[Davisgig] Moving the Project Forward

[Robert Nickerson]

Hello Davisites!

Here is a a letter going out to our davisgig-announce list at some point 
soon.

Want to share the good news, and if you have any feedback let me know by 
private email.

Please READ – TLDR – Make the City Council Meeting on Tues.


Our City Council will take its first important step toward realizing our 
goal of a community owned fiber optic network! Next Tuesday's 8/30/16 
City Council meeting will feature a report by the Broadband Advisory 
Task Force, and a vote of affirmation in support of our important work 
in procuring a feasibility study for fiber optic cable deployment for 
all the homes and businesses in Davis. Assuming this carries, the RFP 
will go forward as a request from, and funded by, City of Davis.  City 
council members will receive the draft RFP in their materials packets 
and will vote on approval of it for publishing.


This RFP is based on the one we all developed some months back, with 
some small changes.

This is the important first step, DavisGIG has raised funds for, and 
building on that success, now the City Council will be stepping in to 
fully fund this study, as well as the essential conduit and 
infrastructure mapping, and code changes to implement a Dig Once policy. 
DavisGIG and DCN will use your generously contributed funds to support 
and sustain this effort through community outreach efforts while this 
study, and others, like engineering, and demand aggregation efforts, go 
forward.

All of you, DavisGIG, and the BATF, are about to take the very important 
step of reclaiming network access from big investor owned entities, and 
managing this ourselves, in our own community. Lets work together, if 
you think you have a worthwhile perspective to share, come down, and 
give 3 minutes to tell the council members.

This is a milestone, and its important for citizens to come and speak at 
public comment in support of this item, which will feature presentations 
from Diane Parro, CIO City of Davis, and Chris Clements, BATF co-chair. 
This is the first meeting of the new City Council, a new group of 
leaders, with an important agenda, and its imperative they know how 
important a fiber optic deployment is to our residents and businesses. 
They want to know the considered opinion of citizens on this matter, and 
not just "X Company sucks!!" or "I need more speeds.."

It will also be great for them to see some more people supporting and 
working on,  DavisGIG, aside from Jeff M and I.

A community owned fiber optic network is an investment in our future. 
Not only will it provide very reliable and cheaper Internet connections 
to everyone now, we will help fund our city through our monthly 
broadband payments, and get better service without the constant worry of 
ever increasing Internet access bills. Furthermore, building out our own 
telecommunications plant gives us lots of options.

Our city will be able to implement real time telemetry throughout its 
utility operations, and realize lots of benefits unbounded network 
access has to offer. See some of the exciting applications being 
sponsored by US-Ignite at www.us-ignite.org <http://www.ignite.org/>

So good job, as has been told again and on, this is a multi year 
process, but our work so far is starting to bear significant results.

Thank you for your continued interest and engagement.

RAN


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://list.omsoft.com/pipermail/davisgig/attachments/20160824/4fce6ec7/attachment.html>