 |
Princeton Broadband Committee
Meeting Minutes July 31, 2013 7:00pm Town Hall Office
Meeting called to order at 7:04 PM. Committee Members Present:
Steve Cullen
Ned Utzig
Mike Cote
Petr Spacek
Phil OBrien
Stan Moss
John Kowaleski
Chris Lynch from Matrix Design Group also attended.
Discussion:
- Review of IPTV Systems Overview information from Chris Lynch. Example channel lineups and subscriber fees, system costs. Discussed whether it is feasible to combine with Sterling’s system. Breakdowns did not include billing, due to small subscriber base it would be best to do 3rd party, eg. Great Lakes.
- Review of municipalities that are publicly funded and have successful Broadband programs. Mike’s research shows many are much larger than Princeton. Of those that failed, a large number were incumbents that were trying to provide a better/cheaper solution, unlike Princeton.
- Discussion of forming an informal subcommittee to handle community relations. John K. and Bill D. will lead this.
- Discussion on newsletter/mailings and community sessions
- Update of MBI installation map was released this week – no discernable updates to the Princeton path.
- Discussion with Chris Lynch on what constitutes design requirements – number of poles, miles of fiber, number of strands, type of fiber are key basic requirements, equipment is almost secondary.
- Update from Stan on G4S: G4S’s legal team is recommending they do not do the network design as it may preclude them from bidding on the installation and they are thus backing out of the network design. Amounts to a 2 month delay in the design. An alternate approach would be to issue an RFI for an active Ethernet installation. Non-binding, needs to be clear it is contingent on town approval.
- Based on above, discussion on moving special town meeting out to October.
- Discussion on combining ISP and network design RFI.
- John sent note to Westfield for info on depreciation.
Action Items:
- Talk to Cell tower customers & tower providers (Brian Allen) about connecting to fiber / getting an ONT, could be a source of revenue. (Stan)
- Talk to Sterling about their cable service and possibly providing service over Princeton Fiber. (Steve)
- Talk with G4S about feasibility of splitting feed to town to East Princeton FD after plan is released from G4S. (Mike)
- Talk to Westfield about depreciation. (John)
- Get update on schedule for lighting up TPS (Stan)
- Meet with pole survey volunteers, organize further work (John)
- Generate a revised near-term schedule for BBC activities (John)
- Ideas for content for possible newsletters to town (All)
- Work on draft for press release of revised schedule / recent update (Phil)
- Chris to provide soft copy of IPTV document to committee. (Chris)
- Talk to John L. about ISP RFI (Stan)
- Follow up with John L. on ability to spend network design money on a consultant (Stan)
- Mike to put together page of reference towns, give to Rich to post (Mike, Rich)
- Come up with a “success” definition for the BB project. (Steve)
- Work with Jon F. on revised/realistic depreciation (Stan)
Upcoming Agenda for 8/7:
- Decide on moving town meeting.
- Discussion/decision on RFI for network design
- Review of John’s schedule for BBC.
- Polished RFI for ISP from John
- Review press release from Phil.
Meeting adjourned 8:45 pm
Respectfully submitted,
Ned Utzig
| |
