Hi Howard,
On 3/10/19 4:32 PM, Howard C. Berkowitz wrote:
I've designed services for cable and other residential broadband, and
evaluated vendor proposals for WAN services. Now, though, I have a new
responsibility: being on the Cable Advisory Committee for my small
Cape Cod town od Chatham, MA. We're the easternmost point on the
continental US, have been around for 300 years, and even was the
original Marconi transmitter site and a WWII SIGINT intercept base. We
have, however, more Great White Sharks than technologists. The town
has a blue-collar fishing population that is dwarfed by summer
vacationers/summer home residents.
Has anyone else been in such a civic role? Can we share experience?
Sure.
In addition to running a policy shop, focused on municipal telecom, and
consulting to municipalities, I also served on the Mayor's Telecom
Advisory Board in Newton, MA (essentially the cable board). Happy to
share experiences.
Ask away, here, or privately. Also happy to talk by phone (contact me
to coordinate time).
Miles Fidelman
Its first role is evaluating performance of Comcast, the incumbent,
and deciding whether to recommend renewal or make a preliminary
denial. This gets into an overall "ascertainment of needs"
requirements process, possibly for new features to be built into the
renewed contract.
There are other issues to examine, such as subscribers cutting the
cable or getting other digital access. Since the municipality gets
revenue from the franchise fees, this may mean a drop in funding for
Public Access, Education, and Government video channels.
While it's not within the original committee charter, we may well look
at overall communications architecture, including municipal fiber and
Wifi, cellular infrastructure, emergency communications, etc.
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra