PA-COMNET meeting on Nov 8, 1995

Terman Library in the Terman Community Center, 661 Arastradero Road, Palo Alto, CA

The ICT presented the following options for the city:

1. Become an Information Service Provider (ISP) in direct competition with commercial providers.
2. Lease out city-owned telecomm facilities (cables, fibre, etc.) to commercial carriers.
3. Create a public information road system for Palo Alto that would be low cost, open for experimentation, and would/could stimulate commerce locally.

In terms of the telecommunications infrastructure, there seem to be three options:

1. Use existing city-owned or leased cable. (Keith has a map of the city's communications infrastructure in his office at 306 Bryant and will gladly let anyone study it. Call him first at 322-4722).
2. Build a new broad-band network, perhaps tax-supported, and provide low-cost universal service for all Palo Altans.
3. Partner with (the financially troubled) Cable Co-op.(Joe Villareal reported that the Cable Co-op board decided last night to refocus the company's activities away from TV and toward data transmission over time.)

The consultants' report was not well received because it was devoted mainly to financial aspect of telecommunications rather than policy, management and usage issues. The Telecommunications Advisory Panel (TAP) includes members from EPRI, Harris Telecom, Stanford University, Cable Co-op (Joe) and Ron Anderson. The main problem was the unspoken implication that the City would be involved in providing the services on the new network. TAP agreed that the city would stay out of service business; it would, instead, partner with one or more of many companies like Pac Bell or MFS to provide appropriate infrastructure.

Elliott Margolies asked: What are other cities doing? Anaheim, for example, is partnering with local companies to create a broadband net.

Paul Pease asked: What about wireless? Is that an answer to the infrastructure question? The technical answer is No, not for the long term. Too limited. But Metricom has already put wireless transceivers in place to serve 75% of Palo Alto. Another possible partner besides Metro Fibre Systems and the phone company is TCI. There are many others looking at what can become a very lucrative market.

Jay Thorwaldson sees a danger in losing the "Big Brother" problem represented by a city-owned cable or comm system to the obverse, a "Thousands of Little Brothers" problem, with confusion, lack of standards, and real security worries.

Mary Jo Levy asked, "How are decisions being made? Businesses are being wired now, but what about the rest of us?" To help us see what's afoot, she brought a few copies of pertinent sections of Palo Alto's Comprehensive Plan, copies of which are available in all our libraries.

Kathryn Johnson agreed to excerpt these sections and add them to a pastiche of thoughts gleaned from recent correspondence on the PA-Comnet and put together the beginnings of a Manifesto that will be made available to the TAP and City Hall before the next important meeting. We all agreed that we have done a lot of thinking about what we would like to see in a real community network, and that it's time to make a clear statement of how we would like to see it implemented. This is not just about the wiring and the speed of switches, but about our VISION of what it can do to promote the common weal.

Elliott suggested a pilot project. Mary Jo suggested that be preceded by a needs assessment sequence; Louis Bookbinder will work with the other two to devise a short questionnaire that could be distributed and collected at libraries.

Paul and Elliott will visit the Senior Center to see what the computer lab there looks like and will report to the next PA Comnet meeting. Paul suggested we get someone from the new local company, @HOME, to tell us what they are doing at our next meeting.

Submitted by substitute recorder,
Paul Pease, Writer/Consultant
302 Bryant, Palo Alto, CA 94301 415 322-2072 | fax -7940