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OpenCape: Local Ideas to Maximize Fiber Infrastructure
The OpenCape Network launched about eight months ago to bring better middle mile connectivity to Cape Cod. Reporter Sean Gonsalves explored other possibilities for the 350-mile infrastructure in a recent Cape Cod Online article.
Gonsalves spoke with OpenCape CEO Dan Vorthems. The network was funded with $32 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) grants and approximately $8 million in funds from the state, county, and private-sector partner CapeNet. It brings connectivity to 91 community anchor institutions from Provincetown as far west as Providence and Brockton. The idea for the network began with Cape Cod Community College and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Today, OpenCape is a non-profit with Board members from healthcare, higher education, public education, government, and the private sector.
Gonsalves and Vorthems touched on the high hopes for economic development that accompanied the network deployment. When the project began, the dream was to turn Cape Cod into a "Silicon Sandbar." The network is still in its infancy, but new jobs in the area are retail, service, and tourist related rather than high-tech. Residents of Cape Cod were hoping the network would bring better paying positions to meet the high cost of living in the area.
Gonsalves takes it one step further and proposes using the network for last mile connections:
Getting the Cape's big data users online opens up all sorts of possibilities. But [what] I wanted to know is when the Cape would get to the point where residential users could access this Internet autobahn capable of reaching speeds of a gigabit per second.
CapeNet Celebrates Launch
CapeNet is officially open throughout Cape Cod. Cape Cod Today reports Governor Deval Patrick, President of Massachusetts' Senate Therese Murray, and State Senator Dan Wolf spoke on June 14th at an official event titled "This Changes Everything."
Planning for the new fiber network began seven years ago as a joint idea between Cape Cod Community College and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. In addition to $8 million in state, county, and CapeNet contributions, the project received a $32 million stimulus award. The network spans 37 towns along its 350 mile trail. According to the CapeNet website, community anchor institutions will include 30 libraries, five colleges, and six research facilities. Approximately 62,000 businesses will have the ability to connect.
Comcast Cuts Deal in Cape Cod as OpenCape Deployment Continues
CapeCodToday, recently ran two interviews relating to OpenCape, the publicly owned network nearing completion in Massachusetts. The interviews follow a belated March press release from Comcast, announcing its new service contract with Cape Cod Community College (CCCC). Like some others familiar with the project, we were surprised to see the college choosing Comcast for connectivity instead of OpenCape.
As we previously noted, CCCC and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute were two OpenCape founding members in 2006. The nonprofit OpenCape received $32 million in a Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (stimulus) award and gathered an additional $8 million in funds from the state, the county, and CapeNet, the company building and operating the network.
Reporter Walter Brooks asked CCCC President John Cox about the arrangement via email. Comcast began serving CCCC last fall and when asked why parties delayed the announcement, Cox said:
Regarding the delay in publicity, the College was not willing to comment on the connection, including statements to Comcast itself, until we had actively used it for a couple of months.
When the contract was negotiated, CCCC needed fiber service and OpenCape was not ready to serve them. Cox stated that the college needs to stay competitive and referred to a Bridgewater University satellite campus that will soon open in the community. Community colleges rely heavily on reliable connectivity as students look for distance learning opportunities.
OpenCape Update - First Stretch Scheduled for Testing By the End of the Month
After six years in the making, the OpenCape network is soon to be delivering services. According to a Sandwich Wicked Local article, town selectmen were informed on December 6th that the Brockton-to-Plymouth stretch of the network will be activated before the end of 2012 for testing. We brought you detailed news of the $40 million project earlier this year.
Funded with a $32 million Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (BTOP) grant and $8 million from the state, county, and private venture firm CapeNet. According to the article, 200 miles of fiber are installed and 50 are in construction or are being leased. Construction was set back when Hurrican Sandy hit the east coast. Verizon NStar crews, working on the install, were all pulled and sent to New York and New Jersey.
The news from OpenCape Chief Executive Officer Dan Vortherms was welcome. The community has been waiting patiently to tap into the improved access, economic development, and cost savings. From the article:
Selectman Frank Pannorfi said broadband might service several initiatives the town has planned for some time; alluding perhaps to South Sandwich Village and its business potential.
“We’ve been waiting for this a long time,” Pannorfi said.
A much needed data center is just beginning construction. The data center and the network will belong to the non-profit OpenCape. The purpose of the middle-mile network is to "support the economic, educational, public safety and governmental needs of the region.
OpenCape is Almost Open for Business
Cape Cod brings thoughts of ocean waves and wind swept beaches. OpenCape and SmarterCape Partnership want to add “really fast pipe” to that image.
This winter, crews have begun installing over 300 miles of fiber optic lines [pdf] connecting 70 anchor institutions in the region. A few customers may be able to get service as early as this summer, and the network will be fully deployed by early 2013. It is middle mile infrastructure, which is to say it is intended to be the link between the Internet backbone and organizations and businesses that serve end users.
OpenCape began in 2006, when leaders of several Cape academic and research institutions met to compare notes on their telecommunications needs and wants. Dan Gallagher, as CIO of Cape Cod Community College, was paying about $3,750 per month for 3 T-1 lines to serve 5,000 students, plus faculty and administration. The CIO of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute was searching for a way to meet his organization’s needs for symmetric data transfer. As is typical for remote or geographically challenging areas, moderate bandwidth was very expensive, and the high capacity connections needed for modern computing applications were not available at any price. The Cape region also lacked a data center, which is necessary for redundant communications and network power systems.
Everyone at the meeting recognized their region had an infrastructure problem. As Gallagher, now CEO of OpenCape, puts it, “If you weren’t on a canal, if you didn’t get a train station, you wouldn’t survive. Today, broadband is that infrastructure.”
Further discussions ensued within the founding group and throughout the community. They looked to projects like Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative, and thought about what would best fit their region.
At some point in the process of building and financing a new infrastructure, a decision is made about who will finance and own it. Ownership was a central part of the discussions from the beginning. “Long ago, we decided that roads are the domain of government,” says Gallagher. “We gave power to highly regulated monopolies.
Boston vs. Verizon
A recent editorial in the Boston Globe caught my attention - Fiber-optic nerve. It seems that Boston is tired of waiting for private companies to build modern broadband networks in the city.
The editorial suggests that as Verizon has started building its FTTH FiOS in New York City, D.C., and some of the Boston suburbs, it may be a withholding the network from Boston due to the Mayor's efforts to change a state law that has exempted telecom companies from paying a number of taxes. Verizon denies any connection. From the editorial:
Menino is right to insist that telecommunication companies pay their fair share of taxes. In Boston, the exemption shifts more than $5 million a year onto the property tax bills of homeowners, say city officials. But tensions between Verizon and the mayor can be costly in many ways. City cable providers Comcast and RCN, for example, don’t offer the speedier fiber-optic connections into customers’ homes available from Verizon in 98 Massachusetts cities and towns. The new and faster broadband speeds - both downstream and upstream - offered by Verizon to Internet customers therefore remain beyond the reach of Bostonians, as do FiOS-related incentives on products such as mini netbooks and camcorders. Cable and Internet competition is alive and well in the suburbs, but flat in Boston.Verizon has previously threatened to withhold its investments in states that do not sufficiently deregulate -- after turning its back on the New England region by offloading its customers on the totally unprepared Fairpoint company, Verizon pushed franchise "reform" in Massachusetts. Franchise "reform" is when states agree to preempt local communities that selfishly want to regulate the quality of service offered by providers - things like requiring some local channels and thresholds for customer service. As Karl Bode noted in the link above:
While these bills are promoted as a magic elixir that will bring competition and lower TV prices to a region, when people go back to investigate whether these bills actually helped anybody (which is amusingly rare), data indicates that TV prices increased anyway and consumers got the short end of the stick.