FAQ outline
The following outline has been developed based on conversations between City Council and the Task Force to date. This page will be updated as additional key items arise.
April 11, 2013; revised May 9th, 2013.
For City of Rossland Council:
Broadband Project Risks: Frequently Asked Questions and Concerns.
Who would be the Project Manager of a Rossland project? Who would be the contractor?
Mark Halwa, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Columbia Basin Broadband Corporation (CBBC) would be the project Manager and DSG Communications from Kimberley, BC (owner: Dylan Griffiths) would be the design and contract company.
How does the ‘pole deal’ with Fortis work?
The total upfront cost for Fortis pole permits is $10,659 (+ tax). The monthly rental for the poles will be $211/ month. If CoR chooses to not connect the Water Treatment Plant, the pole rental cost will be $134/month. The contract to use the poles is good in perpetuity, but Fortis reserves the right to change rental price. Historically, these rental prices for Fortis poles have not risen sharply at any point. Of the $10,659 up front cost, $1,766 (+ tax) has been spent already by CBBC, balance due May 28th, 2013. CBBC will be paying $4,697 of this cost.
Right now, the ability to rent all the Fortis poles we require for the build out as per current map has been obtained. We need to finalise the contract by May 28, 2013, or we will lose the ‘reservation’ and will need to reapply. The application process for the Fortis pole permits took five months.
The build-out plan being considered will require 30 Fortis poles.
What is the ‘pole deal’ with TELUS?
There are significantly fewer TELUS poles along the build-out plan than Fortis poles and they are along the corridor to the water treatment plant.
On Wednesday April 17th, CBBC’s Network Designer and Construction Contractor visited the site to gather the information to submit to TELUS and confirmed a permit for a total of 12 poles would be required. They mentioned that most of the telecommunications space on those required poles are at, or near capacity, which means a denial would have been probable. This would mean that the fibre on that line would have to be either installed via micro-trenching, or a new route has to be designed. Given this information, it is likely that spending $1,500 on the permit application, and waiting, would not have benefitted the project.
With that in mind, Mark Halwa asked the Construction Contractor (DSG Communications from Kimberley) if they could install the fibre using the same route (up Spokane Street, turning left or west, on 2nd Avenue) via micro-trenching for the same price as along the pole line and they have agreed to do so – at no additional charge. The net result of this is, Rossland will save about $36/month (in perpetuity) of pole rental costs and there is no need to apply for TELUS permits. The only drawback is some of the connections along Spokane may be slightly more expensive and the $36/month savings will help pay for that.
In summary, the construction costs will not change and the monthly operating expenses will decrease.
Why depend on other companies’ poles instead of running the fibre underground?
The price of putting fibre into the ground where conduit does not yet exist would cost roughly $65/meter or ~$183,000. At current rental prices, the poles will cost $61.67 per year from Fortis and approximately $36/year from TELUS. (a total of $2,528 from Fortis and $540/year from TELUS). This is not including the upfront costs mentioned above.
Who would be responsible for the fibre in Rossland moving forward, and in particular, for its maintenance?
CBBC will present the CoR with an “Indefeasible Right of Use Agreement” (IRU) and the CoR decides which side it will sign: as either the ‘Grantor’ or the ‘Recipient’.
GRANTOR: -takes care of fibre maintenance and bills back to IRU Recipient in the event of fibre breaks.
-gets notifications of issues from Fortis, TELUS and CRTC
-gets to say they own the fibre and something physical to show for it.
-gets the pole rental bill directly form Fortis and/or TELUS
-gets the ‘needs repair’ phone calls at all hours and needs to deploy the technician.
RECIPIENT: -just uses the fibre, access to which can never be altered or taken away under the IRU agreement (Oxford Dictionary says indefeasible means “not subject to being lost, annulled, or overturned”)
- financially responsible for maintenance of fibre or emergencies if party causing damage refuses to pay.
What is the process when a fibre cable is damaged?
Each pole upon which the fibre is strung will have a little plaque with info the effect of “if damaged, call owner at ###”. The person who created or noticed the damage may call the number, or if it gets reported to City Hall instead, CoR will have to call the number. Quite likely, the end result would be that CoR Public Works would be deployed to check out the site and report it to CBBC. CBBC then deploys the on-call fibre optic splicing contractor that will arrive on site within four hours. Meanwhile, “network redundancy” (explained later) will ensure service is not halted and everyone remains online. If the fibre is completely severed, there will be no service.
If the damage has been caused by a vehicle of sorts, ICBC (i.e. insurer of at-fault vehicle) is meant to pay, but CBBC will pay initially, while waiting for ICBC pay-out. Ms. Arnott has mentioned that in her experience of such things, ICBC does not generally graciously pay out, so this will tend to become an ordeal in itself. In the event ICBC does not pay or pays only partially, we would revert to the IRU. The IRU agreement will specify that each party will pay their own proportionate share of unscheduled maintenance – and a vehicle taking out a pole is most certainly, unscheduled maintenance.
If CoR Public Works were to be the ones to accidentally cause the damage, then CoR would be responsible for paying for the damage (or CoR insurance, depending on the case).
Technology changes quickly. Should we be concerned about obsolescence?
Technology changes allow fibre to transmit increasingly larger amounts if data all the time. Some people debate that wireless will take over and fibre will become obsolete which is an interesting debate and may never be resolved. Fibre will likely be an integral component of telecommunications for a very long time.
Fibre on poles is a 25-35 year asset. CBBC would take care of the network electronics including upgrades. The customer premise equipment (CPE) is similar to the TELUS or Shaw modem/router you use if you receive service from either of those companies. There are enough of them included in the project budget to supply service to the downtown area and municipal buildings. They cost about $200 and last 3-5 years. We can’t estimate what they will cost when they need to be upgraded, but have included $266/month to set aside funds to pay for the upgrade when required.
Will CBBC be around in a year?
CBBC was created by and is backed by the CBT. According to CBT’s “Report to Residents,” in 2012, CBT held an accumulated surplus of $430,023,000.
Who is on the CBBC Board of Directors and what is their background?
The members of CBBC Board of Directors are Ron Miles, Greg Deck, Gary Merkel, Jim Miller and Kim Deane. All are past directors of CBT; aside from Kim Deane, who is a current Director on the CBT board. Greg Deck is the only one with telecommunications experience; the others have a very clear understanding of the community value and benefits of broadband. The staff and contractors of CBBC are the ones with the technical expertise and experience.
Why was CMON not successful?
CMON did not have a service component and the CBBC plan has a strong service component with open potential. They did not have data centres but CBBC will have mirrored data centres. They were in direct competition with large telecommunications companies whereas CBBC has strategic relationships whereby they are trading fibre assets and building new fibre runs together. CMON had no significant financial backing.
The big telecommunications companies would never use the fibre of an open access network, in a concern to control service levels and value of their brand.
Large telecommunication companies (i.e. Bell Canada) use the open access network in Alberta called the SuperNet. CBBC is creating an open access network in the Columbia Basin.
ORION is Ontario's Research & Development network. Healthcare, Education etc. all travel over this network and the telecommunications companies use it to reach these end customers.
For more info on the Alberta SuperNet: www.thealbertasupernet.com
More info on ORION can be found at: www.orion.on.ca
The City of Rossland is not in the business of telecommunications. How much City time and money will it cost for maintenance, training, vans, on-call technicians, dispatch, and equipment?
CBBC will deal with these. The CoR is not building a fibre network of its own, but building onto the CBBC fibre network. CoR is not entering the business of telecommunications so much as enabling the arrival of open access network broadband within our community.
Again, the City of Rossland is not in the business of telecommunications so how will CoR be able to provide services to make this network work?
CBBC would be the Internet service provider of City Hall.
City Hall could choose to be the Internet service provider to Rossland, or could choose to enter into contract with real Internet service providers who will run the service instead. CBBC would oversee the process of finding and contracting Internet service providers. There are small companies already existent in the Kootenays, and more will appear.
Further to this, if a company had software they thought would benefit either just Rosslanders or the whole Columbia Basin, and this company wanted to run on the CoR (or entire CBBC) network, CBBC would be charged with analyzing the company and their offering, and then take care of bringing them on board or not.
I’ve heard that the CMON fibre that CBBC has purchased for the project is not quality fibre.
It is the same as what TELUS uses. Fibre optic cables are glass fibres and therefore very ‘hardy’, sturdy and long-lasting.
Didn’t I hear that TELUS is making their way to Rossland with a fibre network already?
Current TELUS scenario in Rossland: very low Internet capacity and bandwidth speeds. We can now expect to get about 5-7 megabits (Mb) per second download speed, 15 Mb per second if you ask for it, as compared to up to 100 Mb per second through CBBC network. The CBBC network will also provide up to a 100 Mbps upload speed, where as the others offer upload speeds in the range of 1-2.5 Mbps.
Note: these are the speeds provisioned by each network and can only be achieved on each network. When data travels across networks (i.e. from TELUS to Shaw or on to the global Internet) there is no guarantee of speed from any telecommunications provider.
Copper runs from houses and businesses to the central office (square building across from City Hall). Small fibre runs from Rossland central office to Trail base unit. Heavy duty fibre runs out from Trail to other communities.
The copper wire running to the houses in Trail is disintegrating due to soil composition so TELUS is replacing it with a fibre network called GPON to the houses. This is a slow process but it will ‘go live’ in June 2013. GPON has the capacity to download about 40 Mb per second, but upload more slowly. CBBC’s Ethernet will be able to download and upload up to 100 Mb per second on its network.
TELUS rebuild of Trail is a huge project. They may or may not come to Rossland and do the same up here. If they did have plans to do so, the plans are quite a few years out. Without a doubt, this is a benefit Trail will have well before Rossland.
If Rossland relied on TELUS coming to town in this capacity, not only would we be waiting a long time, we would never have nearly the capacity and bandwidth speed, nor would we have any of the many benefits of the open access network. As well, TELUS is only one Internet service provider, CBBC’s network will bring in multiple Internet service providers to choose from.
What is the redundancy of CBBC’s fibre network?
Redundancy of a network is necessary to reduce or prevent down time if there is a break in the fibre or other technical issue at a single point. Network redundancy allows the data to change paths but continue to travel in such a circumstance, so as not to inconvenience network users.
CBBC will ensure they have network redundancy by having Internet connections with Shaw and TELUS.
Commercial or corporate buy-in to jumping on an open access network would be nil due to their high need for security.
Banks, credit unions and large companies are using the Alberta SuperNet to transfer data.
Already signed up to participate in the CBBC network, are Revelstoke Credit Union, Toxco, Columbia Power Corporation, SNC and Columbia Basin Trust, along with Trail, Kaslo, Revelstoke and the RDCK.
Additional questions, comments and concerns are welcome.
April 11, 2013; revised May 9th, 2013.
For City of Rossland Council:
Broadband Project Risks: Frequently Asked Questions and Concerns.
Who would be the Project Manager of a Rossland project? Who would be the contractor?
Mark Halwa, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Columbia Basin Broadband Corporation (CBBC) would be the project Manager and DSG Communications from Kimberley, BC (owner: Dylan Griffiths) would be the design and contract company.
How does the ‘pole deal’ with Fortis work?
The total upfront cost for Fortis pole permits is $10,659 (+ tax). The monthly rental for the poles will be $211/ month. If CoR chooses to not connect the Water Treatment Plant, the pole rental cost will be $134/month. The contract to use the poles is good in perpetuity, but Fortis reserves the right to change rental price. Historically, these rental prices for Fortis poles have not risen sharply at any point. Of the $10,659 up front cost, $1,766 (+ tax) has been spent already by CBBC, balance due May 28th, 2013. CBBC will be paying $4,697 of this cost.
Right now, the ability to rent all the Fortis poles we require for the build out as per current map has been obtained. We need to finalise the contract by May 28, 2013, or we will lose the ‘reservation’ and will need to reapply. The application process for the Fortis pole permits took five months.
The build-out plan being considered will require 30 Fortis poles.
What is the ‘pole deal’ with TELUS?
There are significantly fewer TELUS poles along the build-out plan than Fortis poles and they are along the corridor to the water treatment plant.
On Wednesday April 17th, CBBC’s Network Designer and Construction Contractor visited the site to gather the information to submit to TELUS and confirmed a permit for a total of 12 poles would be required. They mentioned that most of the telecommunications space on those required poles are at, or near capacity, which means a denial would have been probable. This would mean that the fibre on that line would have to be either installed via micro-trenching, or a new route has to be designed. Given this information, it is likely that spending $1,500 on the permit application, and waiting, would not have benefitted the project.
With that in mind, Mark Halwa asked the Construction Contractor (DSG Communications from Kimberley) if they could install the fibre using the same route (up Spokane Street, turning left or west, on 2nd Avenue) via micro-trenching for the same price as along the pole line and they have agreed to do so – at no additional charge. The net result of this is, Rossland will save about $36/month (in perpetuity) of pole rental costs and there is no need to apply for TELUS permits. The only drawback is some of the connections along Spokane may be slightly more expensive and the $36/month savings will help pay for that.
In summary, the construction costs will not change and the monthly operating expenses will decrease.
Why depend on other companies’ poles instead of running the fibre underground?
The price of putting fibre into the ground where conduit does not yet exist would cost roughly $65/meter or ~$183,000. At current rental prices, the poles will cost $61.67 per year from Fortis and approximately $36/year from TELUS. (a total of $2,528 from Fortis and $540/year from TELUS). This is not including the upfront costs mentioned above.
Who would be responsible for the fibre in Rossland moving forward, and in particular, for its maintenance?
CBBC will present the CoR with an “Indefeasible Right of Use Agreement” (IRU) and the CoR decides which side it will sign: as either the ‘Grantor’ or the ‘Recipient’.
GRANTOR: -takes care of fibre maintenance and bills back to IRU Recipient in the event of fibre breaks.
-gets notifications of issues from Fortis, TELUS and CRTC
-gets to say they own the fibre and something physical to show for it.
-gets the pole rental bill directly form Fortis and/or TELUS
-gets the ‘needs repair’ phone calls at all hours and needs to deploy the technician.
RECIPIENT: -just uses the fibre, access to which can never be altered or taken away under the IRU agreement (Oxford Dictionary says indefeasible means “not subject to being lost, annulled, or overturned”)
- financially responsible for maintenance of fibre or emergencies if party causing damage refuses to pay.
What is the process when a fibre cable is damaged?
Each pole upon which the fibre is strung will have a little plaque with info the effect of “if damaged, call owner at ###”. The person who created or noticed the damage may call the number, or if it gets reported to City Hall instead, CoR will have to call the number. Quite likely, the end result would be that CoR Public Works would be deployed to check out the site and report it to CBBC. CBBC then deploys the on-call fibre optic splicing contractor that will arrive on site within four hours. Meanwhile, “network redundancy” (explained later) will ensure service is not halted and everyone remains online. If the fibre is completely severed, there will be no service.
If the damage has been caused by a vehicle of sorts, ICBC (i.e. insurer of at-fault vehicle) is meant to pay, but CBBC will pay initially, while waiting for ICBC pay-out. Ms. Arnott has mentioned that in her experience of such things, ICBC does not generally graciously pay out, so this will tend to become an ordeal in itself. In the event ICBC does not pay or pays only partially, we would revert to the IRU. The IRU agreement will specify that each party will pay their own proportionate share of unscheduled maintenance – and a vehicle taking out a pole is most certainly, unscheduled maintenance.
If CoR Public Works were to be the ones to accidentally cause the damage, then CoR would be responsible for paying for the damage (or CoR insurance, depending on the case).
Technology changes quickly. Should we be concerned about obsolescence?
Technology changes allow fibre to transmit increasingly larger amounts if data all the time. Some people debate that wireless will take over and fibre will become obsolete which is an interesting debate and may never be resolved. Fibre will likely be an integral component of telecommunications for a very long time.
Fibre on poles is a 25-35 year asset. CBBC would take care of the network electronics including upgrades. The customer premise equipment (CPE) is similar to the TELUS or Shaw modem/router you use if you receive service from either of those companies. There are enough of them included in the project budget to supply service to the downtown area and municipal buildings. They cost about $200 and last 3-5 years. We can’t estimate what they will cost when they need to be upgraded, but have included $266/month to set aside funds to pay for the upgrade when required.
Will CBBC be around in a year?
CBBC was created by and is backed by the CBT. According to CBT’s “Report to Residents,” in 2012, CBT held an accumulated surplus of $430,023,000.
Who is on the CBBC Board of Directors and what is their background?
The members of CBBC Board of Directors are Ron Miles, Greg Deck, Gary Merkel, Jim Miller and Kim Deane. All are past directors of CBT; aside from Kim Deane, who is a current Director on the CBT board. Greg Deck is the only one with telecommunications experience; the others have a very clear understanding of the community value and benefits of broadband. The staff and contractors of CBBC are the ones with the technical expertise and experience.
Why was CMON not successful?
CMON did not have a service component and the CBBC plan has a strong service component with open potential. They did not have data centres but CBBC will have mirrored data centres. They were in direct competition with large telecommunications companies whereas CBBC has strategic relationships whereby they are trading fibre assets and building new fibre runs together. CMON had no significant financial backing.
The big telecommunications companies would never use the fibre of an open access network, in a concern to control service levels and value of their brand.
Large telecommunication companies (i.e. Bell Canada) use the open access network in Alberta called the SuperNet. CBBC is creating an open access network in the Columbia Basin.
ORION is Ontario's Research & Development network. Healthcare, Education etc. all travel over this network and the telecommunications companies use it to reach these end customers.
For more info on the Alberta SuperNet: www.thealbertasupernet.com
More info on ORION can be found at: www.orion.on.ca
The City of Rossland is not in the business of telecommunications. How much City time and money will it cost for maintenance, training, vans, on-call technicians, dispatch, and equipment?
CBBC will deal with these. The CoR is not building a fibre network of its own, but building onto the CBBC fibre network. CoR is not entering the business of telecommunications so much as enabling the arrival of open access network broadband within our community.
Again, the City of Rossland is not in the business of telecommunications so how will CoR be able to provide services to make this network work?
CBBC would be the Internet service provider of City Hall.
City Hall could choose to be the Internet service provider to Rossland, or could choose to enter into contract with real Internet service providers who will run the service instead. CBBC would oversee the process of finding and contracting Internet service providers. There are small companies already existent in the Kootenays, and more will appear.
Further to this, if a company had software they thought would benefit either just Rosslanders or the whole Columbia Basin, and this company wanted to run on the CoR (or entire CBBC) network, CBBC would be charged with analyzing the company and their offering, and then take care of bringing them on board or not.
I’ve heard that the CMON fibre that CBBC has purchased for the project is not quality fibre.
It is the same as what TELUS uses. Fibre optic cables are glass fibres and therefore very ‘hardy’, sturdy and long-lasting.
Didn’t I hear that TELUS is making their way to Rossland with a fibre network already?
Current TELUS scenario in Rossland: very low Internet capacity and bandwidth speeds. We can now expect to get about 5-7 megabits (Mb) per second download speed, 15 Mb per second if you ask for it, as compared to up to 100 Mb per second through CBBC network. The CBBC network will also provide up to a 100 Mbps upload speed, where as the others offer upload speeds in the range of 1-2.5 Mbps.
Note: these are the speeds provisioned by each network and can only be achieved on each network. When data travels across networks (i.e. from TELUS to Shaw or on to the global Internet) there is no guarantee of speed from any telecommunications provider.
Copper runs from houses and businesses to the central office (square building across from City Hall). Small fibre runs from Rossland central office to Trail base unit. Heavy duty fibre runs out from Trail to other communities.
The copper wire running to the houses in Trail is disintegrating due to soil composition so TELUS is replacing it with a fibre network called GPON to the houses. This is a slow process but it will ‘go live’ in June 2013. GPON has the capacity to download about 40 Mb per second, but upload more slowly. CBBC’s Ethernet will be able to download and upload up to 100 Mb per second on its network.
TELUS rebuild of Trail is a huge project. They may or may not come to Rossland and do the same up here. If they did have plans to do so, the plans are quite a few years out. Without a doubt, this is a benefit Trail will have well before Rossland.
If Rossland relied on TELUS coming to town in this capacity, not only would we be waiting a long time, we would never have nearly the capacity and bandwidth speed, nor would we have any of the many benefits of the open access network. As well, TELUS is only one Internet service provider, CBBC’s network will bring in multiple Internet service providers to choose from.
What is the redundancy of CBBC’s fibre network?
Redundancy of a network is necessary to reduce or prevent down time if there is a break in the fibre or other technical issue at a single point. Network redundancy allows the data to change paths but continue to travel in such a circumstance, so as not to inconvenience network users.
CBBC will ensure they have network redundancy by having Internet connections with Shaw and TELUS.
Commercial or corporate buy-in to jumping on an open access network would be nil due to their high need for security.
Banks, credit unions and large companies are using the Alberta SuperNet to transfer data.
Already signed up to participate in the CBBC network, are Revelstoke Credit Union, Toxco, Columbia Power Corporation, SNC and Columbia Basin Trust, along with Trail, Kaslo, Revelstoke and the RDCK.
Additional questions, comments and concerns are welcome.
