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While telecom industry-backed groups dismiss community broadband as a waste of taxpayer dollars and an excuse for customers to watch illicit videos and steal content, CNBC reports Chattanooga’s infrastructure improvements, including their gigabit fiber network owned by public utility EPB are contributing to the city’s enormous economic growth and falling unemployment rate. Private companies are pouring into Chattanooga and find a city ready to welcome them and meet their digital needs. Community broadband: a waste of taxpayer money or exactly the right fuel to power American cities into the 21st century digital economy?  (2 minutes)

Plenty of taxpayer-backed money for this... (Time Warner Cable Arena - Charlotte, N.C.)

Which is more important:

1. Spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to finance sports facilities, stadiums, and “incentive packages” to attract and keep major sports franchises calling your city home;
2. Building quality digital infrastructure that will deliver 21st century broadband service at affordable prices for every local citizen that wants the service.

Here in western New York, the city of Buffalo — the third poorest city in the nation with 28 percent of its residents living in poverty and suffering chronically high unemployment — is about to the recipient of a one billion dollar bailout courtesy of the state government (a/k/a taxpayers).  That, even as some in the city are howling that the promised tens-to-hundreds of millions in promised renovation funding for the Ralph Wilson (Buffalo Bills) Stadium is apparently not included.

While hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are readily available to finance sports stadiums, getting privately financed bonds for public broadband is somehow the real crime in states like North and South Carolina.  North Carolina already has legislation in place that virtually assures broadband service is under the control of the state’s largest phone and cable companies, or it simply is not provided at all. Evidently in a battle over worthwhile public spending, financing a reported $260 million for Charlotte, N.C.’s Time Warner Cable Arena remains a higher priority than making sure the people of North Carolina have decent broadband service.

South Carolina this week is considering extending a similar courtesy to companies like AT&T and Time Warner Cable.  They need better broadband even more than their neighbors to the north.

Happily, broadband advocate Craig Settles has found a way for broadband lovers to have their cake and eat it too.

...but none for this?

Why not construct public, non-profit broadband networks by selling ownership shares to the general public?

All of you who believe in broadband’s impact on economic development (or are a little jealous of stories like this about Chattanooga’s 1 gigabit network), should look to the Green Bay Packers of the NFL for the key to financing your broadband network.

Yeah, they kind of choked in last Sunday’s playoff game against the N.Y. Giants. But the team is a surefire winner when it comes to raising money. The franchise raised $70 million to rehab its football stadium (Lambeau Field) by selling 280,000 stock shares to individuals at $250 a pop. They pulled off this amazing feat in just five weeks!

With apologies to New Orleans Saints fans — “Who Dat” is bringing big bucks into town for a project that will pump up the local economy? The citizens of Green Bay. Literally. The Green Bay Packers are a nonprofit corporation owned by local residents and businesses. Packers pride enabled Green Bay to outdo tech companies that can’t get an initial public offering off the ground, let alone raise $70 million.

If Green Bay can do all this for a football field, can’t your hometown or county convince constituents to raise just a few million for a broadband network?

$250?  That’s the combined price of today’s cable and cell phone service over just a single month.  Should a private non-profit group act as coordinator for the project, they can walk right past existing restrictions on municipal broadband enacted at the behest of big cable and phone companies.  Self-financed fiber to the home service could pay dividends… to customers instead of Wall Street.

Settles lays out the parameters and the challenges, namely fighting that old meme that only giant telecom duopolies know how to run a broadband business.  But as we’ve seen from small scrappy private providers like Sonic.net in California and publicly-owned EPB Fiber, providing superior service at a reasonable price will bring customers to your door.  Even more so if they also happen to own the door.

A western Indiana fiber-to-the-home project first envisioned more than five years ago is finally moving forward as it wins unanimous approval at the Tippecanoe County Redevelopment Commission.

Lafayette and West Lafayette, Ind., home to prestigious Purdue University, has a broadband problem.  Broadband advocates claim current providers Comcast and Frontier Communications underserve Tippecanoe County.  The former has put western Indiana on the “long list” waiting for service upgrades, and Frontier Communications offers little more than slow speed DSL in the region.  While Purdue arranges for its own Internet connectivity, off-campus students and area residents have had to make due with what the local cable and phone company offers, which isn’t much according to the locals.

“Comcast service has recently improved, but there is a big difference between Comcast service in a city like Chicago and what they deliver this part of Indiana,” shares Stop the Cap! reader Nick Jefferson, who tipped us to the recent developments.  “Frontier is a complete waste of time, and they have alienated customers across Indiana after taking over from Verizon Communications.”

In 2005, Tippecanoe County officials met with Verizon to encourage construction of its FiOS fiber-to-the-home network in western Indiana, as it had planned for the eastern Indiana city of Fort Wayne.  But Verizon sold off its Indiana landline operations to Frontier Communications, which has since shown little interest in expanding the fiber to the home network it inherited.  Now the county is considering financing a fiber network itself, to be ultimately run and administered by Cinergy MetroNet, which already provides service in the Indiana communities of Connersville, Greencastle, Huntington, Madison, New Castle, North Manchester, North Vernon, Seymour, Vincennes, and Wabash.

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WLFI-TV explained the basics of the new fiber-to-the-home network and how it will be paid for in this report from March, 2011.  (2 minutes)

The $40-50 million project would not come out of taxpayer funds directly.  Instead, a novel financing approach would cover construction costs over a 15-20 year period using a combination of MetroNet investor funds and a “tax increment financing” district, which would provide a temporary tax abatement during the period the network is being paid off.  Taxpayer dollars would not be exposed — the financial risks would be to MetroNet and its investors alone.

A fiber to the home service would provide a network capable of gigabit broadband speeds, but historically Cinergy has offered lower speeds to their other Indiana customers, albeit at highly competitive pricing, along with packages of video and phone service.

Larry Oates, head of the West Lafayette redevelopment commission for the project, says the fiber network delivers more than just the promise of better broadband service

“This project could be a great economic development tool,” Oates told The Exponent. “It is up to the businesses and residents who live here to decide what to do with it. We are just facilitating their potential.”

The County Commissioners will decide later whether to give the project a final approval.

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WLFI in Lafayette reports Tippecanoe’s fiber to the home network has gotten unanimous approval from the country redevelopment commission.  (2 minutes)

The network envisioned with the help of a $30 million federal broadband grant, now in jeopardy.

A consortium of 15 rural north Florida counties awarded a $30 million federal broadband grant to provide a “middle-mile” wireless broadband network for the region has spent almost $7 million of its federal grant on consultants, design engineers, land acquisition and staffing without breaking ground on a single construction project.

In February 2010, the Obama Administration announced the broadband grant to deliver rural Florida residents a way to finally obtain high-speed access to the Internet within three years.  Now, a year-and-a-half later, not a single tower of the wireless network has been built, residents have been told they will never receive Internet service directly from the project, and one of the key members of the North Florida Broadband Authority charged with constructing the network has called one of the major contractors “incompetent.”

Last week, federal officials suspended the grant amid growing accusations of wasteful spending and lack of oversight.

NFBA was supposed to be building a wireless wholesale-access network across 15 counties that would deliver ISPs, government agencies, libraries, and other institutional users packages of 6, 12, 25, 60, 150Mbps or faster service, linked with fiber to Orlando and Tampa.

Although media coverage touted the project as delivering improved access to residential customers in Baker, Bradford, Columbia, Dixie, Gilchrist, Hamilton, Jefferson, Lafayette, Levy, Madison, Putnam, Suwannee, Taylor, Union and Wakulla counties, the NFBA project will not directly make broadband service available to consumers.  Would be residential customers will have to hope an incumbent Internet Service Provider chooses to participate and resells access to the network across the region.  Otherwise, those taxpayers will only be able to use the network they paid for at a local library.

That is, if the project ever gets completed.

To date, financial statements from the NFBA reflect the biggest checks paid to-date have gone to architecture and design consultants, which have received a total of more than $3.37 million dollars.  In contrast, NFBA has paid $0.00 for on-site construction and site work as of the end of the last quarter.  Money has also been spent on “Administrative and Legal Expenses” amounting to more than $863,000, and $1.54 million has been spent on property appraisal, acquisition, and expenses related to establishing rights-of-way.

When questions began to be raised about why the project had spent so much on so little, the fur began to fly, according to the North Florida Herald:

Christopher Thurow of Bradford County, accused [contractor] Government Services Group of being “incompetent.” Government Services Group answers to the Authority and is in charge of managing the project.

Then Rapid Systems, one of the project’s engineering companies, began making accusations of not getting paid. But GSG pointed to what it said was inadequate documentation by Rapid Systems and not following payment procedures.

Adding to the controversy was that GSG had been let go from managing the Florida Rural Broadband Authority (FRBA), a program similar to the North Florida Broadband Authority.

Multiple FRBA meetings were canceled, and the project was behind schedule, said Rick Marcum, chairman of FRBA.

“We felt like we needed to move in a different direction,” he said.

Since then, Government Services Group has filed a lawsuit against FRBA, saying there is a breach of contract.

At the North Florida Broadband Authority, some members allege a conflict of interest between GSG and Capital Solutions, which was contracted by GSG to oversee the administration of the grant money.

The apparent conflict comes from the accusation that Government Services Group CEO Robert Sheets is 25-percent owner of Meridian Services group, where Lisa Blair is CEO and president. Blair also is the CEO of Capital Solutions.

NFBA project members seem content to blame most of the problems on others, as well as on a sudden discovery their initial network design would not meet the performance requirements of potential wholesale customers.  That meant a wholesale re-design of the project into a “interconnected-ring network” design topology.  The rest of the delay, according to the NFBA, was because the project was sitting around waiting for government approvals:

This entire process (which included design re-evaluation, engineering services procurement, and network redesign) was carried out over a period of two to three quarters, which was the period of time designated in the original Baseline Plan for the turnkey link design phase as well as for subsequent equipment procurement, site acquisition, and pre-deployment activities. Additional variance from the Baseline Plan resulted substantial delays that were incurred awaiting wage-rate determinations (more than 3 months), awaiting a response to a waiver request to allow eligibility of Long term Operational leases (requested process in December, 2010, AAR submitted in April 2011, received in June, 2011); and comments from the Program Office on a Route Change Request (2 months).

That explanation did not pass muster with grant administrators at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the federal agency overseeing broadband grants.

“NFBA has experienced a number of external and internal delays on its project and, as a result, NTIA has serious concerns regarding the project’s long-term viability and, in the short-term, its ability to implement and deploy the proposed project during the grant award period,” the NTIA wrote in a statement.

As a result, the NTIA has suspended the program, ending all work, pending some sort of oversight agreement with the NFBA being concluded before Oct. 10.

The NTIA wants all invoices and disbursements from the $30 million grant approved directly by them before any more money is spent on the project.

To date, filings indicate the project has no signed customers of any kind, institutional, commercial or otherwise.  NFBA anticipates it will “outline service to 308 anchor institutions by project closeout,” with “outline” at this point defined as “offer.”

However, NFBA claims to have received a “Commitment Letter for a substantial monthly service commitment from one of our last mile partners, and we expect to receive additional Commitment Letters over the next quarter as we continue to actively engage last mile providers in the network region.”

Last-mile partners are the ones that will ultimately deliver service to residential and business customers.

Dixie County resident and Stop the Cap! reader Jimmy Dixon, who alerted us to the latest developments, calls it “a good government program hijacked by greedy consultants and incompetent local officials.”

“This was supposed to be about serving the unserved — we the people — and instead the project will only sell to government buildings and libraries, and whatever ISPs choose to buy access,” he writes. “But when an ISP won’t sell DSL to your home today, nothing about this grant will make them sell it tomorrow.”

Indeed, Dixon says the local phone company in his area continues to have no plans to wire his neighborhood for DSL, grant or no grant.

“They frankly told me it did not make economic sense to extend DSL here, and unless the government directly defrayed those expenses, they never will service us,” Dixon shares. “But I guess until recently it was just fine to line the pockets of consultants with millions in taxpayer dollars to not deliver service to anyone else, either.”

“We’re all in the same boat, and it’s sinking fast.”

Read the special investigative report published by the North Florida Herald here.

As we approach the 10th anniversary of 9/11, emergency responders promised a state-of-the-art emergency communications voice, broadband, and mobile network are still waiting, even though billions in taxpayer dollars have been thrown away in crony insider deals, incompetence, and faulty design work.

Findings from the original 9/11 Commission found radios that couldn’t receive public safety signals, an inability for different fire, police, and ambulance agencies to easily communicate with each other, communications failures when the Twin Towers fell, and nightmarish congestion on civilian cell phone networks often used as a backup when radios are overwhelmed with traffic.

After hundreds of public safety personnel died, the Commission recommended federal funding of a national communications network for emergency responders and other priority traffic.  That recommendation has never been implemented, and piecemeal funding of individual projects in its place on the state level have achieved only mixed success.

Now, legislation languishing to Washington to pay for a national emergency network is getting a renewed push from Democratic senators Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican.

The estimated cost of the new network is between $10-12 billion dollars, but before taxpayers foot the bill for a new voice/data emergency network, federal officials should learn from past mistakes that have wasted billions of dollars and have been delayed or worse by waste, fraud, and abusively bad planning.

Examples from just one state — the one worst impacted by the events on 9/11, provide numerous examples of bad decisionmaking and repeated mistakes that could cost taxpayers even more.

The New York Statewide Wireless Network – A Disaster Of Its Own Making

In the summer of 2004, New York State accepted bids to construct what it thought would be a $500 million-$1 billion dollar statewide wireless radio and data system to connect emergency responders together anywhere from Buffalo to Long Island.  The $1 billion dollar winning bid came from Tyco Electronics’ MA/COM division, which claimed it could do the job for one-third of the cost of the next qualified bidder Motorola, which put the price tag closer to $3 billion.

The wide disparity in bids created significant controversy, especially for Motorola which has years of experience in constructing emergency radio systems.

“There’s something wrong with this picture,” John McFadden, Motorola’s vice president of sales for the northern division of its North America Group told Urgent Communications magazine. “There shouldn’t be a massive gap in these prices.”

Indeed, M/A-COM and Motorola — the first vendors to deploy Project 25-compliant systems — often find themselves as bidding competitors, but their proposals typically are in the same price range, Motorola spokeswoman Pat Sturmon told the magazine.

“If we had lost by 10% or 15%, we would have packed our bags and moved on,” she said.

Then-state assemblyman David Koon (D-Fairport), also raised his eyebrows over the veracity of MA/COM’s bid.  He called MA/COM a “kind of unproven company” for its track record of successfully completing projects on time and on budget.  Koon said Pennsylvania’s wireless system, also being built by MA/COM, ran significantly over budget and was running late.

Four years later, MA/COM’s reputation took a hit when Lancaster County canceled their contract with the company for inadequate reception of fire ground communications.  By 2009, Pennsylvania’s statewide network was still suffering reception problems and remained incomplete, costing state taxpayers $500 million, when it was originally expected to cost $179 million.  Despite this, state officials involved in the original approval of MA/COM defended the company’s performance in the state, blaming mountainous terrain for reception issues and changes in the scope of the network.

In 2007, many of Koon’s fears about MA/COM’s eventual performance in New York were proven correct as costs for the billion dollar network more than doubled, and its construction ran considerably behind schedule.  In late 2007, a field test of MA/COM’s network in Erie County was called an abject failure.

Syracuse’s Post-Standard delivered the report card:

Buffalo’s fire commissioner said many radios had no reception in the western half of the city. And many radios that did get signals had poor sound quality. Problems surfaced, too, that pointed out the need for more effective training of the folks operating the network’s equipment.

[…] The Erie-Chautauqua leg of the network was supposed to be up and running by last June. It was on track to meet that target as late as December 2006, according to the state comptroller. Now, the state is hoping to see it working by April 2008.

It was not to be.  Citing 10 pages of the deficiencies that M/A-COM did not fix or remedy, then Gov. David Paterson canceled the contract in January 2009, and effectively sidelined the network.  In fact, state officials were seeking a refund of at least $50 million in wasted taxpayer dollars.

While New York and Pennsylvania were struggling with performance issues in rolling out MA/COM’s networks, MA/COM employees were testifying before the FCC, advocating the federal government adopt the kind of “end-to-end IP network” similar to what the company was building for New York.

But the controversies don’t stop there.  Several contractors hired to develop, administer, or deploy various projects have come under fire for their performance on various projects:

Hiding Projects from Public Scrutiny

Harry Bronson, Monroe County's former Democratic Minority Leader is among many asking questions about Monroe County's public safety communications project.

In December 2010, New York’s comptroller rejected a $118 million contract to update New York City Transit’s communications system, citing the association of the engineering company involved in an alleged $80 million corruption scheme involving city payroll processing.  The government officials who supported the bid were under suspicion of ignoring the consultant fraud and money laundering alleged by federal prosecutors, perhaps to protect their own reputations.  Details of the project under scrutiny were carefully controlled and selectively released by the Office of Payroll Administration, the body in charge of the “problematic project.”  The executive director was suspended.  He later resigned and as of June of this year, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was demanding a refund of $600 million — all the money one of the project entities has been paid for the project under scrutiny since 2003.

In Monroe County, N.Y. county officials are under increasing state scrutiny over a project to convert the county’s fire radio system to a digital platform.  Questions have been raised about the establishment of a local development corporation — Monroe Security and Safety Systems, Inc. (M3SI) and a contractor — Navitech, which some believe are being used to avoid state oversight requirements.  The Center for Government Research suggested the cozy relationship between the county and the contractors might not be above-board:

[…] Navitech sought bids from only two vendors, Motorola and Harris RF Communications. After Navitech awarded a $30 million contract to Harris, Motorola cried foul, asserting that the bid lacked specific requirements and that the bid was uncompetitive in other ways.

Press and blog reports of the transaction suggest that personal ties among the County Administration and Navitech are involved. Whether allegations of “self-dealing” are true or not, by delegating the big money transaction to Navitech, M3SI appears to have violated the spirit of openness and transparency suggested by open meetings laws and the public bidding process. We accept the proposition that a private firm can operate more efficiently than a public entity. Perhaps complying with all of those laws would have resulted in higher cost. But that seems unlikely. Properly managed, a public bidding process that employs clear specifications and seeks bids from all comers will squeeze excess profit from prospective vendors, securing a better deal for the taxpayer. There is more to learn about how this bidding process was managed. But what we appear to know about the circumstances leaves open the possibility of self-dealing and corruption.

Communications System Upgrades Some Local Fire Officials Think Are Worse Than What They Have Now

Naples, N.Y. Fire Chief Pat Elwell doesn't want Ontario County to spend money on a digital radio upgrade.

In Ontario County, N.Y., some public safety officials understand the need for upgrades, especially a decade after 9/11, but the systems being promoted by some vendors who dazzle local and state officials with glossy presentations and help with federal and state aid don’t get the same glowing assessments by individual fire and police agencies that are forced to use them.  As the hilly Finger Lakes county contemplates a digital upgrade to its public safety networks, Naples Fire Chief Patrick Elwell said the new system could endanger firefighters, not help them.

“There have been numerous failures of the digital trunk communication system, which have contributed to the death of firefighters,” said Elwell.

Although digital systems open up more individual channels for police and fire agencies to communicate, the audio quality often leaves much to be desired.  Almost all sound worse than the average cell phone, with audio artifacts that can give a “watery” quality to voices.  Background noise, common at a fire scene, can actually be amplified by some digital systems, although “hiss and static” common to weak analog signals is eliminated.  Unfortunately, according to Elwell, digital communications systems do occasionally crash, which can disrupt all radio communications county-wide.

The Messenger Post newspaper elaborates:

Elwell provided supervisors with a packet of information included documented cases of radio failure that resulted in the death of firefighters. One took place on April 16, 2007, when a Woodbridge, Va., firefighter died in the line of duty. The Prince William County Department of Fire Rescue concluded that the county’s Motorola Digital Trunked radio system contributed to the tragedy. In another case, firefighters were using their cell phones to communicate when the digital system failed.

Elwell suggested the county reconsider its investment in the digital system and maintain the 400 MHz radio system.

“The financial burden will be less, and the 400 MHz system will assure clear communication on fire ground,” he said.

“Secure” Communications Network Easily Eavesdropped and Subject to Effective Jamming With $30 Children’s Toy

When modified, an effective jammer for critical safety communications.

Among the most ubiquitous modern digital communications networks public safety agencies rely on is based on a standard called Project 25 (P25).  Many manufacturers can build equipment that can support this standard, which makes competition among different vendors possible.  P25 networks are increasingly common in cities around the country for law enforcement and fire communications. But recent revelations suggest P25, touted as secure and effective in public emergencies, isn’t as robust as its backers would have you believe.  In fact, new findings suggest eavesdropping on secure transmissions is easier than many thought, and anyone using a $30 children’s toy can effectively jam even the most sensitive law enforcement communications.

Scanner enthusiasts and the media have legally monitored public safety communications for decades, listening to fire and police calls and causing no harm.  But some agencies don’t appreciate the public audience, and have used digital radio systems to make listening more expensive (digital scanners cost hundreds of dollars) or encrypt even the most routine communications.

The Wall Street Journal reports findings from the University of Pennsylvania that suggest eavesdropping is still routine, even for encrypted, sensitive communications.

University of Pennsylvania researchers overheard conversations that included descriptions of undercover agents and confidential informants, plans for forthcoming arrests and information on the technology used in surveillance operations.

“We monitored sensitive transmissions about operations by agents in every Federal law enforcement agency in the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security,” wrote the researchers, who were led by computer science professor Matt Blaze and plan to reveal their findings Wednesday in a paper at the Usenix Security Symposium in San Francisco.

More disturbing is the fact P25 transmissions can be effectively jammed over a considerable distance with the use of a modified $30 children’s toy — the GirlTech IM-Me:

The GirlTech-based reflexive subframe jammer is able to reliably prevent reception from a nearby Motorola P25 transmitter as received by both a Motorola XTS2500 transceiver and Icom PCR-2500, with the jammer and the transmitter under attack both operating at similar power levels and with similar distance from the receiver. A standard off-the-shelf external RF amplifier would be all that is necessary to extend this experimental apparatus to real-world, long-range use. While we did not perform high power or long-range jamming ourselves (and there are significant regulatory barriers to such experiments), we expect that an attacker would face few technical difficulties scaling a jammer within the signal range of a typical metropolitan area.