Experiences on Cable Advisory Commissions
Howard C. Berkowitz
sy at netcases.net
Sun Mar 10 20:32:14 UTC 2019
I've designed services for cable and other residential broadband, and
evaluated vendor proposals for WAN services. Now, though, I have a new
responsibility: being on the Cable Advisory Committee for my small Cape
Cod town od Chatham, MA. We're the easternmost point on the continental
US, have been around for 300 years, and even was the original Marconi
transmitter site and a WWII SIGINT intercept base. We have, however,
more Great White Sharks than technologists. The town has a blue-collar
fishing population that is dwarfed by summer vacationers/summer home
residents.
Has anyone else been in such a civic role? Can we share experience?
Its first role is evaluating performance of Comcast, the incumbent, and
deciding whether to recommend renewal or make a preliminary denial. This
gets into an overall "ascertainment of needs" requirements process,
possibly for new features to be built into the renewed contract.
There are other issues to examine, such as subscribers cutting the cable
or getting other digital access. Since the municipality gets revenue
from the franchise fees, this may mean a drop in funding for Public
Access, Education, and Government video channels.
While it's not within the original committee charter, we may well look
at overall communications architecture, including municipal fiber and
Wifi, cellular infrastructure, emergency communications, etc.
--
Howard C. Berkowitz
95 George Ryder Rd.
Chatham, MA 02633
sy at netcases.net
(508)241-1362 cell
(866)262-6579 fax
More information about the NANOG
mailing list