[Davisgig] Broadband Advisory Task Force has ENDED

[Robert Nickerson]

Hi Davisites


Last Wed was the final Broadband Advisory Task Force meeting. The BATF 
unanimously approved its final product, a 3 page letter, which 
unequivocally states a Fiber Based Community Broadband network is 
feasible, should be further analyzed by technical and financial 
professionals in coordination with city engineering staff, and urges 
timely action. Although there is some minor word smithing that will 
change a couple of small details, the Final was approved from a Draft 
copy which may be found here.

http://documents.cityofdavis.org/Media/Default/Documents/PDF/CityCouncil/Broadband-Advisory-Task-Force/Agendas/20190522/06A-BATF-Recomendation-to-Council-Draft.pdf

This process went on 3 full years and was entering its 4^th . It 
produced an excellent Feasibility Study Report, evaluated information, 
talked to vendors, and generated and reviewed the results of a phone 
survey and online poll in its final analysis.

Personally, I’m truly thankful these community leaders took their time 
to evaluate and follow this process of evaluating feasibility to this 
conclusion, and now it is time for DavisGIG to be more active again with 
both the public and the Council to help move it onward.


This report will be presented by the Task Force Chair, hello Chris, at 
the 6/4 CC meeting, so keep your eye on the Agenda. I’m thinking that 
they will evaluate, at that time or soon after, if they want to 
reconstitute some sort of group to carry out carrying out technical and 
financial analysis details the BATF memo recommends, or end the effort 
and bring in Big Fiber Provider Grande/Wave/RCN, aka Astound, owned by 
private equity firm TPG Capital. This will setup another monopoly 
control situation over physical Internet infrastructure, like Comcast’s 
control of Coax, and ATT’s control of Copper.

So we need to put some effort into encouraging Council to do the right 
thing here, which is continue the effort for a phased build approach to 
a city-owned, community-operated open access fiber ring or more.

In support of that, we have generated a “talking points” type document 
which refers to benefits identified by the Feasibility Study and 
addresses concerns citizens raised in the DavisGIG broadband poll. 
Please comment if you think anything needs tweaking, it may be found here.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G8WTYwwkxZFFKSoOZn0Bjpz0Pw2VRQD_WR8CJGEVjcY/edit?usp=sharing

We hope you can use this to educate your neighbors and colleagues as to 
why this will make everyone's quality of life better.

We need an Op Ed ASAP for the papers, and to finish out a light business 
plan for the first phase; the build out of backbone ring and sub rings, 
aka the “COFOR” thanks DW! This we plan to submit to City Staff for 
inclusion in documents sent to CC on this issue, as DavisGIG’s 
recommendation, so we have a week on that. I’ll put links to those in 
subsequent emails. I’m hoping some of you all can collaborate on this 
through Google Docs.

Should we also get a statement together asking Council to follow the 
advice of the BATF memo that we can ask people to endorse or sign on to 
that can be presented to CC during public comment or in support of the 
item?

I’ll send a notice out to our announce list about this, as well as 
social media, asking people to submit public comment or just endorse our 
statement. It would also be spectacular to have lots of people come to 
this CC meeting to give comment at the start of the 6/4 CC Session.


Any other ideas for how to keep this going please chime in.


Thanks ALL


RAN

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