[1st-mile-nm] Santa Fe Telecom Ordinance + CityLink Fiber

[peter baston]

Unfortunately the issue is a little more complex and several of the
councilors asked for our help to bring some clarity to expedite broadband in
Santa Fe . John Bs biggest point and ours as well is that most of the
ordinances lump everything into one big blog with little understanding of
the real world issues current and future. I intentionally did not get into
the yays and nays of wireless as those should be addressed totally
separately to other technology delivery methodologies. The city attorneys
office is supposed to address this smorgasbord and although they are doing
stellar work they are toitally illequiped to even understand the primary
issues

In the voice of calm reason this is what we sent to them to help

To Office of the City Attorney
City of Santa Fe
Santa Fe, NM

Dear Maureen and Jeanne:

Many thanks for the courtesy shown me in our recent meeting, and the time
given to our discussions. As
promised, I have reviewed the proposed telecommunications ordinances posted
on the city’s website.

As you know, our company is involved in Technology Integration across a
broad spectrum of the
industry, which is why Councilor Miguel Chavez asked us for input after the
last debates on this subject
at recent council meetings. I have performed a cursory review, just looking
at the ordinance itself in the
light of my professional experience and expertise and minimal research.
Based on this review, it would
appear that the ordinance has multiple problems. Let me try to bring some
clarity to the situation with a
brief outline of why I say this.

The very first thing that we do when we are engaged to advise any city or
county that is introducing this
type of ordinance is to lay out a set of best practice questions to gauge
how thoroughly the city or
county understands the full ramifications of the ordinance. Keeping in mind
that telecommunications in
today’s world is vital infrastructure, and many other functions of the city,
the community, the local
economy will be impacted by decisions made in this regard, management
planning of the city’s
technology future network should at a minimum fully address three sectors,
in this order:
1. The technology to be used
2. Oversight of the business operations
3. Legal oversight and control

What I have seen so far is a smorgasbord, with the city trying to combine
selected components of each
sector into a document (not a plan) driven by item 3. This is an approach
that has been amply
demonstrated will fail — and create tons of work for future attorneys.

Here are the questions that I normally ask following best practices for a
city or statewide technology
communications roll‐out plan:
1. Do you have a detailed technology integration plan for your
city/county/state?

2. Does it combine short and long term goals?

3. What are the real economic/social benefits of the plan (and liabilities
if it goes wrong), based on
solid and verifiable research? How will you track that they are being
achieved and what
mechanisms are in place to adjust the plan if they are not being achieved?

4. Do you understand the business oversight and management operations
needed?

5. Does your legal team understand the issues with transferring old Right of
Way (ROW)
agreements into the new plan? 6. Do you have a good understanding of your
current ROWs: where and how extensive they are,
how they are being used, and the economic value of that usage?

7. Do you understand how the value of your ROWs will change in the future?

8. Does your technology , operations and legal team understand the benefits
and liabilities of
different technologies (coax cable/fiber/ISDN/1, 2, 3, or 4G
Wireless/Wi‐fi/WiMax) Laser?

9. Has your technology, operations and legal team prepared a business plan
based on a SWOT
(strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis of the volume and
value of application
services that will ride on the network as well as best practices for the
installation and
maintenance of the actual hardware and software infrastructure?

10. Who is/are the point person(s) in your organization for technology
integration/business
operations/legal oversight and what experience do they have with technology
integration
planning and execution?

11. Has your city/county/state used outside consultants who stand to gain in
any way to advise you
with regard to the technology/business/legal choices you are undertaking?

>From our inspection of your posted ordinance, so far it would appear that
the business and technology
piece is being driven by the legal mandate, and very few if any of the above
questions have been asked,
much less addressed. The experience of many jurisdictions has shown that if
answers to the above
questions are not crystal clear, well documented, understood and bought into
by all parties before the
ordinance is drafted, if the ordinance is not drafted in response to those
answers, then bigger legal
issues will inevitably evolve from whatever ordinance is adopted.

During our conversation, you told me the ordinance was originally drafted
from copies of the Albuquerque ordina by your office with no involvement
from other departments — in other words, from a purely legal perspective.
Yet 90% of the
public discussion that has gone on so far have been about technology issues,
about the preference for
one type of network carrier technology versus another. Although that focus
might make great press, it
concerns only one portion of one question in our list — a question that has
not, as I understand it, really
been addressed at all in the planning stages.

It’s our considered opinion that any action taken without prior development
of a business plan that
addresses all 11 questions outlined above will yield no net benefit for the
city, will likely create
situations that open the city to further legal challenge, and will have the
result of locking the city into a
situation where it is significantly under‐exploiting the value of its ROWs.
Therefore, I would highly
recommend a moratorium on this issue by the city council until a sound
business plan can be drawn up.

As always, should you wish to engage our professional services to assist in
this regard, we will be very
happy to submit a proposal. In the meantime, please feel free to call me
with any questions about what I
have laid out so far.

Sincerely,

Peter Baston
CEO
-- 
--------------------------------------
IDEAS business technology integration
www.ideapete.com
Cell: 505-690-3627
Mailto:pete at ideapete.com


Cc: Geno Zamora, City of Santa Fe
 Miguel Chavez, City of Santa Fe
Chris Calvert , City of Santa Fe


On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 7:11 AM, Richard Lowenberg <rl at 1st-mile.com> wrote:

> Telecommunications ordinance: Fiber-optic firm may bury plan for Santa Fe
> network
>
> Tom Sharpe | The New Mexican    Posted: Monday, March 08, 2010
>
>
> http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/Telecommunications-ordinance-Fiber-optic-firm-may-bury-plan-for
>
>
> The president of a firm seeking to build a fiber-optic cable system says he
> might have to drop his plans for Santa Fe because of the city's proposed
> telecommunications ordinance.
>
> John M. Brown, president and cofounder of CityLink Fiber Holdings in
> Albuquerque, said he began seeking a franchise for a fiber-optic cable
> system
> in Santa Fe two years ago. Mayor David Coss was "positive" about the idea,
> he
> said. But meetings with other city officials led nowhere.
>
> "I've seen bureaucratic red-tape before, and in the spirit of the Olympic
> Games,
> this takes the Gold Medal," Brown wrote in an e-mail.
>
> CityLink's fiber-optic system in downtown Albuquerque provides speeds more
> than
> a hundred times faster than that of the copper coaxial cable connections
> offered by Comcast and Qwest ? without wireless technology, radio
> frequencies
> or electromagnetic fields, Brown said. He said the same service could be
> provided to residences and businesses around Paseo de Peralta, where he
> plans
> to lay the cable.
>
> Brown said he buries his lines underground using microtrenching between the
> asphalt road surface and the concrete gutter or stringing cable through
> sewer
> and storm-drainage lines.
>
> "If the citizens of Santa Fe really want to have world-class high-speed
> connectivity, then there needs to be a process that encourages private
> businesses such as CityLink who want to come and build this," he said.
> "We're
> not looking for a handout. We're not looking for anything for free."
>
> But late last week, after seeing the latest rewrite of the Santa Fe
> telecommunications ordinance, Brown called it "overly burdensome." He
> especially objected to its requirements for mailing notices to neighbors,
> buying display ads in newspapers and paying $2,500 for each application to
> the
> city Land Use Department. He said building a cable system might take
> numerous
> applications.
>
> The $2,500 will be passed on to customers, according to Brown. Although
> Albuquerque customers pay about $79 a month plus $150 for installation,
> Brown
> said, the additional expense proposed could mean Santa Fe customers would
> have
> to pay $199 a month plus $399 for installation for the same service.
>
> Brown said he didn't think either Qwest or Comcast would agree to pay the
> $2,500
> fees. But "as it stands CityLink CAN NOT accept this and unless changed
> will NOT
> be servicing Santa Fe anytime soon," he wrote in another e-mail.
>
> Brown also maintains that he's been unfairly linked to the dispute over the
> safety of wireless systems because the media doesn't understand the
> differences
> between cell-phone transmissions, Wi-Fi, distributed antenna systems and
> fiber-optic cable systems.
>
> The press mostly writes about "the 'juicy' stuff, people in conflict,
> people
> yelling and cussing, the 'Wi-Fi' opponents and the issues they raise," he
> wrote. "As is typical, the news media has gotten it very WRONG."
>
> But in an interview, Brown acknowledged fiber-optic cable systems have a
> role to
> play in delivering wireless because the technology can be used to link
> together
> antennas in a DAS. However, he said, NewPath Networks, which seeks a local
> franchise for a DAS, plans to install its own fiber-optic cable rather than
> use
> the one CityLink is proposing.
>
> Brown said he doesn't know if wireless signals pose a biological hazard,
> but he
> believes opponents of this technology have unfairly drawn fiber-optics into
> the
> fray. "They are lobbing it all together as one big blob," he said. "And so,
> they
> want to kill the blob wherever they can kill the blob."
>
> The telecommunications ordinance is on the agenda for Wednesday's council
> meeting.
>
> You can read the proposed ordinance, with new changes in red, here
> http://www.santafenm.gov/DocumentView.aspx?DID=...
>
>
>
> --
> Richard Lowenberg
> 1st-Mile Institute
> P.O. Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504
> 505-989-9110;   505-603-5200 cell
> rl at 1st-mile.com  www.1st-mile.com
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
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