Lessons Learned

TIMOTHY NULTY,

Burlington Telecom, ValleyFiber: Burlington has insisted on having Burlington Telecom as a department of the city, like parks and rec. In the very special context of Burlington's history, it was not a stupid or frivolous decision, but I would urge any town thinking of this that they not do it. That's not to say it can't be wholly owned by the city, but it should be run like a private business, not a city bureaucracy. Telecom is massively different from any of those traditional utilities. Even electricity sells a commodity: kilowatt hours. There is no change in the product; it's one product with no competition, relatively slow change in technology, [and] most of the pricing decisions are made by regulator. All you have to do is make sure you don't kill anybody.

Telecom, on the other hand, has a lot more in common with Wal-Mart than it does with electricity. We sell five different kinds of products, which change all the time: pricing changes, costing changes, technology changes every six months, very high pace, very high stress. You can fail quickly in this kind of business. Trying to do it under civil service town constraints as a department of a town, it's hard. Being a department is a serious disadvantage. Instead, it needs to be set up as a wholly independent, municipally owned corporation with very tough business requirements.

TIM SCOTT,

PacketFront: The business case needs to include triple play, and innovative local services are very important to growth of local and regional networks. But municipalities should also look at local education or health care. There are all sorts of service providers, and the municipality should make sure it has something that is different, something that is compelling. The feedback we get is that economic development gets touted as the reason for doing this, but that should be one of several attributes that the network is going to bring. Economic development can be hard to measure, hard to prove. How do you measure the businesses that decide to stay in the community?

SARAH MORFORD,

Grant County PUD: When we first started this in 2000, we were our own utility crews to deploy and build. Because we are a utility, we were building in the electrical zone, which meant only electrical linemen could do the deployment. Today we are using a design/build firm to deploy and build, and we have moved it to the communications zone.

WES ROSENBALM,

BVU OptiNet: Most municipalities that have electric systems start off by tying together substations and facilities today with fiber optics, which is very beneficial. Then they think, “Let's start connecting homes,” and they try to run these networks with their current staffing. Now you never say “never.” There are people who have been successful doing that, but it is very difficult to do and maintain the knowledge base and talent that people demand and expect — tech support, network engineering, the whole nine yards. It's a different mind-set; where you had a monopoly before, now you have to compete. We learned some things the hard way, and we did have the right people in place.

Municipalities need to understand you need to be as future-proof as you can be, not only for the network but the content. You need to be looking three to five years out to ask, “What are we going to need, and how are we going to pay for it?” Municipalities tend to be reactive, and they need to get proactive in their thought processes.