Coordinator report January 31, 2013 - includes Broadband Report

No one had any corrections to the minutes so they are as submitted for
the board's approval.

I am seeking section 20d exemptions from the conflict of interest law so
I can hire from among this group of local carpenters to assist our
broadband installers attain new heights.

Ron Gates will report on the public safety building, the CORI checks he
has done on the department members, flu shots, and their perceived need
to have the Town fund some road closed signs. The board and coordinator
got a letter from a young adult firefighter we can have the chief
address.

I'll make a mid- year report on Warwick broadband at the meeting. We are
six months into the fiscal year and show a $10k surplus. We have 9
orders and most of them are going to be more difficult than average to
provision. I want broadband to sponsor some computer classes through the
library and have spoken with Nancy about making this happen. The biggest
problem broadband has is that most of us don't know much about or
computers and our home networks.

Is time to authorize highway boss to close our dirt roads to heavy
traffic. We are best to defer to his discretion as it may or not be
needed. Exemptions are in law for emergency fuel and school busses.

All town employees need to get retested on conflict of interest law.
Town clerk and I will push this and track it.

The town took out an advertisement in the Pioneer School yearbook to
honor our six graduates. It is a half-page ad and cost the town $100.

Tom Wyatt did a fine job on the flyer for the 250th Ball happening on
Feb. 16.  Three community members have volunteered so far to assist with
the bar and other fundraising activities.

The ice harvest happens on Feb 9 at Moores Pond at 10 am.

I met with Building and Energy committee and their consultant, Mr. Bales
who has provided a framing statement. We are going to begin our efforts
with the school committee and the administration before going the
nuclear option of town meeting votes. We will be doing some additional
work with the consultant as he feels that the preferred option to
enlarge the conditioned space is not wisest course because not as cost
effective as thought.

We got copies of documents on Seaboard's 3 Meg project in Brimfield MA
that has Warwick on the meter. This is getting real.

We can expect the completed audit of the town's financials by the next
meeting.

Broadband report - February 1, 2013

We are six months into the fiscal year. Revenues are $51,365 and YTD
profit is $11,205. We budgeted for $87,700 and that sets our spending
limit for the year. YTD (end of December) spending is $40.159.

11 residents have entered orders that are not yet filled. Only two of
the orders are what I would characterize as simple installations as the
others require repeaters, multiple bridges and or scaling buildings to
access roofs to gain more height.  We are serving ten customers with
repeaters already with sites deployed at Moores Pond; Wheeler Pond;
Anderson Farm, and on Richmond Rd. We are currently working on
installations on Flower Hill, Wendell Rd near the Town Forest, Gale Rd
and the Bass Rd area to extend the signal. Warwick Broadband Service
has:

149	paying customers, of whom five are on vacation mode

6	town buildings of which three pay for service

28	customers are served by resellers out of town

182	total connections to the Warwick network.

The MBI middle mile 123 fiber to community anchor institutions (CAIs) is
slated to be provisioned in late June of 2013 to Warwick.  This will
eliminate one of the Internet speed bottlenecks we face with our current
backhaul buy of 10 Mbps that is provisioned wirelessly. I hope to
continue having the wireless circuit for back up.  Our primary Internet
backhaul will be 100 Mbps or more of fiber to Mt Grace.

WBS is a wholesale customer on the MBI 123 network. I am working on
doing the procurement for basic commodity Internet service and Boston
transport. I will get prices for Internet at major hub in Boston or
Cambridge and as well for Internet at Springfield. The latter I expect
will come at a higher total cost even though it will be without the
Boston - Springfield transport cost as a separate charge.  To illustrate
our advantageous position, as a wholesale buyer, we can buy a dedicated
Gig of Internet delivered to Mt. Grace for $4,500 to $5,000 / month.  If
we were not an ISP and didn't have this wholesale pricing our costs
based on informal quotes is $6,000 to $7800 / month for best effort
Gigabit service and $12,000 and higher for a guaranteed connection,
which is one that isn't shared with other customers.

I work with the thumbnail rule that an ISP spends about a quarter of
revenues on its Internet connection. We can't use a whole gigabit of
Internet nor can we afford one by that rule. Yet.

WiMax deployment is getting near. The wire and radios are installed on
all towers. Now the grounding of all the added circuits and inside the
service building wiring needs to be completed by the contractor.

The auditors noted that we are carrying some bad debt on the broadband
books. They recommend these items be written off subject to a vote of
the Selectboard.  I will work with the auditor and bring this forward at
another date.

A WBS customer asked me what this fiber and WiMax means.  The short
answer is that in the next year and beginning in July we will be able to
run the Internet service noticeably faster than it goes at present by
having a bigger pipe to the Internet and by balancing the load on the
network so we can "turn it up".