The decision on the third-party vendor approach stems from a feasibility study by Kersey Consulting, a firm that offers broadband consulting to municipalities and public utilities. The study began in July, and examined three models the JCPB could use to offer the services: having the JCPB be the retailer; leasing the extra fiber capacity to another company; or bringing in a third-party operator to provide the network access electronics, customer support, billing services, etc. Working with a third-party vendor gives the JCPB the best return on its investment, balancing low risk with possible profits, said JCPB spokesman Robert White. The Power Board would provide the “backbone,” while the vendor, working under JCPB’s brand, would provide the “last mile” services and equipment to the commercial customers.

Initially, according to the feasibility study, the Power Board would most likely make a capital investment of $1.5 million over five years, which could include installing more of a fiber backbone to reach businesses if needed.

In the place where “Texas history lives,” the City of Granbury followed a fellow Texas city in delivering a Tropos wifi system that covers all 10 square miles of the city.  Less than a decade ago, Granbury had no functional IT department and after hurdles with a private public partnership, established a functional and successful publicly-owned wireless network.  Initially created to support city functions and mobile police, the network is available to the public, elevating the rural town outside of Fort Worth to the mobile age.

When Granbury hired IT Director Tony Tull in 2003, the technology capabilities of the city were dire: no staff, a budget of $6,000, and only two buildings with access.   Tull quickly brought city and council officials on-board to his ambitious technology plan to deploy wireless WAN to all city buildings in partnership with their existing ISP, Texas-based Frontier Broadband (now acquired by KeyOn).  The initial needs were to equip city personnel with mobile access which focused on police officers, firefighters, and city inspectors.

Other goals included general public and tourist broadband access, reading utility meters, perform live web casts, and connect to nearby governmental networks.   After the City received a Homeland Security grant, $70,000 was earmarked to outfit over 10 police vehicles with wireless laptops.  In 2004 Tull attended the Public Technology Institute’s National Summit for Local Governments in Corpus Christi where he reviewed the city’s 147 square mile wireless network by Tropos.  Convinced the technology was right, Granbury deployed a test run of 40 routers across half the city and eventually 100 more to cover the roughly 10 square miles.

Franklin County formed a partnership with a local wireless Internet service provider (WISP) to expand the County's local government wide-area network and provide broadband options for the citizens. The project leveraged County structures such as towers and water tanks for WISP transmitters and receivers. We were in the process of upgrading the public safety radio system at the same time, so the two efforts worked together to identify possible new tower locations that would improve radio coverage and meet broadband demand. The partnership provided the WISP with a fast-path to business growth through additional funding and access to existing infrastructure. The County provided space on towers, tanks and poles in exchange for Internet service at County offices. This arrangement lowered deployment costs for the WISP, expediting business growth. The partnership expanded the WISP customer base in Franklin County from 98 customers in early 2005 to approximately 1000 in early 2008. In addition, 15 fire and rescue stations were added to the County’s wide-area-network (WAN) in addition to five other County offices. There are many advantages to moving remote offices onto the WAN, including reduced costs and improved communications and data sharing across County Administration. The wireless mesh network supports data and voice and the WISP is currently segmenting the County's voice traffic on their network to ensure quality of service (QoS).

At the 10th annual Commonwealth of Virginia Innovative Technology Symposium in 2008, Governor Timothy M.

Synopsis

One of features that differentiates WiscNet from a private broadband provider is allowing for “bursting,” so that during isolated periods when researchers send huge data sets, they greatly exceed the average data cap. UW-Madison currently uses seven gigabits on average, and would have to procure 14 gigabits under the new legislation, even though most of the extra seven gigabits would seldom be in use, Meachen [UW CIO] said. “We'd be paying for the fact that researchers have to send these huge data sets, and not have it take hours and hours to get to where it's going,” Meachen said. “You can't afford to pay for that extra 7 gigabits from the private sector because it's too costly. They increase your charges based on that.” A private network would not have the necessary capacity for scientists on the UW-Madison campus, who are some of the leading researchers on next generation Internet.

The motion prohibits the UW System from taking part in WiscNet, the network provider for 450 organizations, including K-12 schools, libraries, cities and county governments.

The Port Authority of Medina County, Ohio, has successfully bonded $14.4 million to take advantage of a broadband stimulus award to build a fiber-optic network connecting community anchor institutions and businesses with better broadband.

Bethany Dentler, executive director of the Medina County Economic Development Corporation, said Dec. 17 that a bond consultant had just completed sale of the bonds at an average interest rate of 5.96 percent. Cash from the bond sale was expected to be in the hands of the Medina County Port Authority by the end of the year and a fiber lighting ceremony to kickoff the construction phase of the project is planned for March or April. Dentler said the port authority, which will own the network, plans to pay off the bonds over the next 20 years with fees charged to customers of the fiber network.

The nonprofit organization OneCommunity will build and presumably operate the network, which will be owned by the County. Being located in close enough proximity to work with OneCommunity appears to be a terrific advantage for communities who make investments in broadband infrastructure. The $1.4 million in stimulus funds aiding this project were a part of the larger award given to OneCommunity as part of their efforts to better wire 20 counties in Ohio.

Ontario County was working on a publicly owned solution to Middle Mile long before the broadband stimulus approach made it popular. And now, before most of the stimulus money has been disbursed, they have completed an expanded version of their initial plan.

To date, Axcess Ontario has signed master agreements with eight telecom and broadband companies, including Verizon Wireless and national broadband provider tw telecom. Axcess Ontario is in continual discussions with other service providers, and is working aggressively on its next goal of luring a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service provider to Ontario County. With the fiber ring complete, businesses and municipalities now have access to faster and less expensive broadband, as well as bandwidth equal to global broadband leaders. Businesses can gain access to the ring simply by contacting any of the eight service providers that work with Axcess Ontario. Residents do not yet have access to faster and less expensive broadband, but they will once a FTTH service provider is secured. Axcess Ontario has been working to lure a FTTH provider for more than a year, including submitting an application on behalf of Ontario County, NY, to Google's "Fiber for Communities" ultrafast broadband project earlier this year. More than 1,100 communities nationwide responded to that project, and Google just announced last week that it was postponing its selection of winning communities to early 2011.

We will be interested to see if they can lure a FTTH provider -- though middle mile can lower the operating costs of providing such a service, the capital costs are not significantly changed. And with the robust middle mile already connecting community anchor institutions, a new FTTH provider cannot count on those high-revenue customers. We have seen this previously in Alberta, Canada. Axcess Ontario is an example of a good public-private partnership - as noted in Telecompetitor: