Hawley Communications Committee (HCC) Hawley, Massachusetts 01339 Meeting Minutes of: Hawley Communications Committee Meeting, Tuesday, 4/23/13. Meeting began at: 5:07 PM Present: Lark Thwing, Member; Jason Velazquez, Member and Webmaster; Rick Kean, Member and Chair. Absent: None Others present: 1.) Craig Shrimpton, prospective Communications Committee Member. (Mr. Shrimpton has subsequently been appointed by the Board of Selectmen to serve on the Committee). 2.) Virginia Gabert, TOH Administrative Assistant, was in the room and available to answer questions but was focused on other duties. 3.) Susan Olson, 5:15-5:45 pm, Hawley s Wired West Coop. Delegate & Manager, Municipal Lighting Coop. (via speakerphone) 4.) Tom Miller, 6:00-6:35 pm, Channel Manager, CornerStone Telephone, Troy, NY & Richmond, MA (potential high speed Internet vendor) Citizen comments: Craig Shrimpton participated in the full meeting and made some recommendations, as noted below. Virginia Gabert answered some questions for the committee, primarily about current Town Internet and Telephone costs. Susan Olson provided a written report on WiredWest to the committee and answered questions via phone. (She was in California). Tom Miller presented some background on his company and then gathered information about the Town s specific Internet and Telecommunications needs. As a result of that conversation, the Committee asked Mr. Miller to prepare two of sets of quotes for Internet and/or telephone based on two volume levels of Internet use. (Mr. Miller has subsequently submitted those quotes, which will be reviewed at our next meeting.) Documents provided: Meeting Agenda Generic pricing information from Crocker Communications Report from Susan Olson, Sheet containing a short blurb on CornerStone Telephone derived from the materials gathered by Rick Kean at an MBI/Axia meeting in Buckland Status sheet on webpages created to date and whether they need updating. All are addended to this report. Vote to approve minutes: The minutes of the last meeting (2/23/13) were approved via email prior to the meeting, and ratified at the meeting. The minutes of the current (4/23/13) meeting have been approved via email as of 5/1//2013, and will be ratified at the next regular meeting, on or about Tuesday, May 21, 2013. Purpose of the meeting: The meeting had four purposes: 1.) To assess the status of the Massachusetts Broadband Initiative (MBI) as it relates to the Town of Hawley and its residents; 2.) To determine what role WiredWest will play in that initiative at this point in time; and, 3.) To meet the first of (at least) three ISP vendors to help the Town make a selection to accommodate high speed internet. 4.) To review and discuss issues related to the ongoing website work.
Here are our findings and decisions: The news that the Governor of Massachusetts is pushing another $40 million through the legislature to fund the last mile of the Broadband Initiative has changed the game for cooperatives like WiredWest. As a result, WiredWest will seek more of an advocacy role on behalf of small towns rather than that of a services provider in the near future, although their ultimate role is very much up in the air. Susan Olson advised us NOT to include them in our search for an ISP vendor. One unexpected benefit of this development is that Susan can advise us in the vendor selection process without a creating a potential conflict of interest. We agreed to keep in touch more often, and to invite Susan to future meetings of the Communications Committee. Craig Shrimpton identified Level 3, Light Tower and Windstream as three very strong vendors from the list provided in the MBI/Axia literature. The committee expressed a preference for finding more local sources, but agreed to entertain a bid from at least one of them as part of the due diligence process. The Committee agreed to create email addresses with the @townofhawley.com suffix for each Town Officer and Committee. These would be set up so that incoming email could be forwarded to an individual s personal email account, but the @townofhawley.com email addresses would remain the property of, and under the password control of, the Town. Tom Miller recommended that the Town should consider high-speed internet bandwidth volumes in the 5 10 Megabits per second range to meet the needs of the Town Office. He estimated that 5 Megabits would run 5 10 times faster than the measured rate of the current Hughesnet system, depending on the additional load put on it by hotspot users, should we decide to create such a guest network. Craig Shrimpton was in essential agreement with that assessment, and the Committee agreed to ask for proposals from all vendors in the 5 10 Megabit range for purposes of apples-to-apples comparison. It was agreed by all Hawley Communications Committee members that Craig Shrimpton would be a strong addition to the group. In closing the meeting, Chair Rick Kean handed out a printed version of a prototype Welcome (or Home) page for the website, and asked for feedback via email. That prototype can be viewed at http://www.townofhawley.com/?q=node/32. (Note that the graphics that appear there are just placeholders. They will be changed once appropriate pictures can be secured.) The meeting adjourned at: 6:55 pm Respectfully Submitted, Rick Kean, Chairperson 05/02/2013
Hawley Communications Committee Monthly Meeting www.townofhawley.com Town Office: Tuesday, April 23: 5-7 pm Agenda Meeting Intro s & Objectives Phone Briefing by Susan Olson re: Wired West 5:15 PM Drupal Review questions, editing tips Presentation by Tom Miller, et. al., CornerStone Telephone re: Town Office ISP -- 6:00 PM ISP Due Diligence, Next Steps Email Accounts for Officers and Committees (?) Website Next Steps o Layout Plan o Content o Technical Issues Assignments Next Meeting is 30 days soon enough? Adjourn -- 7:00 pm
WiredWest DRAFT UPDATE 4/23/13 To the Hawley Communications Committee In the upcoming months a number of issues will be facing Western Mass towns due to the inclusion of 40 million dollars for last-mile fiber-optic build out in Governor Patrick's most recently submitted budget. It is my belief that the more people who have a basic understanding of the background and context for this proposal and the various options that are now emerging, the better we will all be able to make good decisions for Hawley and our region. It's for this reason I am submitting to you a rather lengthy draft write-up that may include information you already know, but bear with me. I hope that this piece will turn into something (or a couple of different somethings) that I can update as needed and hand to anyone interested in being brought up to speed on the issues. What I have not done here is to advise on which ISP Hawley should consider. You all have probably heard presentations from some of them and therefore know more than I do. I have heard that fees are rather steep and that for the same mbps service it could be far more economical to stay with satellite! However I would like Hawley to consider going with the fiber-optic in order to create a wifi zone around the town hall something probably impossible with the daily/monthly caps of satellite service. Again, I don t know how we would do this but this would be something the Communications Committee could raise with the providers it talks with. I also won t go into fine detail about why last-mile, fiber-optic to the home makes vastly more sense for our region than any alternative solution wifi, DSL, cellular, cable, satellite, etc. In short, there is no comparison in terms of capacity (fiber-optic has vastly vastly more than copper or co-axial cable, as well as all the rest) and it is future proof and easily upgradable as technology improves (equipment is replaced at a few junctures, not the fiber itself). A company was given an MBI grant to put wifi into Ashfield and after initial studies returned the money because the topography with its windy roads, mountains, lack of lines of site, etc made the project prohibitively expensive. Plus, should technology improve, the whole network and all equipment would have to be replaced from scratch. Even most celltowers go straight into fiber now if they can. Any of the other technologies quickly reach capacity--long before a fiber network with existing technologies would. Yes fiber-optic has been around for 30 years, but all over the world it is now even more the future of communication. So on to: What WiredWest is and is not The basic idea for what was to become WiredWest was initiated entirely by local citizens who could see earlier than most of us that fiber-optic infrastructure was the only viable, reliable, future-proof solution to the lack of broadband in rural western Massachusetts. Most notable was David Greenberg, head of technology for regional public schools. Several years ago he put notices in newspapers, had a meeting at the
Greenfield Public Library, and began pulling in local people who possessed not only tremendous knowledge, skills, experience and expertise (technical, legal, financial, etc), but tremendous determination to make this kind of project happen as well. While WiredWest has tweeked itself over the last couple of years as it has adapted to changing circumstances and learned from other somewhat similar projects going on around the country, the purpose and goal of WiredWest is, and always has been, to bring universal reasonably priced fiber-optic internet access to every member-town home or business that wants it. Until a few weeks ago these goals meant finding a way for us towns to build the network ourselves, since no one else was going to do it due to our lack of profitability for any private sector company having to perform for shareholders. Everybody knew from the start that most, if not all, towns would be unable or unwilling to finance any project through taxes. What emerged was a plan to use the century-old laws that brought electrification to rural Massachusetts to create municipal lighting plants in each town and then a cooperative of these municipal lighting plants that would be able to issue bonds on Wall Street to be repaid through fees for services. This bottom-up organizational feat was accomplished mainly in 2011. To summarize: WiredWest is a cooperative corporation of town municipal lighting plants. WiredWest is us--the member towns that created an mlp in their town and joined it with the mlps of other towns that did the same thing. This was an arduous task for every town; it took four separate town meetings in Hawley. It is a separate legal structure but it is not something from outside coming into our town to do something. It is all of us together. This will be much more readily apparent when I discuss the recent proposals coming from the Govenor and the Mass Broadband Institute. WiredWest is governed by a board of directors consisting of a delegate from each of 42 member towns. The board meets monthly in a different member town (usually the second or third Saturday at 9:30 am). It is run on a day-to-day basis by a seven-member executive committee made up of board members nominated and elected by the full board. The executive committee meets at least weekly, most often on Wednesday afternoons, using a meeting room at the old Hampshire County Courthouse in Northampton.
WiredWest is governed by open meeting law and anyone can attend a board or executive committee meeting. Because WiredWest is something of a hybrid organization and not strictly a municipality itself, the exceptions to open meeting law differ slightly than those for a town, however most is exactly the same. Meeting dates, times, directions, agendas, and subsequent minutes are all posted on the WiredWest website Though it has received some grant money from MBI, WiredWest is not MBI, as will become clearer below. After organizing WiredWest set out to create the business plan required to go for financing including: High level engineering planning Financial modeling and analysis Market surveys, pricing, take rates, other data collection including mapping and analysis of 70,000 utility poles Regional economic development analysis Most of this work was done with the volunteer labor of local people with relevant backgrounds. Some, like final engineering plans and a market survey, were required to be done by outside firms and was paid for by donations and grants. The business plan is essentially complete and WiredWest was preparing to seek financing this fall through the USDA/Rural Utility Service program and Wall Street, with the network build out to have been completed in 2015. So what is this latest proposal to build the "last mile" from Governor Patrick and the Massachusetts Broadband Institute, and how does WiredWest fit in (or not!)? The Mass Broadband Institute is a state level agency, part of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, which has been charged with "bridging the digital divide" in Massachusetts with "public private partnerships." They oversaw the building of the fiber-optic backbone up Interstate 91 and the branches to each town with a mixture of federal and state money. While not a lot of specific detail has been announced about this "last mile" to homes, some things have emerged, even if ultimately they may not be written in stone: Nothing can happen until the proposed 40 million is approved, which could be anytime between now and the end of the legislative session in July 2014. There is even some chance, though probably small, that it will not be approved. The total cost estimate for the last mile is about 100 million dollars.
MBI also has been pursuing USDA/Rural Utility Service financing for another chunk of the money. We have heard that it will be insisted that the towns "put skin in the game" and it has been assumed that we will be doing it through increasing property taxes--possibly as much as 30% of the cost. MBI believes build out will take 3 years so we're looking at a finish date possibly in 2017, plus or minus a year. The state will own the network (and determine wholesale pricing to internet service providers, receive revenues, maintain infrastructure), not local towns via WiredWest. Though an ideal, there does not seem to be a guarantee of universal fiberoptic--to cut costs some remoter areas (the ones who need it the most!) might be left out or offered something less than fiber-optic. All of these decisions are being made in Boston with little, if any, direct town input. Last mile MBI-enabled "broadband" (defined as 4 mbps download!) was going to be a mixture of solutions with little fiber optic. That a fiber build out is now the primary emphasis for our area is due to WiredWest, it's insistence on fiber, moving forward with its plan, and it's work demonstrating that it makes the most sense from a number of angles. Clearly, assuming the 40 million dollar state funding passes, WiredWest will not be building the network on its own as it envisioned. However, if nothing else, WiredWest, having organized the towns into a sophisticated entity that can both get information out and respond to the machinations coming out of Boston, has emerged as the advocate for town interests and is really the only representative of the towns at the table. Some examples: All right, let's lay it on the line--anybody who thinks the towns are going to vote to raise property taxes to fund any part, much less 30% of this thing (particularly when they won't even own anything), is grossly misinformed. WiredWest has a number of alternative ways to approach the town contribution--for example, WiredWest itself could finance the "town" portion, to be repaid with network revenues, not taxes, since it has the capacity to borrow. WiredWest has been doing a great deal of work developing business models appropriate for our region and their numbers differ a great deal from MBI's. This work may help reduce the percentage that towns will be asked to be
responsible for and increase the amount MBI decides to finance themselves-- through the USDA, for example. These types of things are just beginning to be discussed. Apparently the USDA, being an ardent advocate of rural cooperatives, would like to see WiredWest a party to any grant application by MBI. WiredWest has organized the towns and educated people about how critical this network is. MBI needs boots on the ground to bring the towns along with any plans and WiredWest is the boots. WiredWest will advocate relentlessly for universal access--every home and business in underserved towns. WiredWest will advocate relentlessly for reasonable fees for service rather than turning the network simply into a cash cow for the state. WiredWest will advocate for a permanent and substantive role for towns in governing/running the network in exchange for whatever the towns will be contributing (even if only loan guarantees). Should the 40 million not be approved, WiredWest stands ready to move forward with its own plan. Some town reps in WiredWest favor becoming an internet service provider on the MBI network, some don't. This will be something hashed out in the months ahead. In the end, the goals of WiredWest remain the same: universal reasonably priced fiber-optic internet access to every member-town home or business that wants it, however it plays out. WiredWest has been cheering and applauding MBI on its successful completion of the first two stages of the buildout and pledging continued collaboration on the last mile in whatever way that can make the above goals happen. Obviously 40 million and the participation of the State of Massachusetts makes the project viable in a new way; WiredWest just wants to make sure important interests of the towns are not left out.
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