Princeton Broadband Committee
December 6, 2012 minutes
Meeting called to order by Chairman Cullen at 7:10 pm in the Town Hall Annex. In attendance: Steve Cullen, John Kowaleski, Dag Olsen, Petr Spacek, Rich Wagner, and Stan Moss. Michael Cote, Bill Dino and Ned Utzig were not available.
Voted unanimously to approve Nov 27, 2010 meeting minutes. Chair to submit them to Town Clerk and post to Dropbox.
Committee had initial discussion on potential budget and/o capital requests for FY2014. Capital request possibilities include funding a professional survey for Verizon to relocate communications wiring on poles to allow co-location of fiber backbone, possibly Phase 1 installation of fiber backbone.
- John K will try to get an estimate for hanging fiber backbone (74 miles)
- Stan will craft capital request(s) as necessary
Confirmed consensus on BB Committee mission: proposal to achieving very high speed broadband access for every house and business in Princeton, as soon as possible, at a good value cost.
- Infrastructure should provide scalable bandwidth (‘future proof’ for anticipated higher bandwidth/speed needs). The choice here is a fiber optic backbone.
- Connectivity to house/business could be wired or wireless; users could possibly have an upfront choice. Possibility that users might pay for street to building connection costs
- Type of connection could dictate ceiling on bandwidth (hypothetical example: 40M wireless, 200M wired)
Steve diagramed and explained several infrastructure options:
- Fiber to the Home (FTH) – highest cost, highest potential bandwidth (1000M)
- Mesh network – no fiber backbone, lowest cost, N speed (100) shared among several users (therefore, lowest bandwidth/speed and not very upgradable)
- Fiber backbone with LTE isolated
- Fiber backbone with LTE home based
- Fiber backbone with WiFi b/g/n
- Wireless option would NOT have data download amount limits (aka 4G phone plans)
A general discussion on how to structure implementation:
Phase 1 – move Verizon wires and install fiber optic backbone
Phase 2 – Backbone to buildings connectivity
Phase 3 – Services and content
- Thomas Prince School as a ‘side’ project
Brief initial discussion in regards to possible funding sources – grants, ‘branded’ grants (Google, Dell, GE, etc.)
Confirmed upcoming meeting dates – 12/12, 12/18 & 1/2/2013.
Meeting adjourned at 9:30 pm.
Respectfully submitted
Stan Moss & Steve Cullen
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