[Davisgig] Dueling OpEd's in the Enterprise

Tue Jun 4 14:47:34 PDT 2019

There are two questions here, was Davis Community Cable a success or failure and was replacing it with Comcast successful. Davis Community Cable was never well capitalized and had maintenance problems but for the most part it worked. When we replaced the system with Comcast there was a big injection of capitol but this quickly faded and there has been little effort to update the now dated cable technology. If you were to go to my backyard you would see coaxial cable lying on the ground going from house to house at the fence line and the power lines are enmeshed around tree branches just waiting for a big windstorm. 

California’s regulated utilities could plainly use some improvement. But the utilities are also a political juggernaut, of this we should be mindful. I don’t think the solution here is to suspend the broadband task force but instead the task force could try a different solution, public private partnership. I was able to form public private partnership's in telecommunications successfully in the past and I think that others can now, I’ll give three examples.

- ca.gov - With the help of the University (Russ Hobby) we were able to make a number of trades to build ca.gov <http://ca.gov/> from the department of Water Resources, first DWR traded right of way on the state water project for dark fiber from MCI, we then traded fiber access for support from the university in joining the Internet they then were able to unite the Bay Area Advanced Research Network (BARRnet) and its Southern California counterpart CERFnet to allow California to send Internet traffic from North to South without leaving the State, ca.gov <http://ca.gov/> was a byproduct that saved the state many millions of dollars through early Internet access. 

- Shasta County office of education - For a brief while environmental education was under me at the resources agency, we were able to fund a T1 line from Sacramento county to Shasta county the connection allowed for other in the North to connect to the Internet to sustain the network allowing for rural datafication across Northern California.

- Davis Community Network Task Force - This city task force spent a year envisioning what a community network could be and negotiating with Pacific Bell to give its technical and political support to the effort. The documents and small prototype network then facilitated for a grant from Caltrans to start the DCN.

In each of these cases quite a bit of time went into figuring out the role of government and the role of the private sector in the implementation of a new technologies and both sides got something from the deal. I think the annual license fee is a great idea and a great start. Let’s look for a win-win here.

                                                                                  —Gary

> On Jun 4, 2019, at 10:23 AM, Matthews Williams <mattwill at pacbell.net> wrote:
> 
> Thank you for the response Eric.  Enjoy your evening.
> 
> I wasn't here when Davis Community Cable happened, so any thoughts I have are anecdotal based on what people have volunteered to tell me.  Their belief is that Davis Community Cable was not a success during its relatively brief lifetime.  Some believe that while it was not a success during its tenure, it did establish a cable foundation that lived on and expanded after the Comcast acquisition.  So, qualified failure.
> 
> With that said, it is also my understanding that Davis Community Cable was a consumer initiative, much like the Davis Food CoOp, and stayed in the private sector.  That is very different from what is being considered for Municipal Fiber.  The consultant's feasibility study conclusions essentially confirmed that that approach was/is a non-starter.  The Water Utility that serves the City and surrounding neighborhoods is much closer to what has been considered by the BATF.  Is the Davis Water Utility considered successful or a failure?  The Wastewater/Sewer Utility also fits that model. Is the Davis Wastewater/Sewer Utility considered successful or a failure? 
> 
> The proposed agreement that staff and Wave put forward to Council would produce $0 (zero dollars) of revenue, but it would result in the avoidance of $76,000 a year in cost for the City.  The City was giving Wave the license to market its services from the proposed ring in exchange for the $76,000.  
> 
> If other Municipal Fiber cities are useful as example templates, any and all service providers (Wave, Comcast, AT&T, etc) would be able to deliver their services over the City network for an annual license fee.  Unlike current packages like "Triple Play," future packages from those licensed service providers would not include an Internet connectivity component.  So, my somewhat educated suspicion is that property taxes/licenses don't produce much of a bias either way.
> 
> I have no knowledge to be able to answer your last question.
> 
> On Tuesday, June 4, 2019, 8:45:11 AM PDT, Eric Thompson <elt at pacbell.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> Sorry but I have conflicting plans 
> 
> Things to consider 
> 
> 30+ years ago We were part of the Davis community Cable before Comcast replaced it. Was that considered successful or failure? 
> 
> Would the city get more revenue from say, Wave, in property taxes/ licenses versus a nonprofit or city owned cable provider? Is this a built in bias? 
> 
> Do any council members have cable companies stock?
> 
> Eric
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Jun 3, 2019, at 11:15 AM, Matthews Williams <mattwill at pacbell.net <mailto:mattwill at pacbell.net>> wrote:
> 
>> Eric, I hope you will be at City Council at 8:00pm tomorrow to show your support for the BATF recommendation to dig deeper into the technical and financial issues.  That is the kind of focused "more time and consideration" that Rob is referring to.  The RFP and subsequent consultant agreement was (by the design of staff and the original members of the BATF) focused and therefore limited.  The kind of technical evaluation BATF has recommended as a next step was always anticipated to be out of the scope.  
>> 
>> It turns out that there was an unintended limitation in the financial area, and as a result the consultant's report provides an incomplete set of options, omitting the public utility approach.
>> That is meaningful on a number of levels.  The consultants built $800 per household of Marketing costs into their estimates.  The public utility approach would not need to expend those millions of unnecessary dollars. $800 times 25,000 households equals $20 million, but it isn’t clear whether the consultants included the full $20 million in their $106 million cost estimate.  Regardless of the amount, there will be a substantial cost savings by using the public utility approach.
>> 
>> The Public Utility approach was suggested as an alternative by one of the state’s preeminent financial advisors in a meeting with one of the two BATF subcommittees, who reported the results of that meeting to the BATF.   The Public Utility approach would  change the political approval process under the provisions of Proposition 218.  It would also  segregate the funds and funding into an Enterprise Fund, separate/isolated from the General Fund. The Water Fund is structured that way.  The Sewer Fund is structured that way.  The Solid Waste Fund is structured that way.  The Utility Service Advisory Commission oversees both the rates for the Enterprise Fund services and the associated service costs.
>> 
>> Another huge difference between Municipal Fiber and Dan Carson’s comparison to the Bullet Train is the existence and reliability of the revenues.  There is no committed revenue stream from the public/consumers for the bullet train.  It is a “build it and they will come” approach.  If a Telecommunications Enterprise Fund were established in Davis the revenue stream would be established, with every parcel paying into that fund the same amount or less than they are paying the monopoly suppliers Comcast or AT&T for Internet services currently.  In my own personal case, our household is paying $39.95 per month for Comcast’s lowest level of Internet service.  The monthly bill from the Telecommunications Fund would be less than that, so I would save money every month.  That is the antithesis of the bullet train.
>> 
>> In addition, because of the provisions of Prop 218, the rates would be set for five years.  No consumer would be subject to the annual haggling with their monopoly supplier in order to avoid a steep price increase.
>> 
>> Hopefully on Tuesday night Dan, and the rest of the Council will see the wisdom of siding with Dan’s second statement about the the benefits of improved high-speed broadband for economic development, education, technological innovation, and addressing the digital divide rather side with Dan’s first statement of worry about a bullet train-style boondoggle.
>> 
>> If you do come tomorrow to reinforce your message in support of the BATF's next steps ... bring as many friends as you can.  The Council showed in its deliberations regarding parking downtown that they do see and hear those who attend their meetings.
>> 
>> Thank you for your support of Municipal Fiber in Davis.
>> 
>> Matt Williams
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Monday, June 3, 2019, 10:39:02 AM PDT, Eric Thompson <elt at pacbell.net <mailto:elt at pacbell.net>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> I’d agree
>> 
>> I got to wonder how much of a commitment has already been made to Wave
>> 
>> Eric T
>> 
>> On Jun 2, 2019, at 10:03 AM, Robert Nickerson <rob at omsoft.com <mailto:rob at omsoft.com>> wrote in part:
>> 
>> 
>>> It would be prudent to ask CC not to make any major decisions about this at that meeting, but to hopefully give it more time and consideration. 
>>> 
>>> Any thoughts?
>>> 
>> 
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