Return to NANOG, last mile, municipal facilities

["Howard C. Berkowitz" <sy () netcases net>]

It frightens me when I realize how long it's been since I was active in 
NANOG (2006?, but a lot before then). Happily, I'm surfacing from a lot 
of health and personal issues, and starting to do some consulting. 
*waves to lots of old friends, thinking of the time, in frustration, 
that I called VZ the employer of last resort for color-blind cable 
splicers. No long term insult intended.*

I'm newly on the cable TV advisory commission for the Village of Chatham 
on Cape Cod, and trying to find other counterparts and specific 
experience. I am proposing that my committee take on a broader scope, to 
include municipal communications architecture not just with cable, but 
with town owned facilities/leased duct/carrier hotel, systematic 
cellular repeater towar placement and leasing, and WLANs among town 
buildings and possibly for residents. I'm also interacting with the 
emergency operations manager for various VHF, GETS/WPS telephony, and 
perhaps satellite. We're a fishing community with lots of marine band 
radio and satellite; the backup for the town and county emergency 
communications is 2-meter ham. Anyone else doing something like this?

As a fishing and resort area, we'll be looking at providing WLAN 
connectivity in the harbor and nearby waters.

We have an incumbent cable provider, which will not change this year. 
The committee advises the town on the contract and modifications. One 
area is that the town share of cable revenues is going down with more 
movie-over-IP and the like getting users to drop cable subscriptions. 
Cellular repeater rents might be one balancer.

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Howard C. Berkowitz
95 George Ryder Rd.
Chatham, MA 02633
sy () netcases net
(509)241-1362 cell
(866)262-6579 fax