Author: andy

On March 17, 2022, the monthly Los Alamos League of Women Voters Lunch with a Leader program featured the new County Broadband Manager, Jerry Smith.  You can see a recording of the event on youtube.  Having watched the video, I believe that the County did well in hiring Mr. Smith.  He understands the many aspects of broadband: technology; politics; business; etc.

Here are some high points from the last year’s progress on broadband for Los Alamos:

• December 4, 2020: I launched blabnow.blog
• January 12: County Council makes broadband one of 7 strategic priorities for 2021
• April 6: County Council discusses broadband. All seem to favor County involvement
• April 26: County Council adopts budget for FY2022 that includes a recurring item of $161,664 for a Broadband Manager and $500,000 for Broadband design services
• December 27: The first day that Jerry Smith, the new Broadband Manager, is on the job at the County

The County has posted the new Broadband Manager position.  It closes at the end of September.  If you know anyone qualified who might be interested, tell them about it.  I have written a separate page promoting the position.

On Thursday 2021-09-16 I posted a request on Hacker News with the title “Ask HN: Advice on bringing community broadband to Los Alamos? ”  I was pleased with the discussion which you can read by clicking on the link.  There was good advice from several people with a variety of knowledge and backgrounds.  southerntofu  from France wrote in part “social justice is an important part of public service“.  At least three folks who have lived in Los Alamos commented including brianolson who wrote that in the 1990s, “I was the student representative on the committee setting up the first internet service to all the schools.”  Five people invited me to send them email which I’ve done.  I believe that the discussion will lead to some interesting applications for the Broadband Manager position.

The 2022 fiscal year for Los Alamos County starts on July 1, and the FY22 budget that the County Council approved in April includes a recurring item for a Broadband Manager.  The current staff will bring Council a new position description and salary to approve on June 29.

I think that the Broadband Manager will be key to improving broadband access in the County. It will require an unusual set of activities and skills. The same set of circumstances that has moved Los Alamos to begin moving again on broadband now has led a large number of other communities to make similar decisions. So there will be more competition for people and resources than there would have been even a year ago.

Here’s what I want the Broadband Manager to do:

• Understand and document the current state of the telecommunication business in the County. Take charge of the franchise agreements with telecommunication businesses in the County. If a bond measure is necessary, design one that voters would support.
• Understand and explain/document options for external support, eg, state or federal programs, and be ready to apply for grants or loans as needed.
• Develop several options for how County Government can improve telecommunication options, with estimates of cost, time to implement, and performance that residents and businesses would see. Coordinate with LANL and LA-Schools to support work and study from home.
• Understand and explain/document broadband initiatives in other communities in the US. Know what has succeeded and what has failed and what others are trying now.

Here are some skills and experience that the Broadband Manager will need:

• Work with bureaucrats and elected officials
• Develop and evaluate business plans
• Evaluate communication technologies. In particular be able answer questions about the likely future of satellite, microwave, DOCIS (cable modem) and fiber technology.
• Manage contracts

Here are some links that I found while thinking about what I’ve written:

• The National Conference of State Legislatures has a list of pending and enacted legislation in 47 states about broadband in 2021.
• Block Island, RI uses 2 percent municipal bonds with 40-year terms to fund conduit.
• Google Fiber’s wireline broadband is expanding to a new city for the first time in several years as part of a public-private partnership to build an open-access network that any ISP can use to offer service. The new network will be in West Des Moines, Iowa.
• We need a miracle, it’s very important.

Council Chair Ryti has alerted me to an updated version of budget options prepared by staff in which there are two more lines for broadband, namely: 12b a recurring item of $161,664 for a Broadband Manager; 12c $500,000 for Broadband design services. I like the revisions.

As Emily Litella would have said, “Never mind”.

As I said in the previous posting, I was pleased that in the discussion of broadband at the April 6 meeting of the County Council there was consensus that it’s time for the County government to run fiber in Los Alamos County. The  FY2022 PROPOSED BUDGET does not reflect that consensus. A search for “broadband” finds that only on four of the 448 pages is it mentioned. Here is what it says:

• On page 4 “Improving access to high quality broadband” is listed as one of seven “Priority Areas” specified by the Council. The text is “Enabling reliable high-speed broadband service throughout the county by determining appropriate investments (e.g., conduct a community needs analysis, evaluate technical options).”
• On page 28 amongst 10 pages of Management Action Plans in response to Council Priority Goals of “Improving access to high quality broadband” broadband gets 1/3 of a page. The Management Action Plan there is “Pursue ‘middle mile’ of high speed broadband network”, and the Narrative/Analysis is “ASD is working on broadband options with PW. A phase one project has been identified and included in the new FY budget options request that will go to Council in April. It will include a community needs analysis to evaluate what level of service is currently available from which vendors, where, and at what price (detailed capacity analysis). It will also include an evaluation of what customers (residential and commercial) want and what they are willing to pay – with consideration of whether or not customers might switch to obtain more for less (this will include a detailed market analysis and absorption projection).”  Cross-cutting impacts: Housing, Business Environment. The Lead Staff is CMO/ASD/IM, and the Status/Deadline is On Going.
• On page 178 in “FY2022 Budget Options” the second B level option is a one-time expense of $175K for “Broadband Consulting”. The Detailed Notes are, “Consulting services for the Broadband study initiative. Provide community needs analysis to evaluate what level of service is currently available from which vendors, where, and at what price (detailed capacity analysis) along with detailed market analysis and absorption projection.”
• On page 430 the budget option from page 178 is repeated.

In the sections on broadband, the text of the proposed budget uses the following abbreviations for units in the County: PW Public Works; ASD Administrative Service Department; CMO County Managers Office; IM Information Management. The text also refers to the “middle mile” which I think means a connection off of the hill to the trunk that Redi-Net runs from Santa Fe to Taos. At the April 6 Council meeting there was speculation that Xfinity and LANet share the use of a middle mile link off of the hill that Lumen (the phone company) built for the benefit of LANL. I recommend the brief Wikipedia article on “middle mile” which says in part “However, middle-mile access, where bought from the incumbent operator, is often much more expensive than either, and typically forms the major expense of non-incumbent broadband ISPs. The alternative, building out their own fibre networks, is capital-intensive, and thus unavailable to most new operators.”

The budget proposal fails to take County responsibility for broadband seriously. A recurring budget item for staff oversight of broadband in the County is appropriate whether or not the County owns or operates any part of a telecommunication utility. The level of staff understanding demonstrated at recent Council meetings is not sufficient. Here is a list of some staff activities that the budget should fund:

• Know what telecommunication utilities residents are using. That is to include what they are paying for and what they are getting.
• Make public the knowledge of telecommunication services available in the County.
• Know how telecommunication utilities that operate in the County provide the services that they offer. That includes the last mile technology and the middle mile.
• Understand how residents connect with schools and LANL.
• Know what telecommunication services other community owned utilities, eg, Kit Carson Electric Co-op, are offering. Understand the technologies, financing, and business models that they use.
• Understand the technical and financial aspects of various last mile technologies, eg, is it plausible that in the near future wireless to the house will bypass fiber as the optimal technology.
• Keep track of external funding opportunities that exist and as they emerge.
• Understand the options for a County owned telecommunication utility in terms of technology, financing, and business model.
• Get rough estimates of design/business options.  Choose one in consultation with Council. Flesh out the chosen design to get a good cost estimate, and then pursue funding.

While staff will need external help to understand some of those issues, staff should take responsibility for maintaining the expertise. It will take staff expertise and flexibility to move forward successfully. The 2012/2013 study and design was prepared with constraints imposed by Council at the time that forced the design into the most expensive possible regime, and when the price came in Council chose not to pursue it.  If Council takes a more flexible approach this time that relies on staff expertise, it is more likely to be successful.

I attended almost the entire five hour meeting of the Los Alamos County Council on April 6 2021. I am pleased to report that the Councilors think it’s time for the County government to run fiber in Los Alamos County.  The meeting is available on line, and you can click on the agenda items and watch just the parts you are interested in. In addition to participating live by zoom on the 6th, I watched the video of the first round of comments on the broadband issue by each Councilor to make the notes here (the times are approximate).

Presentation by Steve Lynn, 3:32:40-3:35:28: Proposed $175K for a needs analysis by an outside consultant.

Comments by Councilor Scott, 3:35:28-3:41:00: Instead of supporting handing off a new needs analysis to an external consultant, Scott believes the County needs a staff person in charge of broadband.

Comments by Councilor Williams, 3:41:00-3:50:55: Williams and LAC IT staff member John Roig talked about capacity off of the hill. They each believe that Lumen Technologies (formerly CenturyLink/QWest/U S West, ie, the phone company) owns a fiber link across the Rio Grande that LANL and all of the local ISPs use it to get off of the hill, and that there is not a capacity bottleneck. Williams believes that trenching the County for fiber is the only credible solution. He supports an analysis to discover what residents would save by having such fiber and the associated improvement in service quality. I don’t know if he meant to include the savings from the rate changes we would see from the incumbents in response to the emergence of credible competition. He said that if we are serious, it leads to a bond issue, and if we are serious, fiber is the technology.

Comments by Councilor Derkacs, 3:50:55-3:54:26: She said that it’s time to make a decision to move forward; we should forge forward. She started her comments by referring to the history of studies funded by the County, saying, “This page I’m looking at.” I believe that she was looking at blabnow.blog.

Comments by Councilor Izraelevitz, 3:54:26-4:04:55: He said that economic modeling will be important and raised the question of the County providing dark fiber or becoming a service provider. He mentioned an informal survey effort that he led in January. (He called me when I launched blabnow.blog to ask me to lead that effort, and I declined.) He also suggested that LANL might financially support broadband in the County so that LANL staff could work more effectively offsite. I believe that Councilor Izraelevitz is alone on the Council in opposing a bond issue for broadband infrastructure.

Comments by Councilor Robinson, 4:04:55-4:08:55: He led by saying that there’s not a chance that Triad, ie, the lab, is going to pay to support broadband for staff at home. Next he compared investing in fiber now to the investments decades ago in the El Vado and Abiquiu generating stations. He meant that it’s an opportunity for a once in a generation good move, and he said “It’s the greatest advantage we could give to attract people and business up here.” He wants a study of how to pay for fiber, not a needs analysis, and he says we should move quickly.

Comments by Councilor Reagor, 4:08:55-4:13:00: Reagor said that no more study is necessary. He believes that we need a fiber optic backbone in the County and that the next steps are an RFP (Request for Proposals) and a bond issue. His principal concern is that “wireless technology is moving really fast”. Rather than running fiber to the home where signals are then translated to WiFi, the best solution in the future may be to have that translation at the level of a block or even a mile from each residence. He noted that we can’t address that concern with a survey of the public. While I suspect fiber to the home is going to be the best option for many years, I don’t entirely discount Reagor’s concern about wireless bypassing the final link from fiber to devices in homes. I support getting external expert advice on the question.

Comments by Councilor Ryti, 4:13:00-4:15:36: Ryti would like to see options that could be implemented before we get fiber to every home because it will take so long to install all of the fiber.  He believes that the County should move quickly before the telecom incumbents have time to get laws passed that would constrain our options. He also said the County needs a person on staff to manage broadband issues.

Comments by the public, 4:15:36: I made the first comment.

Summary: A 6 to 1 majority of the Los Alamos County Council wants to progress to a bond issue to fund an optical fiber plant of some sort.