[Davisgig] Bill Broadley's Comments

[Robert Nickerson]

Hi

This is very eloquent, and I'd say pretty damn accurate and succinct 
argument that could be morphed into a letter and put on the website.

I have more to add about costs as well when I can at some point in the 
not too distant future.

RAN


On 1/6/2015 7:29 PM, Bill Broadley wrote:
> On 01/06/2015 10:49 AM, Shneor Sherman wrote:
>> Bill, I appreciate your response. However, it does not address the question:
>> Where is the direct benefit to homeowners? An extra $5000 value to a
>> half-million dollar home is inconsequential.
>
> Well it was than $5,200 for a $300k house.  The thought of adding $5k or more
> (the majority of Davis homes are worth more than $300k) to the value of ones
> home is a great incentive for registered voters to sign a petition or vote for
> the initiative.
>
> For the City of Davis that means more tax revenue per home, and more demand for
> Davis homes (assuming surrounding cities don't get GigE networking).
>
>> How many homeowners want to be
>> content providers or maintain a website on their own?
>
> Approximately zero.  People who are in the Google fiber cities are quite
> enthusiastic about the service.  The vast majority of the stories I've heard as
> just the normal fast internet is great type.  Netflix streams at high quality,
> youtube videos start instantly, Amazon prime works great, ability to stream
> video while not impacting phone calls or video conferences etc.
>
> Also the freedom to buy the channels they want instead of expensive bundles and
> the freedom from the pain of:
> * buying/maintaining/replacing DVR/VCRs
> * watching whatever they want, whenever they want, even switching between
>    devices
> * ability to watch a season of a favorite show as quickly as they want to.
>
>> I suspect very few. If
>> we are talking about schools and libraries, it's far cheaper to provide lines
>> only to those entities.
>
> Certainly, I was just mentioning that hugely improved network infrastructure
> could lead to improvements in educational opportunities at Davis Schools and
> Libraries.  Not that these improvements would justify the costs all by themselves.
>
> Generally the higher end users would get very fast network connections (Google
> does GigE for $70 or so), the most cost conscious would get cheaper/slower
> connections (Google does 5 mbit for 7 years for $200), and those without paying
> anything might get better cell coverage (via shared wifi) or be able to use a
> wifi device in more areas than they do now.
>
>> I'm pretty sure that this will require an initiative, though the City Council
>> could act on its own. To get votes, voters will have to see direct benefits.
>> What might those be?
>
> 1) not dealing with hated companies like comcast (typically #1 or #2 hated)
> 2) not being restricted by bandwidth caps (comcast is 250GB last I checked)
> 3) improved network performance
>
> Households with multiple people using laptops, TVs, and phones are pretty
> common.  I run up against my comcast 250GB cap despite having a pretty low end
> TV (720P, not 1080p let alone 4K) and not having a particularly TV centric
> household.  We also do minimal music streaming.
>
> So a typical household with a few kids/parents around who like tv and/or music:
> * 3 hours a day of music from pandora/spotify = 6.5GB
> * 1 hour a day of news/talk shows on standard definition TV = 30.4 GB
> * 1.5 hours a day of Movie on a nicer HD tv = 136 GB
> * 2 hours a week of Ultra HD/4k = 50 GB
>
> So that adds up to 220GB which is pretty close to the 250GB cap.  A bit of web
> surfing, youtube, email (especially large attachments) could easily consume the
> rest.  Especially since audio/video streams are getting more data intensive over
> time.
>
> The above might sound like more than you'd expect, but keep in mind that might
> be spread over several users.  Even appliances these days can use a fair amount
> of bandwidth.  My stereo for instance (a fairly standard Denon receiver)
> consumers a fair amount of data for firmware updates periodically.  Spending a
> day hiking and taking pictures can take a fair amount of bandwidth to upload
> photos.  Things like movies or games can easily be over 1GB, and cloud based
> usage that's today means that the same movie might be downloaded more than once
> just to allow time shifting for 2 users to watch at different times.
>
> So sure 250GB is plenty for a single person under common use cases, but add some
> roommates/kids, video hangouts with grandparents, some phone calls or VOIP over
> wifi, and you can easily exceed 250GB.  I'm a very technical user with a wide
> variety of uses for my home internet connection, but my 10 year old daughter
> uses a roku (easy to use streaming widget for audio/video) and tablet that
> results in consuming WAY more data than I do.  My point being that even Joe
> Average Davis resident with roommates or kids could easily consumer more than
> comcast's data cap.
>
>
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-- 
Rob Nickerson

CEO
Om Networks
UCD Class of 96
C: 530-848-3865

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