola unsafe on the county side, and our antennae have to be removed. The state court system would not allow the antennas to be moved over to the state side of the building for court security reasons. In Union on Coggin hill, there are two state towers, one new one, and one old one, and I haven't figured out who/what needs contacting yet. They would be suitable for ISP use. I've also installed some gear at a ferry terminal, and a competing ISP didn't like it and tried to get a legislator to throw a wrench into the works and disrupt the effort. Some sort of database of what is available for what purposes would be help ISPs provide additional coverage quickly without having to require overburdened or unprepared state maintenance/management staff go through hoops on our behalf. Some funding could also provide improvements at those sites if there is interest in shared use. The matching funding would likely be the ISPs making their additions/improvements in infrastructure/equipment at those sites. I'll probably come up with more ideas... As far as combining those two ideas, here's an example. Let's say Umaine put some fresh fiber between a couple of distance learning branches. ISPs and other users along the way could carry traffic on that path using their own equipment on both ends. A rooftop antenna or small tower (such as might already exist for distance learning) at a branch location might be used by an ISP to provide more Internet services to the neighborhood, or the ISP might wirelessly beam a high capacity feed from the fiber at that location to a hilltop tower site nearby for bigger coverage. Once a certain critical mass of ISPs start using the fiber and it links more and more places, ISPs could wholesale services to each other over it, provide redundancy options, etc... Schools could also utilize the fiber to augment or eventually replace their MSLN links, which would reduce costs and improve service. Probably not related to the stimulus package, but another need of ISPs is reliable power. We started out using small battery backups to power things. We then added portable generators. Now, we use large battery packs (8-20 hours backup), fixed and portable generators, and we still can't keep the power up everywhere after a storm. Lincoln county is especially bad, as apparently trees are not pruned well there. We have a place 100yd off route 1 that has been without power 1-2 days probably 3 times in the past 12 months, and the outages are getting worse over the past few years. Another place in Lincoln county right on route 1 has lost power for 1.5 days for 3 times in the past 12 months and is still running on generator now. We basically need a well maintained last-mile of power far more than a billion dollar grid capacity upgrade. As broadband infrastructure moves from the cities into more and more rural neighborhoods, reliable power and/or expensive/ingeneous power backup systems need to accompany it. Utility power availability of two nines (99%) is bad for business, both for the extra expenses of power backup infrastructure, but also when there are widespread power outages, we have to divert staff to monitoring generators and battery backups instead of tending to customer installation and service. If the state really is interested in last mile power reliability and doesn't want to rely on the utility for availability information, perhaps ISPs could be compensated a modest amount to host and manage inexpensive IP-connected power sensors (and possibly other environmental information of use to agencies) that record and relay power status and information all over the state. Commercial users could also purchase sensors for the system if they want to monitor power. Then we'd have a neutral and agnostic power monitoring network for the state which would provide useful data for regulators, ema office, power companies, and businesses like ours via a website. Right now, our only sources of power outage information is a combination of the CMP website and our own limited monitoring system. We know almost nothing about power outages in non-CMP areas and in places where there is not a human to call in outages to CMP. If it were worthwhile for ISPs and businesses to gather this information for public consumption, it could provide some very beneficial information in emergencies and storms. Meeting with people individually would definitely provide you the most details and refinements. Some conference calling or meetings would be useful for collaborating or testing ideas/evaluating consensuses. On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 07:05:43AM -0800, Marlon K. Schafer wrote: > Hi All, > > I've asked before but saw no discussion so here it is again.... > > If WISPA gets a chance to give input to the grant process, what should we > tell the government? > > I can't believe that NO ONE here has any input on this at all. Did my last > post fail to make it through? Or should we not give any input into the > process if given the chance? We'll just let the telco's get all of it then? > > marlon > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > WISPA Wants You! 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