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Weimar agrees to bring residents fast Internet
13 December 2004WEIMAR - While not actually taking a vote Thursday, the city council did offer a verbal consensus to allow city staff to continue work to bring broadband high-speed Internet service to the community.
The city is currently one of two Texas cities, the other is Burnett, that are running pilot programs of BPL service in cooperation with Broadband Horizons, a Blanco-based communications firm. Representatives of the company updated the council on the progress of the program during the meeting.
Following the presentation, which included a brief outline on the potential revenues to the city depending on its level of financial participation, City Manager Randal Jones requested direction from the council. Councilman Roy Ullrich was among those who expressed an interest in more information.
"I want to see the payout figures," he said.
How much the city will receive will depend on how much it puts in, according to Broadband Horizons' Vice-President for Business Operations Michael Bates. He said his company offers several levels of participation.
One plan would have his company financing all the equipment and providing all the services as an Internet service provider and simply paying the city a franchise fee for use of the lines. Another possibility would be the city paying for the equipment and serving at its own ISP.
He said most cities are looking at something in between, with the city purchasing the equipment and his company providing the support services.
As his part of the presentation, Bates outlined the business process of bringing BPL to the city. He said the first thing needed was a partnership with a utility, pointing out the city owns its own distribution system.
He said that is followed by the arrival of a BPL rollout team that does a preliminary cost estimate and determines where the company would need to place the equipment to create overlapping BPL cells to serve the city. Those actions, he said, have been completed.
The next step in the process is to conduct a market research study and finalize a network design. That information is used to create a business plan that Bates said could tentatively be ready by the council's January meeting.
If the business plan is acceptable, that would be followed by signing a contract with the city, deploying the equipment and launching a campaign to sign up residents for the service.
"Now that we're basically finishing up the pilot program, we're asking the city for permission to do the final design and we're ready to start a feasibility study," he said. "We're close to coming back with a real-life business plan."
While Bates handled the business aspects of the presentation, Broadband Horizons Larry McClung handled the hardware questions. He said BPL is essentially a two-way, high-speed data network using the power lines to provide the service.
He explained that electric distribution uses lower bandwidths, leaving upper bandwidths available for communications.
Bates added that his company has recently been in contact with various vendors about some new developments that offer even higher speeds while reducing the number of cell nodes needed to provide the service.
He said his company was currently doing due diligence testing on the equipment and that it should be ready for use when it comes time to install the equipment in Weimar.
"Once we have an agreement with the city we can have the equipment shipped to us in the couple of months," he said. "Once we receive the equipment, it should take only a couple of weeks to a month to install, so we could be operational within probably three months after we get the go ahead."
The council also addressed a contract that has already been signed with an outside service provider by approving changes in its solid waste ordinance to reflect its recent privatization of that service.
In October, the city council voted to privatize the city's solid waste service, awarding the contract to Texas Disposal Systems, a company based in the city of Creedmore, near Austin.
"The biggest change is in setting the rates," City Manager Jones said. "The ordinance sets them at 5 percent over and above the city costs. By doing that, the ordinance is flexible. If we just put in a dollar figure, we'd have to vote to change the ordinance each time the price changed."
Under the terms of the contract, the company will offer once a week pickup at a cost of $14 per month - down from the $18.50 currently paid for the city's present twice-a-week service.
The council also awarded the bid for drilling of a new water well for the city to the low Bidder J&S Water Well of Bellville at $289,490. Consulting engineer Donald Warschak of Mercer and Associates said his firm had worked with the company on a well in Garwood and had no problems with the work that was done.
Jones said the well was necessary to ensure the city has sufficient water resources for the future.
"The city has seven wells but only three are currently operational," he said. "This will be the fourth, if it is a good well and can produce 375 gallons per minute or better. We needed the additional well. If we lost one of the others at this point, we could have problems meeting our water demands."
Barry Halvorson is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact him at 361-798-3888 or hvilladv@txcr.net
Source: Victoria Advocate
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