Danville Fiber Conference Emphasizes Municipal Broadband and Network Investment

The Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) and Broadband Initiatives Program “have been successful” but “we still have questions we're wrestling through at the FCC,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. Warner pointed to the FCC’s questions about the speeds to define high-speed broadband. One challenge is “helping localities sort through on their own checklist” what they need to bring broadband and connectivity to their area, he said in a video conversation broadcast to Danville attendees. Warner hopes the U.S. government continues rolling out broadband support to rural America, he said. “We can’t call it stimulus anymore -- that’s unfortunately become a bad name,” he said, but high-cost support could be redirected to support broadband.

The recent FCC Mobility Fund was a good start, Warner said. He said he also wants more spectrum in the marketplace and doing away with the wired-wireless divide in thinking: “There ought to be a collaborative relationship, and we need to keep pushing the FCC, whether it’s incentive auctions to free up some of the existing broadcast space; trying to actually just get an inventory of all of our existing spectrum, where it’s used, has been a real challenge.” Traditional fiber and wireless industries have opportunities to work together, he said.

"We preached that if you need fiber and you own an electric utility as a city, you're the perfect candidate to build that network,” said keynoter James Salter, CEO of Atlantic Engineering Group. Atlantic Engineering helped build what was arguably the first fiber-to-the-home city and now helps in many community projects, including Google Fiber in Kansas City. In his Thursday speech, Salter said there'll always be a need for more bandwidth, and fiber is the best way to deliver that.

Rural Utilities Service Deputy Administrator Jessica Zufolo hailed the “historic wave” of investment in rural, unserved and underserved communities under the Obama administration, in a Thursday panel. “Our door is open,” she said, referring to different grant and loan opportunities that she wants this telecom world to “be aware of and use.” Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition Director John Windhausen encouraged the federal government to launch a “round two of funding for BTOP” in the next four years, citing the success of the first round of broadband stimulus grants offered in 2010. BTOP has covered about 10-15 percent of the anchor institutions his organization serves but he described ongoing “unmet needs” and said he supports a second round of grants.

On new funding sources, Virginia Deputy Secretary of Technology Karen Jackson recommended paying attention to FirstNet, which she said the audience would be hearing a lot about in the months to come. The $7 billion national public safety network will be moving into rural and underserved areas, she said. The attendees should talk to their contacts who deal with the federal government and ensure they all “get to be a part of the solution” and avoid “duplicative” efforts, she said. NTIA will offer $135 million in state and local implementation grants for FirstNet. The value is in the data, said Broadband Communities Magazine Corporate Editor Steven Ross. Triple play isn’t profitable and voice has become a “loss leader,” he added. US Ignite Project Director William Wallace urged visiting the Mozilla Ignite website to learn about funding possibilities. The organization is hosting a code prototypes contest with $485,000 worth of prizes available in three rounds, according to the website (http://bit.ly/UzBJuT). The next application deadline is Dec. 20.

Panelists tried to give the business case for community broadband. One network “created approximately 200 jobs” that hadn’t existed before, said Fresenius Medical Care Executive Vice President Franklin Maddux. “Please don’t look at state government as this huge monstrosity that is slow to move,” said Doug Crenshaw, strategic sourcing manager for the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, who is in charge of the state’s IT. He described “extremely broad” needs of government for broadband, noting the amount of data the state Department of Transportation needs to send and new technologies like tablets being used. The Virginia agency spends more than $100 million annually on its telecommunications services “and it’s growing,” Crenshaw added. The National League of Cities focuses on many telecom issues in blog posts and case studies, said Center for Research and Innovation Infrastructure Senior Associate Julia Pulidindi, supporting the right of cities to own their own networks. Success of these networks shouldn’t be held to the standards Wall Street uses to view private investment, Baller said Friday, saying many of these projects did meet that higher standard. “We need better ways to quantify social benefits,” Baller added.

"There’s no one for us to pass the buck to,” said Chris Mitchell, telecom director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, describing the lack of any “silver bullet” in creating these networks. Such broadband projects still have “a lot of work to do” in figuring out how to attract businesses, he said. People understand broadband better than five years ago and projects like in Kansas City, Chattanooga and organizations like US Ignite and Gig.U help demonstrate “success in changing the way people think about broadband,” Baller said. The stimulus helped, too, he said.

During the closing session, one attendee said he was disappointed because he expected the economic development side of the networks to be addressed more, but “what I got was the standard technical conference.” He believes these proposed networks will happen but “the old economy is not going to change unless we change it,” he said, asking for more focus on that economic change in future meetings.

Baller described stopping 13 of 14 proposed state bills that would hurt municipal broadband efforts in years past but said he encountered obstacles starting in 2010. “After those elections, you couldn’t talk to them any more,” he said of local officials and the rise of the Tea Party movement. There was “no room for entertaining rational discussion,” he said during questions that followed a Thursday panel. The 2012 elections might bring back open discussion, he added. “You'll have to join us in this fight,” he told attendees.