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Find the Frontier Fiber
After spending tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money to wire more than 500 miles of fiber broadband cable in public buildings across West Virginia, Frontier is allegedly withholding detailed engineering maps detailing the new fiber network from its competitors.
The Charleston Gazette’s Eric Eyre has kept a close watch on broadband stimulus funding in West Virginia, and the circus of controversy surrounding how the money has been spent.
But now that Frontier’s taxpayer-funded institutional fiber network has been built, efforts to install Internet connections to end users has become complicated… unless you choose Frontier Communications as your vendor.
State Broadband Deployment Council member Jim Martin from Citynet has been a vocal critic of the broadband spending priorities in West Virginia for several years. He’s particularly irritated taxpayer funds have been effectively diverted to Frontier to build a modern fiber network that mostly benefits Frontier and its shareholders. Now his company wants to see if it can use the new fiber network to connect more West Virginians to fiber Internet service, but Martin claims he has been given the runaround by Frontier, state officials, and a broadband council that includes a Frontier executive as a member.
“A number of providers have inquired about where that fiber is located so they can expand broadband to customers,” Martin told the Gazette. “The engineering maps are important so they will know exactly where the fiber is connected, and so they can tap it.”
Only Martin cannot get the detailed engineering maps he needs. Eyre describes the high-tech equivalent of “button, button, who’s got the button?”
Martin started asking about the maps eight months ago. State officials overseeing the broadband expansion project promised to check into his request, but they haven’t released the engineering maps.
On Wednesday, Frontier executive Dana Waldo, who also serves on the Broadband Deployment Council, told Martin to request the maps from the state “broadband grant implementation team,” which heads the broadband expansion project.
“Those are requests that have to go to the implementation team,” said Waldo, who heads Frontier’s West Virginia operations. “It provides for a consistent process.”
However, Gale Given, who serves on the project team and heads the state’s Office of Technology, referred Martin to Frontier.
“If you need detailed engineering maps,” Given said, “it’s my understanding the [broadband project] team is not going to produce those.”
Given noted that less-detailed maps are available on the state’s broadband project website.
“If you need a specific area,” she said, “tell us the specific area you need.”
Martin says the maps on the website mentioned are hand-drawn Google Maps, unsuitable to work with because they lack detail.
Unless there is something in the government funding arrangement to the contrary, the fiber lines installed with gov’t money remain the property of Frontier. So I don’t know why the fact that the lines were gov’t funded should give anyone reason to believe they have a right to see the detailed engineering maps of the installation. Here’s another way of looking at it: we as taxpayers foot the bill for the county jail — does that give me a right to see the detailed wiring diagrams of the jail’s security system? People have this mistaken belief that their taxes somehow… Read more »
Here is the description of the project from the NTIA. Note the last sentence: The West Virginia Statewide Broadband Infrastructure Project plans to bring high-speed Internet access to this vastly underserved region by expanding the state’s existing microwave public safety network and adding about 2,400 miles of fiber. The expanded statewide network expects to directly connect more than 1,000 anchor institutions, including public safety agencies, public libraries, schools, government offices, and other critical community facilities at speeds of up to 45 Mbps. As a result of this project, every K–12 school in the state will have a high-speed Internet connection.… Read more »
Thanx for the link — it helps but not much. From the description, it sounds like the state got the money from the Feds, but the state turned around and bid the project out to a third-party provider (in this case, Frontier). The short blurb talks about providing “access” to anchor institutions, but I can’t tell from the context if the project was to build-out state OWNED fiber, or simply have the state provide high-speed Internet access, which is the SERVICE provided over the fiber, but not the FACILITY itself. Bottom line: I can’t tell who’s on the hook for… Read more »
The problem is it doesn’t really matter:
“by allowing local Internet service providers to connect to the project’s open network.”
Seems pretty clear. Why would a local ISP need a network map?
The state s/b able to tell them if they can connect or not. It’s like any other potential broadband customer: call a few ISPs and ask them if they can provide me service.
I don’t need to know the location of their facilities — all I need to know is whether or not they can provide me service.
Your missing a key component of the wording – open. I for one am tired of things being trade secrets or business secrets, etc if it was paid with by taxpayer dollars and the contract says it should be an open. Thhis goes for everything, not just broadband. If the ISPs need to know where the cable infractructure is to be able to physically connect to it and they are not being told, then it is not an open network. This is FRONTIER. They do everything they can to NOT help their competition. I have experience on the customer side… Read more »
You may be right. But without seeing the actual contract between FTR and the state (shouldn’t that be a matter of public record?), we don’t know what FTR is actually, legally obligated to do. We are speculating based on a web article and an NTIA blurb. Someone at the newspaper needs to do their job, send a FOIA request to NTIA and an open records request to the WV state government, and get those contracts.
I agree. And also, if it is not in the contract, WHY it is not on there…..
I agree, unless part of that funding is that competitors can use that fibre. If that is part of the funding, then they are deliberately trying to get around letting competitors use the very thing the public funded just to keep it for themselves.
I do not know if that is the case or not, but it very well may be if the above is true. Why would everyone even entertain the idea if that was not the case? The first response would have been you can’t as it is our network and for use with Frontier customers only.