HomeMy WebLinkAboutBbTF Minutes 04-07-2021 Broadband Task Force April 7, 2021 @ 5:30 PM Meeting Agenda/ Minutes
Attendees: Sally Greene (OC Commissioner)
Earl McKee (OC Commissioner)
Rep. Graig Meyer
Sen.Valerie Foushee
Rep. Dean Arp
Jim Northrup (OC CIO)
Vasu Kilaru (resident)
Paul Cardillo (resident)
Terri Buckner (resident)
Todd Broucksou (resident)
Pat Hull (resident)
Doug Noell (Chief IT Operations Officer Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools)
Victoria Deaton (Compliance Specialist Office of Institutional Equity and Inclusion Durham Tech)
Jeff Sural (Director, NC Broadband Infrastructure Office) -VACATION
Dr. Monique Felder(Superintendent, OC Schools)
Dr. Kathleen Dawson (Deputy Superintendent, OC Schools)
Laura Jensen (Clerk to the BOCC)
Travis Myren (Deputy County Manager)
Mark Johnson
Jacci Ruhe (resident)
AGENDA
5:30 PM Welcomes and introductions-Greene/McKee
5:35 PM Legislative Updates-Sen.Valerie Foushee/Rep. Graig Meyer/Rep. Dean Arp
• Comm Greene NCACC update
6:25 PM Grants Update— Northrup/Myren
6:35 PM Bureaucratic mechanisms counties have to undertake and accomplish large infrastructure goals. -
Myren
6:45 PM Update on "what's out there?" consequential technology on the horizon and beyond the horizon—
Group/Northrup
• Fiber maps
• Wireless Options
o Fixed Wireless
o Satellite
• Models for success:what are other counties doing?
o Person
o Wake
o Rowan
6:50 PM Old Business/New Business/Housekeeping
• Action Register
• Minutes/Notes approval
7:00 PM Adjourn
Action Items:
ACTION: Meetings are every other Wednesday
ACTION: Next meeting April 215Y at 5:30—All
Proposed agenda items:
- Devise short and long term strategies (Todd has suggestions)
- Invite Open Broadband, Piedmont Electric and River Street to present to group
Action Items carried over from last meeting:
ACTION: Provide list of all county owned land—Northrup
ACTION: Public MCNC fiber maps—Broucksou
ACTION: Commissioner Greene requests that OC put together a synopsis of grants that we are eligible for
(federal funding, block grants, etc); Northrup/Myren (Northrup=>will provide weekly progress reports)
ACTION: Disruptive technologies to consider—All (Northrup will put together a starter list)
Discussion notes:
Sally/Earl—welcomes and introductions
Legislative updates:
Graig Meyer/Dean Arp—been working on BB in OC/NC for quite a while; know where GREAT Grants are going to be and
where federal RDOF grants are going to be; need to figure out what states are doing, what counties are doing and where
to close the broadband gaps; need to speed up the timeline (providers)
Valerie Foushee—little movement in senate chamber so far; now interested in movement, more interest now b/c of
NCACC
Rep Arp—working on rural BB for 3-4 years;trying to address insurmountable odds; more encouraged than ever before;
not only raised awareness of issue/lack of BB in NC(same struggles across entire US)
Proposed legislation? Anything have a chance of passing in this session?
o Arp—have seen a lot more bills filed in Senate; going through bills filed on Senate side
o House bill filing is longer but expect significant bills to be filed here
o Key to talking about BB is you have to identify the problem you're trying to solve first—
adequate service, high bills, etc? Identify problem; discuss money—state has never been in a
better position to put money forward for this, >$10million/year; coming is a tremendous
influx from federal program and trying to align state funding with federal $$; synergistic—
expand areas with state dollars and leverage state/federal funding; need to be careful to not
step on other programs; map is to keep focusing funding where it needs to go; regulations—
what is artificially limiting BB deployment through regulations and what is state's role in
that? Couple of years ago co-locating/leasing on state properties; electric co-ops—allow
them to partner with private partners, required removing some; "take rate"—road has
broadband access but not everyone wants to get it; "take rate" _#of people who're willing
to pay$$for access to line; tier 1 and 2 counties don't have infrastructure; haven't tried to
influence the "take rate";what is government's involvement? Often agreement in goals just
differ in how to achieve them.
o Questions:
■ Comm Greene:
• OC is tier 3 county but have significant areas who cannot get access, some
with unreliable service, some can't have more than one family member that
can be on a meeting at the same time
• Understand grants are available that we're not eligible for because tier 3
county; how to rework rules so that OC is qualified/eligible?
• OC in between mountains and coast—unable to provide extensive coverage
because terrain isn't flat/unobstructed
■ Rep Arp
• Private providers—population density not high enough to be financially
feasible
• Start in rural counties—open last round of$$to statewide areas not just tier
1&2; GREAT grant and other things working on won't be available to all tier
counties
• Maps—changing from tiered county system to maps system which will make
funding available to households in need regardless of tier of county they're
in
• Jim points out that Piedmont Electric, River Street attending (listening) but
not participating
• When look at policy decisions, what can we do, what's the timeline we
envision, haven't leveraged network out, provided hotspots but that was
limited; as a matter of policy,try to be technology agnostic; expect to see
"free market/competition"—satellite service (may be more than a year
away); state to try and invest money as a viable technology(low earth
satellite); need to invest in multiple technologies; incentivize the speed -was
10/1, now 25/3 gets bonus points for grant
• GREAT grant was to provide $$that normalized the cost that would
differentiate density and "take rate" to make BB affordable
■ Jim
• Maps—need is wherever there is only one landline provider in County,that's
where need better service
• Service delivery—average cost per mile; problem is areas where there's no
competition; no regulation around forcing competition
■ Terri
• Any discussion to allow local govts to build/operate their own fiber networks
like Wilson and Salisbury?
o Rep Arp: Wilson (success), Salisbury (not); Salisbury experience—
system built w/tax$$then went in search of partner; had debt load
so ended up selling the system; no matter how much money state
puts in, still needs to be a partnership with providers; how to
prevent govt being in competition with private providers? Proper use
of tax dollars?
o Terri—govt has resources for putting in fiber(much like roads,
sidewalks, etc); situation of putting in fiber not attractive to private
providers so govt should put the fiber in;Terri clarifies that fiber be
installed as work being done (ie. lay fiber when sidewalks being built)
o Rep Arp—fiber different than sidewalk/roads; allowing providers to
make money off of govt fiber work; (Terri clarifies that fiber be
installed as work being done (ie. lay fiber when sidewalks being
built))
• Maps—are these maps that already exist or are in process of creating new
maps?
o Rep Arp: Maps done in dept of IT(BB office); base map is consistent
with FCC map down to the census block;taking FCC maps as a base
then enhance them with detail from BB office so can better identify
areas that are unserved even though census block implies that all are
served; enhance detail of existing FCC maps
■ Todd
• If County put fiber in from a grant (fed, state), could they lease fiber to
ISP? Issues with ISP making money off leased fiber? Lease ISP#1 and offer
same price to ISP#2 and ISP#3 assuming ISP's agree to maintain
• Rep Arp—can lease fiber and avoid constitutional question; current law
allows counties to participate in public/private partnerships like county
putting in fiber then leasing to private partners; working on putting money
toward public/private partnerships
• OC going to get lots of money from feds so can give grant money toward
partnerships—state is changing rules/laws to make the partnership easier
■ Sen Foushee—proposed legislation; BB is a utility
■ Comm McKee—classic catch 22; can't build infrastructure to the point that need to
with the legal restrictions currently in place; going to have to be a dual effort, federal
money that can be applied to this problem; need enticements to providers for
service provision/maintaining service
• Rep Arp—ie. county asset has fiber ring, getting a provider to come in; who's
responsible for upkeep?; Governor will soon be unveiling big plans for BB
o NCACC—Comm Greene, using OC example for lobbying for legislation;
proposed legislation—where money goes to ISP and use that money to
pair up with govt; when NCACC is ready to lobby for specific legislation,
they will let us know so we can get involved
o Sen Foushee-County caucus, working on Senate Bill 689 (draft)
(bipartisan - introduced yesterday)will expand BB in unserved areas,
create partnership to allow use of county asset; another bill on house
side; bill that senate is pushing that will allow financial assistance to
residents who don't have means to access high-speed internet in their
area
Grants updates: Jim/Travis—trying to get up with the state to go through which are available and not;American
Rescue Plan $$-still don't have guidance but BB is listed though don't have restriction info yet; must be spent by end of
Dec2024
Bureaucratic mechanisms: Travis—should funding be authorized, have to take a couple of different legislative actions
to spend money, RFP/bid ->evaluate (OC and members of public)—Task Force would be good audience for that;then
would need to be approved so can take some months; once details are laid out,Jim/Travis can move quickly
Jim—what happens in the case of no $$? How would bonds work?
Travis—general obligation bond can be approved by voters
Update on "What's out there": In past meetings talked about disruptive technologies; fiber strategic plans;Jim shares
map (proposed fiber that we wanted to install ourselves)with group; fiber assessment to show all the kinds of fiber in
the county ie. Cable TV fiber around the county(2017)—highlights the tale of two cities,fiber in populated areas but not
in northern/western OC; combined map—DSL investment (green line) is where you see telephone fiber; no home run
back to H'boro where Century Link is providing service; if need copies of maps individually, contact Jim. Leveraging fiber
—not a good business case to expand fiber to places without BB; fixed wireless, LED, satellite (NetStat, Starlink); radio
spectrum has limited bandwidth, LTE much better; cell phone companies have infrastructure but can't lower rates which
would be required to be more affordble
County success models—Person County project where state let private industry on their towers (Highway Patrol);
Rowan County—dept manager, contracting with Open Broadband; struggling to get that off the ground and having same
challenges as OC—lack of vertical assets, not looking to build towers. OC in year 3 of 3 year contract, OBB learned a lot
Need to approve minutes/notes from last meeting
Meeting frequency every other week!!!
Review Action Register
- Hear from Piedmont Electric, River Street and Open Broadband
next meeting
- Anecdotally—Ting Fiber Internet (Holly Springs) -offers
cellphone service and high speed internet—lowers price and
increases speed (currently advertising$89/mo+startup costs)
Minutes approved with adjustment to add Open Broadband to
list of vendors to present
Suggested agenda items for next meeting
o What is short term strategy and then long term
strategy?
o Put item on agenda for devising short term solution
since fiber will be long term solution
o Todd has suggestions/ideas for short term and long
term solutions at next meeting
Move to adjourn; seconded