[Davisgig] California’s ambitious fiber-Internet plan approved unanimously by legislature

[Robert Nickerson]

Hi  Davisites and Netizens

Thanks for sharing this link.  Been waiting for a good time to see about 
this list and the DavisGIG effort as a whole.

It is gratifying to see the state legislature wholeheartedly back open 
access fiber networks. Feel vindicated that we were on the right track 
with this type of deployment being of considerable benefit to our cities 
and economy.  Not everyone saw it that way, but leadership takes risks. 
Ernesto from EFF, one of the advocating orgs on this measure,  was one 
of the folks I talked to quite a bit about open access fiber networks 
while the City BATF process was ongoing.

Its going to take some real grant writing and collaboration to receive 
these grants, or the current CASF ones,  but perhaps there is enough 
time to pull that together as it will take time to implement this program.

5 years ago community-owned open access fiber optic was a good idea and 
based on everything that has happened, still is. Having designed, built, 
and operated an underground FO network now over the last  years, we have 
some more insights and expertise to assist the community with this 
worthwhile goal. The construction company partner we work with seems to 
be pretty solid, and we are looking to help our community and County 
with the development of this critical infrastructure. Our financial 
model is asking for homeowners to cover our neighborhood install cost on 
a pro-rata share basis with monthly payments  up to 6 years Interest 
free. So it's a quick step from there to homeowners' owning the network.

Perhaps our city wouldn't be a direct financial participant, but it 
could help a community owned 509c12 telecom coop in many non financial 
ways like conduit access, and site leases.

DCN is holding onto enough collected DavisGIG money from 2016-2018 which 
could likely be used to help stand up a telecom coop here. Funds might 
be used either for moderate legal fees to create the legal structure of 
the coop (Articles, Bylaws, other organizing docs) or organizational 
assistance from NRTC.coop,  but I don't think the board in its current 
state has too much if any interest in running the coop, or tin the 
amount of effort it would take to make this happen. So we'd need to look 
to others in the community that feel this is an important issue.

I'd think more people would need to be interested and involved to move 
that forward.

Any interest to have some sort of in person or Zoom meeting to share 
ideas and explore feasibility?

Alternately, if this moment is past, and we want to shut down the list 
and disburse the collected DavisGIG funds to another like minded non 
profit, we should deliberate and do  so.

Thanks all and appreciate any thoughts you might have on the matter even 
if you love Comcast, Wave, and ATT.

RAN


> On 2021-07-17 16:05, John Steggall wrote:
>> Would be curious to hear people's thoughts on this...
>> California’s ambitious fiber-Internet plan approved unanimously by
>> legislature
>> CA to build middle-mile network open to all ISPs and give $2B in
>> last-mile grants.
>> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/california-passes-historic-plan-for-statewide-open-access-fiber-network/ 
>>
>>
>> -js
>>
>
> --------------------------
> Richard Lowenberg
> P.O.Box 8001,
> Santa Fe, NM 87504
> 505-603-5200
> www.richardlowenberg.com
> --------------------------
>
-- 
Robert Nickerson
UCD Class of 1996
CEO, Om Networks

cell: 5308483865
www.omsoft.com