Planning for OPLAN II

That's precisely what the City of Gainesville, FL is doing. Last month, after visiting the Broadband Properties Summit in Dallas, I wrote about Gainesville - see Utility Forum Shows Multiple Broadband Approaches.

The next panel featured an in-depth look at the community of Gainesville, FL, home of 2006 National Champions, the University of Florida Gators. On the panel were Commission Member Ed Braddy and two representatives from the Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU), Frank Latini, Technical Services Manager, and Dan Clark, Marketing Specialist for Gator.Net. They outlined a low-key strategy that has enabled the utility to bring new Internet opportunities to the citizens of Gainesville by incrementally extending the FTTH network on a project by project basis, without raising political objections or opposition from the incumbent cable and telecom broadband providers.

The website GRU.net provides more detailed information on the services offered. Commission Member Braddy described a communication strategy to compare the fiber network to "digital streets and roads," which he said has been an effective communication method. While the team holds a goal of engaging in an advanced deployment of a fiber optic loop for industrial purposes, their method is to engage in public private partnerships with MDUs and property developers, who share the costs of deployment. Their advice to any utilities, when asked how to manage perceived risk, is to "Go Slow."

How does Gainesville's approach compare with Geddes' recommendations in his blog? Pretty good alignment, if you ask me. Key to note here is that wireless and fiber are two sides of the same coin. Regardless of technology, a business model is needed that provides for capital recovery, as well as sustainable operations. So chalk this method up as a second example of 3.0 Emergent Customization...

What interests us most is that it provides a practical framework for realizing Malcolm Matson's open access vision of the future, where networks are funded and owned by long-term low-risk investors and any service provider can ride on top. This is called an OPLAN (Open Public Local Access Network), and implies both the end-user access and metro backhaul are part of the same open network. It's an intellectually attractive proposition. The trouble is finding the route from "here" to "there."

Some of the biggest problems with municipal fiber deployments are down to the fact that it's a big, expensive, monolithic project. The up-front cost is hefty, and its repayment means you have to be very sure there will be enough demand to pay it back. It's difficult to trial the idea of muni-fiber (or any other kind of metro-fiber roll out) without making a huge investment and therefore taking a big risk. This is the "anchor tenant" problem Dave Hughes, Director of BT's Wireless Broadband division, mentioned during the session. Other speakers noted how hard it was to co-ordinate the purchase of connectivity across multiple public services given their varying contract commitments and buying cycles.

So one way of dealing with the large costs and coordination issues of a huge capital project is to not do a huge capital project. Go incremental instead of all-at-once. Sure, there are trade-offs, but there is some wisdom in carving a larger project up into smaller bits, not the least of which is that it makes the project feasible. How about technology risk? By buying into a declining cost curve, you will get more modern equipment at an overall lower cost. The equipment makers may not like it, but it makes sense from a buyer perspective.

Nobody wants to build a metro backhaul network without access network customers; but nobody wants to build an access network without a plentiful supply of cheap metro backhaul. And few are willing to risk doing both. So, what is to be done?

1 An incremental approach to building an open-access muni metro network.
2 Shift from opex to capex - own, don't rent.
3 A multi-utility approach to cabling and ducting around town.
4 A hybrid public/private approach to access networks that connect users to the trunk.
5 A stable infrastructure investment plan to encourage private actors to invest.
6 A holistic view of end-user costs that looks beyond just out-of-pocket ISP and TV/phone service fees.

Now we're getting somewhere - this looks like a plan. Go Slow, in pieces. Buy, don't Rent. Get the most out of holes you dig. Partner where it makes sense. Invite in private money. Roll in lots of cost substitutes for a more robust business plan. I'll cut out the middle man and just copy the rest of the planning guide here - check it out!

The incremental OPLAN

With this model for incremental deployment, you keep rolling until you cover the whole city. It has the advantage that there are no leaps of faith; you simply install links where you have a need for serious bandwidth, or where the cost of telco transit hurts. The EU and incumbents can't complain because you originally built it purely for your own needs - right? The open access tariff is a secondary motivator.