If you see that your community would benefit from better telecommunications
infrastructure, you may benefit by participation.
1999's Oregon SB 622 deregulated US West rates, in exchange for requiring US West to fund telecommunications infrastructure improvment projects in disavantaged areas. Aid for non-school projects is estimated at $68,730,902 over a four year period and $10,663,585 this year alone.
The Lents neighborhood qualifies, as does North Portland and portions of Northeast and Southest Portland (the area within city of Portland bounded by N Portland Harbor, Willamette River, Division St. and 15th Ave (excluding Hayden Island)). However, Portland neighborhoods must compete with other portions of Oregon for funds; here are the criteria for geographical qualification.
The first group of projects may begin as early as the late summer of 2000. The Economic and Community Development Commission and the Connecting Oregon Communities Advisory Board reviews and accept projects which meet the SB 622 criteria.
Guy Alvis (503.986.0047 in Salem) is the contact with Oregon ECDC for this project, and the PDC contact is Tami Tyler Cabezas (503.823.3199).
Here are four concepts submitted to the OEDC on 2000-05-24:
Given that the lack of higher speed Internet connectivity retards business growth in economically disadvantaged areas of Oregon, I wish to propose some concrete solutions to utilize the funding created by SB622. I also suggest that any such program be as simple for the end user as possible, to assure small and home businesses will quickly take advantage of the programs, and thereby accellerate the growth of these disadvantaged areas as quickly as possible.
Please contact me with any questions you may have about these or other concepts.
John Bartley
ten years a PC/Telecom System Administrator, and
Secretary of Portland's King Neighborhood Association
johnbartley@email.com
888-424-8136
1. HOME BUSINESS AND SMALL BUSINESS INTERNET IN PORTLAND VIA MMDS
A. We can't have cable modems in Portland (the ATT litigation has frozen their rollout in the city).
B. The promised 'overbuilding' from Wide Open West and other cable competitors is years away .
C. Numerous problems with ADSL caused by US West infrastructure inadequacy (see below) bar ADSL from reaching many parts of our community.
Therefore, I propose existing providers of alternative high bandwidth Internet services should be subsidised in reaching the economically disadvantaged areas of the city, as well as those rural areas where their MMDS (Microwave Multipoint Distribution Service) can be easily implemented to provide Internet connections.
WantWeb
WantWeb is a full-featured ISP, offering email and newsgroups as well as web connection. WantWeb offers Internet service by hybrid MMDS, where the signal from the Internet to the user is carried by microwave to an 2' Yagi antenna (looks like a UHF TV antenna) pointed at Council Crest. The 'download' is available in user-selectable amounts, up to 1.544 mbps for $100/mo. The uplink is carried by a POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) line from the PC through an external modem, at a maximum speed of 33.6kbps. (Plans are underway to provide two-way service without the POTS line, but such service is not yet ready.)
Since the vast majority of newsgroup, file transfer and web Internet transmissions are downloads, not uploads, the difference in the uplink and downlink bandwidths are not disadvantageous for most business users. WantWeb, in my personal and professional opinion, would serve home businesses and small businesses well, up to the point where they installed their own servers for e-commerce.
One full-bandwidth WantWeb connection, in my personal experience, works very well to serve at least eight networked PCs for the web, email and newsgroups. I've set it up twice to serve an annual convention at the Doubletree Columbia River on Hayden Island, and done signal tests at my house in the King Neighborhood close to MLK Boulevard in the Albina area of NE Portland.
DSL from both US West and CLECs cannot reach much of SE, NE and N Portland because of the poor quality of telephone wiring infrastructure. The use of pair gain devices, line taps and inferior high gauge copper lines prevents successful DSL installs in a large portion of urban Portland.
At the cost of $1,200/year (full 1.544 mbps downlink bandwidth) plus a $700 equipment and installation fee, WantWeb can go where other providers cannot. It can serve individuals and small businesses who have a need or desire for Internet connectivity which surpasses what can be done with a single POTS line connection (typically no more than 40kbps in much of my neighborhood).
It can also bring the Internet to community-based organizations who can't use the 'Gore tax' (AKA the Unoversal Service Fund, which requires a a lengthy process with only a partial refund even if an institution qualifies) to fund telecommunications infrastructure improvement. (See #3 below.)
I suggest a good use of SB622 funds would be to underwrite the equipment purchase and installation fees for all in the Portland target areas who desire WantWeb service, as well as to provide ongoing subsidy directly through WantWeb for the monthly use fees and to the local telco for the dedicated POTS line required for the uplink.
A good contact for further discussion would be the WantWeb Regional Manager, Ed Moscyznski. He can be reached through the Beaverton office, 503-520-9268.
An alternative provider of MMDS service in the Portland area and elsewhere is Clipper Net
2. RURAL MMDS EXPANSION:
I also suggest that some form of grant be provided to WantWeb, targeted to infrastructure improvements so they may serve other target areas where they have a WantTV presence (e.g. Prineville, et al.), to bootstrap off their existing engineering and facilities to more quickly provide service to rural disadvantaged communities. (See #1 above for details.) Likewise, other MMDS providers (e.g., Clipper Net) who have a presence in or near rural areas should be subsidized when those areas are defined as disadvantaged.
3. SCHOOLS AND MMDS
Many schools are not well served by the 'Gore tax'.
A. The process is slow.
B. The paperwork is lengthy (especially for smaller, alternative and charter schools who frequently do not have internal IT staff).
C. Only specific providers are 'qualified' to provide services.
D. The reimbursement is only partial (on a sliding scale which discriminates against rural, i.e., Indian schools), and
E. The process is also not fully funded, so no matter what a school does, it will not get a full reimbursement for expenses under the Gore tax.
The monies targeted for schools under SB622 may not be in the jurisdiction of ECDC, but if you have any liason with those who control SB622 funds for schools, I would urge you to consider suggesting to them that MMDS could serve schools quickly and efficiently.
4. A SUBSIDY FOR CLECs AND LEASING EXTRA COPPER
A significant handicap to the deployment of DSL in urban Portland is the poor quality of the copper phone lines. Let me give you a personal example.
My house is a measured 7,900' from the wiring center/central office (PTLNDOR12, the old 'ATlantic' exchange) on 24th and NE Stanton, yet the copper pair serving my home looks like it is 21,000'. That appearance bans me from receiving ADSL service. After being told twice I could have DSL, and then each time finding I could not, a year and a half of imploring US West personnel for information revealed the reason of this great disparity.
I finally found that there were four line taps (where the line is treed off in multiple directions). These line taps allow a pair to appear at multiple locations, and therefore make it easier for an LEC to provide service, since there are more wires back to the wiring center at each pedestal.
The copper pair from the wiring center is in eleven segments, one of which is in 26 gauge copper. That substandard thinner copper wire has very poor performance at the higher frequencies required for DSL service. When the multiple segments, the line taps and especially the substandard high gauge copper is combined, it's no wonder that US West's systematic and documented disinvestment in Oregon infrastructure bans many from receiving ADSL service.
Other handicaps include 'pair gain' devices, which double the number of voice lines a copper pair can carry, by putting the second number on higher frequencies above the normal voice line frquencies of the first phone number.. Telephone companies use pair gain devices to generate extra revenue and avoid failing to add new customers without the expense of adding new copper to an area. Since they use higher frequencies, pair gain devices block DSL higher frequency signals. Lines with 'pair gain' devices can't have DSL; even the Internet performance of conventional telephone modems suffer when they are used.
CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers) can offer DSL-type services by bringing in a second pair, leased from US West, and qualifying the pair so it meets the standards of DSL transmission. However, this service is expensive, and the process loses the significant economic advantages of the original DSL concept because of the cost to lease that extra copper pair.
I suggest another appropriate use of SB622 funds would be to subsidise CLECs for their expenses in obtaining lines provisioned for DSL use for small and home businesses in the target areas. http://www.2wire.com and http://www.dslreports.com can provide lists of CLECs for specific target area.