Jon - I’m not sure where Mr. Carlsen got his $60,000  audit figure - was there an RFP? DId he solicit bids?  

As a Certified Public Accountant, WA license #30879, I can assure you I could do an audit of the Public Works Department for a fraction of that amount. 

So let’s see an RFP requesting bids for a proper audit of the Public Works Dept.  Not to do this creates an appearance that someone is hiding something and avoiding accountability. 

Thanks Dave. The 60K figure was mentioned at the November 13th meeting after Carlson was questioned by some of the council members. There have been some strange figures coming out in general. For example, Public Works quoted me about $50K per block for 2x2” conduit installation. They did this only after asking me to remove a public records request and take a phone call instead of receive it in writing. Will they claim a different number later? This makes our per mile install for conduit about $400K. This is about 4 times what it costs for other similar sized cities to install conduit. I have shared documentation with the council, mayor, and policy advisors showing this. This has all been really shady. For example, how can they know they have 144 count fiber, but not know where it is? Which is what they’ve told me and their own lawyers. How can they have contracts with the schools showing 6 to 12 count fiber but not know what the capacity is at all? They might have lost track of some resources, but saying that they have generally no idea is disturbing and shady.  As far as I know there is no RFP yet. I have been given no reason as to why.

Jon,

This is excellent reporting.  Thank you very much.  I especially like the Rube Goldberg drawing, a sure testament to the true state of the problem.   The Internet should be treated as a public utility.  So should banks.  All are part of the commons like the air, the water and the earth. 

Thanks Dick, and congratulations again on your Paul deArmond Citizen Journalism Award! Sorry I could not attend. The most frustrating thing about this is how there really should be no resistance from anyone, but the big telecoms, since it benefits everyone like electricity and roads do. I totally agree with you about the internet beign a public utility. In fact, I think most utilities should be public. Still, let me say that even if you beleive in private services, it still makes sense to have publicly useable infrastructure like conduit, roads, etc. paired with a Dig Once Policy. Why dig up the road 90 times and install 90 seperate privately used fiber lines if you can do it once and the city can make money off of the leases? The only people against this are those that want monopolies. 

A lot of people point to Google Fiber as the way to go, but they forget that Kansas City installed a lot of public infrastructure to help make their city attractive to Google and other providers. Without this infrastructure their options wold not be as good, and they would not have reapred all of the benefits of having cheap, net-neutral, fiber. So fully municipal, through priavte provder leased, this a resource that everyone will benefit from.

Proponents of wireless, for example, often forget to mention that for wireless to work correctly (especailly 5G) you need lots of fiber to back it up with. They also forget to mention the many drawbacks that wireless has compated to fiber, but that would be an article in itself. Anyway, if that fiber is public then every company can get a lease on it, we can require net-neutrality, etc. If not, well then you end up with yet another virtual monopoly that’s probably anti-net neutral. Bottom line, you need fiber to do anything broadband related well and if it’s publily owned everyone benefits. I refer you to this Wired article about wireless. 

https://www.wired.com/2016/08/the-next-generation-of-wireless-5g-is-all-hype/

In 2002 I applied for a job with Avista as a Project Manager to help build a fiber network in Bellingham.  I did not get the job but I was aware that they did a loop in Bellingham.  Later the fiber group bankrupted and I thought I read that the city was taking it over.  I am not sure where to find those records or if we can find something at Avista.  In those days fiber was planted everywhere.  Even Black Rock ran a loop in the county.

Thanks Robert, that’s very interesting. I do get the sense that over the years there has been a lot of fiber installed and it has chagned hands a lot.  I have met with many different people since I started down this road almost 2 years ago at this point. I keep getting bits and pieces of the historical information. Most of it is good, some of it is inaccurate. The bottom line is that the city needs to do an audit. For the reasons I mentioned above it would be best for a trustworthy 3rd party to do it, but either way they need to be able to tell us where all of the fiber and conduit we already paid for is. This seems like something they should already be expected to be able to do to me, but right now it is what it is. They have told some of our private providers around 2009 and up, “not to use the network because they aren’t really monitoring it and would probably be unaware if a cable was cut and it was not working…” I am paraphrasing here. This seems like a problem with priorities and professinalism to me. In short, it is not a problem with the idea of building a public or private network, but with what we expect for what we’re paying for with our ever increasing taxes. Basically we need to hold our governments, large corporations, etc. accountable. The issue of accountablility seems to be a recurring issue with just about every issue facing Bellingham and the nation lately. 

Here is an article from 2000.  I know there is a ton of fiber out there.  They just lost track of it.  https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2000/07/17/story8.html

Good read and thank you for the efforts.  It is sad that this happens, where government grants a monopoly to a provider. I know in Lynden, Comcast has an agreement with the city to provide service to all area’s within city limits, yet they have refused to service an area recently developed and annexed into the city leaving many without service.  Of course, they picked up the big development of tightly packed new homes, but left those on larger lots farther apart wihout service.  FYI for those of you who don’t know, Comcast expects a 10 month return on their install/extension of service, or they won’t extend the service.  

Thanks Ryan. Yes, sadly all of the big telecoms have similar, and in some cases even more inappropriate, limits. At the 7/24 COB council meeting CenturyLink told our council and mayor point blank that if they don’t get 20% market share within 5 years they’ll leave. They also said they won’t even give us a local office without 30%. This was before they dodged Dan Hamill’s question about what they’re going to do in North Bellingham to help out. All of their low-income options are a joke, by the way. In other parts of the country Verizon has sold off their connections in entire communities because they consider them simply “too small” to care about.  Pair this with the fact that their services were a joke with terrible reliability and horrible speeds  provided over aging DSL (aka crappy old phone) lines in the first place and it’s obvious that Americans in rural areas need a better choice. https://muninetworks.org/content/verizon-actions-show-carriers-will-not-wire-rural-america

The good news is that many of these rural areas already have some municipal fiber and can get wired up with even more ease than their more populated neighbors, and at lower expense, for a few key reasons.  

1. There are many more grants available to get rural areas wired up.

2. Many of these areas already have fiber running to their municipal buildings. 

3. You have the community of Mount Vernon to use as a model. 

4. You tend to have people in the community that will help you dig ditches, run conduit, etc. as volunteers. You can essentially wire up your whole town for next to nothing. The Tulalip Tribe did this for Quel Ceda Village. Private contractors quoted them over $3 million for their install. They did it as a community project for $300K instead. (By the way if you do this, let me know. I’ll be there to help. I can’t wait to fire up a bobcat, use a pick-Axe, etc. in general.)

So, if Lynden wants to build a net-neutral, locally provided, community broadband solution I’d be happy to help you get going and put you in touch with the right people. Hell, I’ll even be there to help. The problem is that what you’re going to be told is that it’s too expensive, or that you should just “wait for wireless” at this point. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Fiber and Wireless are complimentary technologies. Not competing ones. You need a good fiber backbone to do anything broadband related well and fiber now costs less than fishing line. The wireless tech gets hooked up to fiber. Also, wireless has a lot of drawbacks that fiber does not.

So the question becomes, do you want that backbone to be Open Access so everyone can use it, your city can make money by leasing it out, you can have local net-neutral providers that live in and care about your community providing you with better services, etc. Or do you want to keep putting up with Comcast’s BS when you know that they don’t care about your city, and never really will, because of their own behavior? Here is an article on Wireless from WIRED magazine. I also highly recommend “The 5G Myth” by William Webb available on Amazon. I don’t agree with him on the FTTC installation method, and want FTTH, but otherwise it’s really good. https://www.wired.com/2016/08/the-next-generation-of-wireless-5g-is-all-hype/ 

Also, here is the link to my petition where I post most of my updates. https://www.change.org/p/mayorsoffice-cob-org-bellingham-public-fiber-optic-network 

I’ve just realized I’ve written so much here about Community Broadband in rural areas that maybe I should write an article about that…  

Just returned from Jalisco, Mexico.  My hotel WiFi on a city street with underground fiber in a colonia with older buildings and two star hotels tested 50 mbps on download and 15 mbps on upload.  Something stinks up here.

Yep, this PBS article covers the idea pretty well. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/internet-u-s-compare-globally-hint-slower-expensive The problem is that we pay the highest price pet MBit in the developed world, but lawmakers also don’t understand the basics of how conenctions work and largely refuse to learn about it, so they consider us connected if we have a connection at all. This means that many of our connections are so poor they are virtually worthless, but when I met with April Barker and explained this she stood up for CenturyLInk saying, “they say they will give us “better” connections” ignoring the numbers and presenting no numbers of her own. I of coruse asked, “what does that mean” and explained the basics of what to look for if you actually want Bellingham to keep pace with the rest of the country and the world. Sure, a handful of people might get access to new services from the anti-net neutral company CenturyLink, via inferior aerial installation methods, but their “low-income” connections that Barker defends are as slow as 1.5 Mbps down and .768Mbps up. Comcast’s low-income connections are also a joke. We call this unequal access to good internet services and information the Digital Divide. Still, your officials consider that connected because even though that kind of connections is worthless you are technically connected. It’s kind of like saying someone has a car because they have one that doesn’t run on blocks in their yard. By way of comparison, fiber connections of 1,000 Mbps down and 1,000 Mbps up are about $25/month  in Japan and $70/month in Kansas city. In Bellingham, if you can get to it at all, it’s about $300 to $900 a month, depending on your provider and location, and in many cases, thousands to get conencted in the first place. Why, because we don’t have public infrastructure and because your lawmakers refuse to understand even the basic math behind the issues (with the exception of Michael Lilliquist). It’s not like we haven’t tried to teach them, but with Roxanne Murphy literally saying she “will wait as long as necessary to get services from CenturyLink, because she thinks they’re a great company!” It’s pretty obvious that our government is in bed with them. I paraphrased her comments a bit. The City of Bellingham currently does not have the link to the 7/24 meeting where the CenturyLink deal was finalized up. Their COB site has said that they are in the process of moving the videos for a few months now.  I will post the link when/if it becomes available again.