Working together with the municipal government / Collaboration avec le gouvernement municipal

The meeting today with Bruno DIDIER and Philippe CHIVOT (les maires-adjoints) from the municipal government went extremely well. We spent almost 2 hours talking about the status of broadband development in the village and the best ways to move forward with a fiber project.

There were a number of key issues and developments:

• The new, upgraded exchange is due to be built early next year

  This is a huge development and is tied to a EUR 50'000 investment by the municipality. The deal is rather complex as I understand it. France Telecom owns the land where the exchange will be built but our local government will pay for the construction of the new building/shelter. After 20 years the building will be deeded back to France Telecom.

  I was never very happy with this arrangement but luckily the papers have not been officially signed and approved. This is excellent news. One of the key points of our discussion in the meeting was how to restructure elements of the deal to accommodate fiber rollouts.

• Competitive operators likely are coming

  The new exchange will be built to accommodate competitive operators and from the look of it there are some who may be interested in coming with their own equipment. Obviously there are no "done deals" yet but this would be a good sign if it turns out to be correct.

  Operators would install their own DSLAMs for DSL (and hopefully FTTH equipment at the same time) when the exchange opens. For the residents in my area that means DSL speeds at 400 meters, instead of 4500 meters. Others farther up and away from the exchange won't be so lucky but there is a bit of geography in our favor as well. Generally the farther you get from our exchange the more expensive the homes become. That means the most expensive lines would be installed to the most expensive houses where residents could pay more for the installation. All operators already have a fiber presence which passes through the exchange using the Yvelines Numériques backbone.

• We are all islands (private residences)

  It turns out that St Nom La Bretèche is different than many other French towns because we are largely made up of islands of private residences (where the roads are owned and maintained by the residents). This set-up actually makes rolling out fiber easier because the conduit in each of these private residences belongs to the residents, not France Telecom. The challenge is linking these various islands together by crossing streets or through France Telecom's conduit - and then back down to the exchange.

  We talked about ways to facilitate "bridges" (conduit) between these islands (subdivisions) and the municipal government seems very ready to help. I asked for a list of any proposed work on roads ahead of time so that we could put in manholes and conduit across streets between these "islands" whenever there was work planned.

  The really good thing about the island approach is that each private residence will only have to build out to the nearest "fibered" island and not all the way back to the exchange. it will take some planning to ensure we have enough fibers passing through each residence to ensure point-to-point connections back to the exchange but it is possible.

• Ensuring the new exchange is "fiber-ready" and open to competition

  As long as the village is going to be footing the bill to build the exchange for France Telecom why not insist on including space for an optical distribution frame which becomes the property of the village? That is one of the nice things about the government paying EUR 50'000 to build something for a private company. They have bargaining leverage. If France Telecom were against the idea the municipality could simply take the 50'000 and build their own public fiber exchange right next to the copper one instead.

  We spent some time talking about the details of what the municipality should require in the deal and I promised to get some feedback from experts in the Netherlands. I'll post their responses.

I left the meeting very excited for the project. The next step is contacting the competitive operators (with the help of the municipality) about putting a workable fiber plan into action.

Preparing to meet with the Mayor's cabinet / La préparation pour une réunion avec les Maires-Adjoints

I called the office of our Mayor (Manuelle WAJSBLAT) last week to ask for an appointment to speak with her about fiber. There are a couple of things I wanted to talk about.

1. The status of France Telecom's upgrade of our exchange
2. The need for a small space next to the exchange (which the village owns) for fiber termination equipment
3. The plan eventually to extend our network to other residences
4. Coordinating fiber planning with any civil work in the village

Her office called me back to set up a meeting for today with the heads of two municipal commisssions (les maires-adjoints).

• Bruno DIDIER
  Urbanisme, Environnement, Développement économique, Transports, Sécurité
  (Urbanism, environment, economic development, transportation and security)

• Philippe CHIVOT
  Travaux, Entretien du Patrimoine, Marchés Publics, Ordures Ménagères
  (Work, maintaining historical elements, public works and trash collection)

Before the meeting I spoke with a friend of mine who had a similar post in another city government and he gave me some key things to focus on for the discussions. He told me how it is important to focus on the benefits to everyone involved - the users, the businesses and even the political leaders.

I realized as I was going through my speaking points that there are some huge benefits for a village with fiber. First, it will add value to our homes at a time when people are worried that their house values are falling. We'd also move from having some of the worst connections in our department to having the best. We could also take advantage of the regional network backbone investments put in place by our department which have been, so far, underutilized. Finally, symmetric connections for telecommuting could help ease traffic congestion, improve business traffic for local merchants and help the environment. Those are some big social benefits.

Broadband and the role of municipalities /l'Internet à haute vitesse et le rôle des gouvernements municipaux

I recently spoke with a number of people running community broadband projects as part of my job. I was very interested in their own experiences from both a professional and personal standpoint. We've recently seen the meltdown of a number of municipal Wi-Fi projects and I believe there are still some questions surrounding the most appropriate role of governments in telecommunications. That's why it was so interesting to talk to people "in the trenches" and hear about their own experiences and struggles. I was particularly interested in their experiences with fiber.

The people leading these projects seem to be driven overwhelmingly by the desire to improve their communities over the longer term. Many of these communities lack good broadband infrastructure and the people pushing these projects see new broadband networks as a way to build sustainable communities - often outside of major city centers. They believe that the investment models of telecom and cable firms are focused too much on the short-term. Fiber isn't a 3-5 year return proposition and the CEO's of telcos and cable companies often don't even last that long. Instead, fiber evangelists argue that their communities need fiber and that these investments should be evaluated over a much longer time span. That could make them less interesting for the private sector.

The arguments for government intervention should be tied more to positive externalities. Private firms are concerned with short-term returns on investment. Communities, on the other hand, often have other social goals in mind. Private firms want to maximize profit while governments often aim to maximize welfare (utility). That means the the private sector and local governments may come to different conclusions regarding when a project is "worthwhile." Private firms will come when it's profitable. Governments may step in when it is net welfare enhancing.

Municipalities typically aim to cover costs of the network but there may also be other social benefits such as drawing a high tech employer to the area and stimulating demand. This could still make the project socially worthwhile even if it weren't profitable. It's interesting because the effects of externalities are typically neglected from discussions of fiber infrastructure. However, similar externalities are front and center when cities give millions of dollars in tax rebates to developers for building shopping centers or manufacturing plants. I think these externalities deserve more attention.

I'm taking a different approach by building this network as a private citizen but I will still rely on these positive externalities as a selling point for the network. The difference is I'll need to convince people to pay a little extra for these benefits while governments typically can use taxes for the same purpose. I'm hoping that the residents in my neighborhood will be able to recognize these benefits and then support the project by signing up. The telecom and cable companies don't consider the welfare of people in St Nom La Breteche when they make their telecommunication decisions. Residents, on the other hand, should.