The following panel discussed the the concept of a municipal fiber to the home utility and some of the financial structures, benefits and long term goals. The discussion also went over some of the common isses, misconceptions, and some of the outright lies told by the incumbents to their customers regarding municipal broadband.
By using the links below, you can watch the forum in its entirety (2 hours, 20 minutes, 65 mb) or
or you can view piece by piece, speaker by speaker, and question by question.
While we can certainly understand that 2 1/2 hours is a long time to watch, we feel the discussion was so worthwhile that ALL people involved in this field should view the ENTIRE forum video, even if you have to do it one section at a time.
Just for clarification, all segments are listed in the order they occurred and nothing has been edited out of the original tape.
The forum was moderated by:
Annie Collins - Chariwoman - Fiber For Our Future -- Ms. Collins
has been an outspoken advocate of the concept of municipal
broadband, specifically Fiber to the Home (FTTH) systems,
in the TriCities and across the country. Ms. Collins, a longtime
community activist, strongly believes that a municipally owned,
fiber optic network will bring real economic development to
a community. Ms. Collins is a Batavia resident.
Featured panelists included:
Jim
Baller – Founder - The Baller Herbst Law
Group - Washington D.C. telecommunications lawyer Jim Baller
is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading
lawyers and experts on public broadband matters. Working regularly
with multi-disciplinary teams of legal, financial, accounting,
engineering and other technical experts, Baller also assists
government entities in making comprehensive telecommunications
plans, developing state-of-the-art telecommunications systems,
searching for strategic partners, and integrating right-of-way
and zoning ordinances, franchises, licenses, pole-attachment
agreements, contracts, forms, permits and other related documents.
James
Carlini - President of Carlini & Associates,
adjunct professor at Northwestern University, and eprairie.com
columnist
Alex Chew – Regional Manager – OFS – Chicago, IL
Walter
Czerniak - Associate Vice President for Information
Technology - Northern Illinois University - and Geneva resident
Ed Hodges
- Chief Technical Officer, EMMtek Inc., St Charles, IL, and
Batavia resident
Rick Kaufmann - Co-founder & Principal - Aggregate Networks, Lisle, Illinois
Dennis
Kintop - President - M.I.C., Inc. Construction
- Batavia, Illinois - and Geneva resident
David Larson – Director, Information Systems - The Sidwell Company, St. Charles, IL
Brian Mehta - Senior Account Director:Fiber To The User - Alcatel
Don
Petravick - Don Petravick, Head of the Computation
and Communications Fabric Department of Fermilab's
Computing Division - and Geneva resident
Dan
Shanahan - Director of Batavia Access Television,
Inc. (BATV) - and Batavia resident.
Greg Snider - Treasury Manager, Equity Group
Investments, LLC. and St. Charles resident
Jack
Tenison - Executive Director, DuPage County Technology
Park, West Chicago, Illinois
Gary
White - President, Illinois Chapter of the National
Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors
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