Greensboro Is Talking

The following is from the Sunlight Foundation’s Introduction to the Cycle of Transparency:

Government transparency is that rarest of political phenomena — a great idea with support across the political spectrum and popularity among the public. Yet, here we are in the 21st century with every tool we would need to make government more transparent and accountable, and still we are operating with a government that often behaves as it did in the 19th century.

So, transparent government is a good thing, but we do not yet have one. Now what?

It’s clear that there is a breakdown between conceptual support for the idea of government transparency and enacting the changes necessary to make it so. There is fear and resistance to change inside government that requires cultural, political, and attitude adjustments. And there’s a large gap between the good intentions of citizens and watchdog groups and think tanks and reporters, and translating those good intentions into effective results. Many people want to act, but they rarely know how or where to begin.

Here would be a great place to start.

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Where: Greensboro Public Library – Central Branch  – 219 N. Church St.

When: Thursday,  March 11, 2010 6:00pm-8:00pm

What: Informal gathering of community members interested in sharing ideas on how Greensboro can distinguish itself from others in the Google Fiber for Communities Initiative.

Who: Everyone is invited

Why: The Greensboro Google Fiber Application team is meeting Friday (March 12) at 8am in the Plaza Level Conference Room of the Melvin Municipal Building.  This will provide an opportunity for interested community members to share their ideas if they are unable to attend the morning meeting.

Thank you to the Library for coming through on such short notice to provide a meeting location.

Thank you to Ganache Bakery for offering up their place if we needed it.

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The following is from the preface of the final report submitted by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University on February 16, 2010 to the FCC in response to the National Broadband Plan.

“The basic large economies of scale of communications networks have not been repealed by the transition
to digital communications networks. The failure of twentieth-century natural monopoly regulation
pushed advanced economies everywhere to experiment with different models of achieving competition.
The two primary methods have been an effort to leverage cable and telephone convergence: fostering
competition between these two platforms in the broadband market; and using new regulatory techniques
to enable competition over shared or partially shared infrastructure. These have been complemented in a
few places by public investment in the public-utility-like facilities.

The transition to next generation connectivity is heightening the effect of the large economies of scale.
In particular, the fiber-to-the-home networks that are likely to dominate future home connectivity
involve very high costs of low-tech, labor-intensive elements like digging trenches, placing ducts, and
pulling fibers through the walls of subscribers’ homes. In the short term, the costs of fiber-to-the-home
deployment are several times higher than the cost of cable upgrades to next generation speeds, which
require mostly electronic upgrades. In the long term, fiber-to-the-home networks have vastly higher
capacity and upgradeability. These facts to some extent undermine the business and technological
convergence effects that played so central a role in the first-generation transition by weakening the
efficacy of media convergence for sustaining a competitive market in digital media and communications
carriage networks.

During the first broadband transition, a major assumption underlying the reliance on facilities-based
competition was that cable and telephone infrastructures already in place needed relatively low and
largely symmetric cost upgrades to provide Internet services. This meant that, at a minimum, there
would be two facilities whose incremental upgrade costs were sufficiently low to be able to compete
head-to-head in retail broadband markets. In addition, there were some hopes that the same would be
true of power lines and wireless systems. Together these meant that technological convergence could
underwrite competitive markets among players, each of whom invested in—and owned—their own complete
facilities.”

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Some key points of discussion and consideration being lost in the Google mellee the National Broadband Plan and where our communities fit in. The FCC’s National Broadband Plan was slated for release Febuary 17 and should include ideas on how the billions of our tax dollars set from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009) for National Broadband infrastructure improvement are spent.

• Formal public comments are closed (they are  still taking informal input on FCC blog) but you you can read a summary of Google’s initial thoughtd on their Policy blog here or click here to read their initial response in full (.pdf)

Google seems pretty committed to a 2012 broadband access for everyone component. So it appears might the FCC.

You can read the prelim report from the FCC here. Seems most Communities could cut and paste a good bit of whats in there into their RFI’s.

The FCC missed its target and knocked back the release of i’ts recommendations until March 17, 2010.

• You can read Google’s response here.

Is Google’s Fiber Inititive a way to emphasize the lack of local community input on the Plan? They do basically say in their disscussion points about how broadband infrastructure is an everyone issue? If so need to be grateful for Goog’s invitation to the table.

Google has said they they may pick a few of the guesstimated 250 plus communities for their Inititive. Where is that going to leave those that are not selected? What if Greensboro is not selected?

Interesting note: Google puts out request for input and thousands and thousands repspond. The FCC has a blog, asks for input and gets 3 comments.

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In the spirit of the “un” conference maybe it is time to revisit Ryan’s idea of a 2nd meeting. We could have an “un’ meeting.

Set Date/Time/Place and invite all to come.

We can commiserate about who wasn’t there after it  is done.

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Beginning in about two weeks, customers with smart meters will be able to access a web site to see their usage in 15-minute intervals, which will help them identify when they use the most electricity and to predict what their bills will be.

This data will provide consumers with a much better understanding of how much energy they are consuming, which will allow them to make changes, appropriately budget, or both. from Electric Light & Power

The following is from the pitch section of a pilot project from a few years ago in Ottawa, Canada that  ran into reglatory challenges. It is worth the browse through because it raises some interesting possibilities for consideration.

In it, the author  Bill St. Arnaud, talks about the customer owning the last mile, bundling energy/broadband, open access to service providers and incentives for reduced energy consumption.

Customers are encouraged to save money through reduced energy consumption

• Higher premium for “Green Broadband” will be an incentive to reduce consumption
• May end up paying substantially less than they do now for gas + electricity + brodband + telephone + cable
• and Thereby reduce greenhouse gas emissions
• Customer (or electric gas retailer) can also earn dollars for CO2 credits on energy savings
• Customer (or Employer) can also earn dollars for CO2 credits for Telecommuting.

Fiber to the Home business model

View more presentations from Bill St. Arnaud.

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In five years will we be able to look back on the Google Fiber Initiative as the rise of Participatory Community Development?

Can Greensboro,  pioneers in the rise of the  Participatory News Consumer, take the lead again?

The following is from the PCD website of the International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies in Central and South-East Europe:

Participatory Community Development?

The ground of PCD is our true belief that vulnerable people and all people naturally have the right to participate in the decisions that affect their life.

Our main objective is to involve the full power of communities and together to work for improving the life of the most vulnerable people.
Our secondary objective is to involve other local stakeholders in the process so we can support the development of vulnerable communities together with other experts, local decision makers, and other people who care.
Our parallel objective is through the process to bring together those who are often separated – the majority and those who are socially excluded, marginalized and in many cases – discriminated.

What is special about Participatory Community Development is that different people, in different contexts, from their own perspective give variety of definitions.

Definitely it is a process. And it is a community process where the local vulnerable people become stronger, their relations become better, they gain the power to improve their life together. And the whole community means much more then just the sum of its members.

But it has other meanings too… For civil society it is a process of building local democracy. For local people it is their initiative for a better life. For excluded and marginalized people it is a way back to the society.

I believe our community’s opportunity to distinguish its self lies as much in the application process —-as by what is written and submitted for consideration on March 26, 2010.

• Was it open?
• Were we inclusive?
• Did we take the lead?

The Google Initiative is becoming a process of self discovery  for all who are pursuing it . The end result is already evident:   We all need what is being offered. Now lets ALL go get it!

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This is the time of year I start yearning for Spring hard. Especially when I start to see the flowers come out.

The coming weeks forecast calls for temps in the 60’s, not quite shorts weather – but we headed in the right direction.

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From the site:

Outreach Tactics

Over the next three weeks, the city will launch an aggressive outreach effort to build community support for the Google initiative and persuade the company to pick Greensboro. Those efforts will include:

• Media relations
• Google AdWords and radio ads (donated by Dynamic Quest)
• Online contests and promotions
• Tracking and measurement of this work

And more.

We updated the site bar with the link.  Take a moment to fill out the City Survry while there.

http://googlegreensboro.com/

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The closer I look at the Google Fiber for Communities Initiative the more I wonder if it is a straw man for mass WiMax deployment.
The wireless VOIP market is poised for the plucking by a $ 14.5 billion venture like Clearwire’s partners which include Google along with major voice/ISP and content providers Time Warner, Comcast, Intel, Sprint & Bright House. There are a lot more cell phone and PDAs in our City then there are homes.

There are costs for wiring all of our community to the end home user being bandied about in the range of $500-$750 million. I don’t think that’s what Google plans to do. A much more likely scenario would probably include Google laying “middle mile” backbone, establish the needed WiMax transmitting locations, devour a chunck of the wireless market and sell end mile fiber connections to the end mile user… One at a time.

Which means of course that we would pay for it. The open question remains how many times over?

For Google or anyone to pursue laying their own “middle mile” fiber across our community they will need to acquire various rights-of-way. The Primary right of way being through our City’s existing “middle-mile” infrastructure…the sewers.

If a new “middle mile” network of fiber is what is  needed to support end mile models, now might be a good time to get off our our duffs and stop waiting for Google or anyone else to do it for us. Lets not leave any value sitting on the table and look at the possibilities of doing it ourselves. Doing it ourselves could create jobs immediately and allow our community to take control of its destiny. This would also be  a value proposition to pursue  as we look at ways to improve our aging-deteriorating sewer infrastructure. We could fix the sewers, add the conduits to compete in the global economy and  at the same time potentially generate revenue to offset the costs.

We could lay our own fiber and then lease the rights of way through the pipes that run through the pipes we have paid for and will continue to pay for.  We just completed a $55 million dollar sewer improvement project in Latham Park. How much would it have added to the price tag to lay fiber while we were at it? What kind of return could we have recevied long term to offset those costs?

We need to be excited about any offers to meet our infrastructure needs but at the same time we need to be diligent and watch our community’s assets and not just reach for our ankles on this one.

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