Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutBC 2025-01-03Town of Dryden Broadband Committee Meeting Friday, January 3, 2025 – Via Zoom Approved Minutes Attendees Graham Dobson – Broadband Committee Tony Salerno – Broadband Committee Mark Wilson – Broadband Committee Jason Leifer – Town of Dryden Supervisor Dan Lamb – Town Board Mark Witmer – Town of Caroline Supervisor Kathleen Kelley-Mackenzie – Town of Caroline Councilmember Tracy Monell – Gleamon Technology Ryan Garrison – HUNT EAS Kate Morseman – HUNT EAS Eric Beckhorn – Clarity Connect Dave Makar – Executive Director Amanda Anderson – Director of Finance and Personnel Cassie Byrnes – Confidential Secretary to the Town Supervisor Ray Burger – Planning Director Doug Schneider – Cortland Standard Rick Cicciarelli – Resident Dave Makar called the meeting to order at 10:33am. Introductions – Dave Makar D Lamb read the Dryden Fiber Mission Statement aloud: “Our mission is to provide reliable, affordable, high-speed, fiber-based internet access. We offer state-of-the-art technology and unmatched customer service.” • D Makar asked D Lamb, “As a writer of this mission statement, what does it mean to you?” • D Lamb answered, “It’s a big embrace to our community. We’re putting it out there, and we’re making a commitment, a promise, to the people we serve. I think it’s a very accessible statement and it should be reassuring to anyone who reads it.” • D Makar added that our mission is to provide this service, but also to reach every single house in the Town D Makar shared a comment from a customer in response to receiving their bill: “Thank You! The internet is AMAZING now… I can actually do meetings on my computer!” We are now at about 1,500 houses out of the around 5,800 in the Town of Dryden, so we are ¼ of the way there as far as parcels We have a huge quarter coming up with our projections of what we’re going to be turning green in January, February, and March Map: Construction Projections for 2025 and Map on drydenfiber.com – Ryan Garrison Hunt has been looking at what will be done in the first quarter of next year • Yellow areas on the map (will be green by the end of the first quarter) include: o Lower Fall Creek Road, Ed Hill Road, and Hile School Road – cable is hung and ready to be spliced in o Caswell Road – cable has been run (including underground) as is ready for splicing o W. Dryden Road and Rt. 38 North – cabling has been started o Bone Plain Road and adjacent north roads will be next once cabling is complete o Sheldon Road, Wood Road, and other miscellaneous areas are also coming up next • Blue areas on the map (will be green by the end of 2025) include: o MIP – Route 79 in the Town of Caroline – setting up the Caroline network o Pole applications for these areas have moved through • Orange areas on the map (will be green by the end of 2026) include: o MIP – Southern part of the Town of Caroline T Salerno asked about Southworth Road, as people have been asking him when it will be available • R Garrison said that area will be problematic, as there are no poles and there are issues with easements; This location, as well as Kimberly Drive and others, already have a service provider and likely will not be reached until after MIP D Lamb inquired about parcels that are in Cortland County, but are directly next to a house that we can provide service to; How are we going to manage these? • T Salerno asked, “How far are we going to go?” • G Dobson said, “We don’t have a set policy on this. I think what was discussed was if you can just do a plugin (without re-running wire), we will provide them service. We won’t be providing any additional infrastructure.” • D Lamb is not aware of anything that would prevent us from allowing this • D Makar added that the Town Board may want to have an Inter-Municipal Agreement with other municipalities that border the Town of Dryden (Groton, Virgil, Cortlandville, Town of Ithaca, etc…) • D Makar added that we have a goal for MIP, which has a very strict timeline, and we have this mission that we committed to the Town of Dryden to reach all addresses in the Town of Dryden; How many side quests do we want to do to reach these border parcels, that may pull us away from achieving the entire mission on time? • T Salerno added that he would hate for the people in the Town of Dryden to be questioning why we are turning someone on in a neighboring municipality before hitting all houses in the Town of Dryden • G Dobson added that a larger customer base will help eventually reduce the cost for everybody; If we don’t have to add more infrastructure, we should clearly do it • D Makar finished the conversation with, “I think it would be best for Dryden Fiber as an organization of the Town, to have permission, in writing, approved by the Town Board, that says, you may operate specifically in a non-new-infrastructure, non-new-construction phase to support installations and go and serve those people” o D Makar will write this up as a resolution R. Cicciarelli sent a Chat Message: “Sounds like Neimi Rd just went from ‘by then end of 12/31/24’ to second half of 2025.” • D Makar responded that the map that R Garrison is showing is updated quarterly; On April 1st, there will be another update to the map; If all works right, everything that is yellow right now will be green on April 1st, everything that is blue will be changed to either yellow (which means it will be done in the second quarter of 2025), or it will stay blue (which means it will be done in the second half of 2025); In an effort to keep the map as simple as possible, we have limited the amount of colors (green is today, yellow is this quarter, blue is this year, orange is 2026) • D Makar added that we cannot commit to when it will be done at this point, but we could look at it being done sometime before the first half of the year is over (we will have a more specific prediction around April 1st) R Garrison shared a demo of a pie chart re: Dryden Fiber Availability • Shows: Total Parcels, Total Available, In Construction, 3-6 Months, MIP Project, and 12+ Months • The committee discussed mobile home parks, landlord agreements, etc… that affect the “Total Available” number • R Cicciarelli sent a Chat Message: “What is the reason for a landlord not wanting the service availability? I would think it would be a selling point for your units.” o D Makar answered the main reason we’ve had is mobile home parks have many utilities buried underground (could be water, sewer, electric, telephone, cable), and bringing in fiber brings a fear of disrupting the current utilities while digging o T Monell added that some landlords read the agreement as they must give up all their rights Business Conversations – Dave Makar Static IP Addresses We have had a few residential customers request a static IP address We currently only offer static IP addresses to Business Tier customers D Makar discussed whether to force residential customers who want a static IP address to switch to the Business Tier, or offering it to them as an add-on to the Residential service • G Dobson commented that he thinks we should just keep it simple; You purchase the service that you need; If we start doing add-ons, we will have to keep track of them • M Wilson agreed and added that the distinctions we make between the packages helps keep costs low; If a customer has special needs, they should sign up for the package that provides the service needed • T Salerno commented that he doesn’t have an issue with add-ons as long as they are priced right and are not costing us anything; As long as we have a mechanism with which we can track it and bill it without causing extra billing issues • J Leifer commented that it should be fine to do just an add-on unless they want all the other extra services that the Business Tier offers (in that case, they should purchase the Business Tier) • A Anderson commented that it isn’t hard to set up a customer with an add-on to their subscription, it’s the tracking later on and the reporting that will cause extra workload o T Salerno suggested reporting on the total service price (with the add-on included), in lieu of adding a new column for the add-on (this will make the reporting much easier) • D Lamb added, “To be competitive, if other companies are offering this, we should as well.” • T Salerno suggested the add-on charge should be $20-$25 per month (this is still cheaper than the Business Tier, but you’re not getting the other Service Level Agreement (SLA) perks) Residential 2 Gig Service 2 Residential Tier customers have requested 2 Gig service (Residential Tier offers 1 Gig) • Should we offer a 4th Residential Tier? • Could we offer a Super Platinum at $150 per month for 2 Gig Residential? • Business Tier is $150 for 1 Gig and $250 for 2 Gig (includes other Business Tier benefits) o The committee members discussed pricing, as well as the services in the SLA of the different tiers, but decided that they need to see more data from our competitors before making a decision, and decided to table the discussion until a future meeting Motion to Add Static IP Addresses for Residential Tier Customers at $20 per Month T Salerno made a motion to add static IP addresses for Residential Tier customers at $20 per month per static IP address J Leifer seconded the motion All in favor: T Salerno, J Leifer, D Lamb All against: G Dobson, M Wilson With no additional comments, the motion passed with 3 votes in favor and 2 votes against Service Level Agreement Discussion Service Availability/Unavailability: Acts of God/Weather • D Makar has sent a request to Phillips Lytle (broadband attorney) about adding an update to the SLA regarding natural disasters, terrorism, and other things we cannot control Credit Schedule – Coming January 17th • T Salerno is working on this and mentioned that in his research, he is finding that pretty much every service that offers credits for outages requires that the customer initiate the request for a credit; He suggests that Dryden Fiber issue credits automatically, without customer initiating, because it separates us from competitors o D Makar added that the current SLA states that customers must report outages to us, however, we have not been following this, and have been automatically issuing credits to anyone with an outage over 2 hours to be proactive o Committee members discussed different situations that could result in an outage, and whether Dryden Fiber should be responsible for crediting those outages o G Dobson added that automatically crediting customers with no reporting will result in a lot more work for A Anderson, who has to put these credits on each individual account; When we get more subscribers, this could be very time-consuming. o A Anderson commented that getting phone calls from each customer with an outage would be more time consuming than just getting the list from Netegrity of all outages, and applying them to each customer’s account MIP Update: IMA, GDA, Overall Timing – Dave Makar IMA: Inter-Municipal Agreement between the Town of Dryden and the Town of Caroline • Has been drafted by the Town of Dryden’s attorney, and reviewed by the Town of Dryden • Town of Caroline will sign off on the IMA on January 15th • Town of Dryden will sign off on the IMA on January 16th GDA: Grant Dispersal Agreement between the Town of Dryden and NYS • Town of Dryden will sign off on the GDA on January 16th Overall Timing: On January 17th, we will be ready to begin the process of getting our first reimbursements from the grant 2025 Public Broadband Committee Retreat – Dave Makar D Makar asked the committee members if they were interested in an in-person “Public Broadband Committee Retreat” sometime later this month, to outline the big picture goals for the year • The committee scheduled the Retreat for January 24, 2025 at 2:00pm Installation / Customer Count Update – Tracy Monell / Dave Makar Install Volume and Sign-Ups • We have had 78 new customer requests for installation in the last few days, due to the Dryden Fiber information letter that was sent out with the town tax bills; T Monell said that many of these requests are in the green zone, so installations have been scheduled as well • We had 68 installations in the month of December (our biggest month to date) and close to 60 installations already scheduled for the month of January • We have done 1,500 parcels so far in the first 2 ½ years, and in the next 90 days, we are looking to add another 1,500 parcels • The committee discussed the process of contacting potential customers who have already signed up for service, once they are in the green zone o T Monell explained that customers who have already signed up are prioritized, and as soon as their parcel turns green, they are contacted to schedule an installation Inventory – Drop Cables and ONUs • ONUs – even considering a switch from Ciena to Calix, we think we can manage with what we have • Drop Cables – there are varying lengths of cables that we need for each installation, some up to 1,000 feet long o Both shorter and longer length cables are getting more difficult to acquire (we get them from Graybar, who gets them from CommScope) o CommScope is the only manufacturer of the kind of cables we use in our network o We project, at the rate we are going right now, that we are going to run out of drop cables (probably within the next 60-90 days) o We have them on order, but some will not be delivered for 4 or 6 months Next Meeting – Friday, January 17, 2025, at 10:30am The meeting adjourned at 12:23pm. Respectfully submitted, Cassie Byrnes Confidential Secretary to the Town Supervisor