GCN Update November 2010

Ballot Measure 1 Fails

Ballot measure 1, which would have lent up to $150,000 from the Gustavus Endowment Fund to build a community-wide broadband network, failed to gain the 2/3 majority vote necessary for passage, so the Gustavus Endowment Fund will not be used to build a community-wide broadband network.

• See also: Ballot Measure 1 details.

Now What?

The Gustavus Community Network (GCN) advisory committee met October 14 to consider how to proceed given that ballot measure 1 failed and Nathan Borson, Sean Neilson, and Phoebe Vanselow have announced that volunteer maintenance and operations will end July 1, 2011.

Public vs. Private

First the committee discussed the question of whether to keep GCN public versus privatizing it. After considerable discussion, the committee voted to keep GCN in the public sector. Factors entering into that decision included

• Nathan Borson has lost interest in building the network proposed for Ballot measure 1 himself for two reasons:
• • Building the broadband network presents a conflict of interest with the GCN administration contract currently held by Corvid Computing. He would rather develop grant applications and represent the city to other contractors and vendors than be one of them.
  • The network proposed for ballot measure 1 was the least expensive way to get real broadband service to the entire community. The amount needed was within the means of city government or a private party and subscribers could have paid for it over time. However, it would have been challenging to extend it to western Gustavus and it would have seemed slow in another 5 to 10 years given maximum speeds of 3 megabits/second to many customers (based on our experience with the Open-Mesh radios in the Salmon River area). It also might not have fully supported advanced voice and video services that would make a community-wide network more financially viable.
• The committee questioned whether the proposed network could be built by other contractors for what Nate was willing to build it for.
  
• It appears that any community-wide broadband network, especially one that would provide advanced services and have a lifetime longer than 5 to 10 years, would cost more than city government can fund, and more than a private investor would be able to recover from subscriber fees. Therefore, public funds from outside Gustavus are needed to build a quality community-wide broadband network.
  
• There appears to be strong public support for building a broadband network.
• • 57% of voters were in favor of ballot measure 1; it failed only because a 2/3 super-majority was needed for passage.
  • Broadband ranks high among the priorities established by the Gustavus Strategic Plan and in the survey conducted for the city's 3-year anniversary review.

The committee concluded that a community-wide broadband network is still needed, that building a decent one requires public funding from outside Gustavus, and that a network built with public funds should be owned by and answerable to the public.

The New Plan

The GCN committee voted to direct co-administrator Nathan Borson to develop a new grant request for a community-wide broadband network, to be submitted to city council and hopefully to the state capital improvement program, as well as other sources in case that does not succeed. The understanding was this grant request might be for many times what the old plan would have cost.

Nate has started researching a fiber-optic network that could deliver speeds of one gigabit per second from the local network center to any customer in Gustavus, which is 333 times faster than the old plan, with superior reliability and quality of service fully capable of serving all multimedia needs for decades to come. By upgrading the equipment at each end of the fiber connections, this speed could be increased ten-fold in the future without replacing the fiber, which is why fiber optic networks are sometimes called "future proof." Despite the exponential rate of change in networks, telecommunications technology, and demand for multimedia, an all-fiber community network should have a lifespan of 20 years or more, supporting applications like multiple simultaneous high-definition video streams to the same household.

If a fiber optic network appears more expensive than granting agencies are willing to support, the fall-back position would be a 700 MHz wireless network or a hybrid fiber-wireless network. These could still cost many times the old plan, but could be considerably less costly than an all-fiber network.

The grant request should be ready for council consideration by the end of November.

Tower Update

The Gustavus city council will take public testimony and vote on November 11 whether or not to use $8,672 from city reserves to fill the funding gap and build the Gustavus Multipurpose Telecommunications facility. 

[to be finished soon]

Financial Report

[To be finished soon]

Surviving Next Year

Facing multiple challenges including network congestion, end of volunteer support, etc.