How To Get Nothing Done

During a Special Meeting of the City Council on 8/5/2024, an inexperienced company named Uptown presented a Fiber Report that they tried to pass off as a “plan.” Uptown was selected to author this “plan” by former Public Works Director Eric Johnston along with various members of the BAG (Broadband Advisory Group), who are known big-telecom-sympathizers. As usual, citizens—who would have stood up for the public interest—were not allowed to comment. I’ve written before about how biased the BAG is; you can read the article here.

Hopefully, this article serves as a primer for your review of the full document, you can read my full critique here.

THIS IS NOT A PLAN! 

This report is presented as a plan, unfortunately, it lacks many of the key features of a plan:

1. There are no statistically significant sources in the entire study/report. The only thing of value is that it identifies a few obvious areas needing improvement in the city’s own fiber system. 

2. No standards are set and a Dig Once Policy is not mentioned. For example, Mount Vernon’s standard for their public fiber network requires installing 144-count single-mode fiber, carrying 16 wavelengths per strand, in two 2-inch schedule 40 PVC (or HDPE) conduit, with vaults 1,500 feet apart or more often if necessary. 

There is nothing like that is in this document. There are no standards anywhere. To review a real document outlining standards please see this document by Erik Alm, former TAGNW Director Michael Gan, and me. It has all of the necessary details to be a plan.

3. While lit and dark fiber leasing and service models are discussed briefly, there are no firm decisions regarding testing resources, or leasing this fiber to nonprofits that may want to address the digital divide.

4.  Perhaps the only positive point in the report was the discovery that a majority of Bellingham residents would welcome having the City as their internet provider.

Otherwise, this report is so bad that the COB would be within its rights to ask for its money back. So what does it do well? It protects the interests of big telecom rather well.   

It Was Written By…

The “plan” was primarily written by WAVE employee Melissa Miller who was a voting member and big-telecom supporter on the BAG, (reported here.) Melissa Miller now claims to be retired and we’re told she has no bias toward protecting WAVE and/or private fiber after 30 years of working for private fiber companies. We have her word for it. The second “expert” Uptown consulted was the COB network engineer, John Gaven, who was selected by former Public Works Director Johnston with help from Miller and big telecom. The third expert was Ray Poorman who owns CSSNW, which is a private telecommunications facility on C-Street that charges even more than WAVE. Poorman boasted at a COB council meeting in 2018, one attended by many public fiber supporters, that all the communications that go through Bellingham run through “his house.” The Security Risks of this situation are covered below. 

The Telecom Claims:

1. Unfortunately, none of the private companies involved would provide maps or any details of their networks to either Uptown, the BAG, or the COB, other than to make unsubstantiated claims that they had more than enough resources and installing a public fiber network was unnecessary.
2. The only speed data they provided was the inaccurate, browser-based testing data instead of load testing data like RRUL. (This document outlines differences between a network load test as opposed to the browser based tests the FCC, state, and telecom companies use to protect their own interests.)
3. They refused to substantiate their negative claims about other public networks, like Hillsboro, OR, and they excluded data from the best public networks in the nation like Chattanooga, TN. Miller claims the information about Hillsboro is “anecdotal” when, in fact, we have actual RRUL test data from there. They also ignored the success of our neighboring towns like Anacortes and Mount Vernon.
4. They neglected to mention that their local install costs are much higher than Anacortes, Mount Vernon, Hillsboro, Chattanooga, and most of the rest of the developed world.

Basically, they biased the data in their favor and expect the City Council to do what they always do: refuse to look deeper into a matter or educate themselves on how the technologies they are dealing with actually work. Several council members socialize with WAVE executives; that’s how influence works, right? 

Backed Up By Statistics?
There are not enough data points to be significant, because most of their findings come from interviews with fewer than 10 companies, in many cases, only five. For example, they talked to Johnston’s old buddies at Dawson Construction, but not the more community minded folks at RAM Construction. As for companies that really use a lot of data, like Faithlife? Nope; asking them didn’t fit Miller’s narrative, so they didn’t even ask.
 
Playing With Words and Obfuscating the Truth
Miller was clear in telling the Council that “businesses have access to fiber.” What she didn’t mention was how expensive and inaccessible WAVE fiber is. By “access” she simply means that if they have lots of money they might be able to get it, and then pay way too much for it every month. Having access to something doesn’t mean you can afford to use it. For example, there is a Porsche dealership close to my home. So, using her analogy, I have access to Porsches and shouldn’t complain, but having access to a Porsche is of little use to me and 90% of the citizens in Bellingham and Whatcom County, as is having access to the outrageously priced WAVE.   

Our Backhaul Has Virtually No Providers
According to Wikipedia, “Backhaul generally refers to the side of the network that communicates with the global internet.” (For more details click here.)

No matter who is providing you with Fronthaul, whether from your cell phone to a tower, or your home to the Comcast office, at some point they all have to buy backhaul in order to get the signal out of your local area and into the rest of the world.

In Bellingham and Whatcom County we have fewer than five backhaul providers and they are not all available everywhere. Most providers only have one backhaul choice in a given area. So really, if you look at your communications from the standpoint of backhaul, you actually have no choice in communications.   

Security Risks: One Line In, One Out.
Our emergency services system has a wireless backup called FirstNet, but when it comes to saving lives, the quality of our communications is critical and a wireless backup is NOT ideal. Remember, wireless is only an extension of fiber. The longer it takes a signal to get back to fiber, if it gets there at all, the more precious time is lost. Yet we have almost all of our communications eggs in one basket.  
Right now, as Ray Poorman of CSSNW himself indicated in 2018, virtually all of our services “run through his house.” Which is a data center on C-Street. This means that virtually all of our fiber backhaul runs through one physical location, giving our most critical services a single point of failure. Damage to that C Street data center would sever our communications access to the rest of the world.

A real plan would include a second public data center, in a different physical location, with more backhaul options. A partnership with the City of Mount Vernon or NoaNet as backhaul providers for the second datacenter seems appropriate here. It would also get us out of our dangerous telecom scenario while greatly increasing customer choice and performance. 

Finally, as a reminder, WAVE charges $900/month for Gigabit service and often $10K to $35K to hook up. This is 13.5 times more than the monthly cost of fiber in Hillsboro, OR, Anacortes, WA, Chattanooga, TN, and most public networks in the U.S. It is 10 to 35 times more to get hooked up to, if WAVE even has fiber in your area at all, which they probably don’t. It is 36 times more per month when compared to most of the rest of the developed world, and tens of thousands of times more to hook up. And yes, your new pretend fiber providers are paying some company like WAVE through the nose for private, overpriced, services which is why they don’t perform much better than Comcast, or in some cases, worse. The age of pretend fiber is upon us and won’t pass until we have a Dig Once Policy and a City/County wide public fiber network.