You may also enjoy this overview slide show.

One of OHIvey's fundamental beliefs is that the natural monopoly element of our nation's telecommunications infrastructure - that is, the physical infrastructure - should be a shared public infrastructure in order to deliver to consumers true choice of true broadband. In other words, we believe all telecommunications should be delivered via municipal open access fiber to the premises.

However, the history of telecommunications delivery in America has led to business models that are at odds with true choice of true broadband. We like to suggest that the state of broadband in America today is about two horses’ hind ends. This is based on the apocryphal story (jump to www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/r/railwidth.htm for more about the veracity (or, actually, the lack thereof) of this story – but we like it anyway) that explains the reason the Space Shuttle’s engines are the size they are.  The story goes like this:

Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" ring any bells?
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

And why 4 fee, 8.5 inches?
Because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

Now the twist to the story...
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' hind ends.
So, a major design feature for the Space Shuttle, arguably the world's most advanced transportation system, was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's hind end.

Broadband in America today is based on archaic ownership and business models established more than a hundred years ago.  If we are going to offer true choice of true broadband, we MUST start thinking differently.  America can no longer afford to manage the transportation system of the 21st Century – that is her broadband networks – based on two horses hind ends.

Cities and other government entities typically have mission statements or other guiding principles. These statements are often vague and do not lend themselves well to specific action. For example, from Orem City in Utah:

"The mission of the City of Orem is to partner with citizens and businesses to help create and preserve a community where people want to live, work and play."

Even when the City drives their mission statement to more specific action items, it is often hard to find specific actionable items. Take, for example, Riverton, Utah's "Report Card:"

• Economic Development: Facilitate balanced economic development.
• Community: Maintain Riverton sense of community.
• Infrastructure: Improve City infrastructure.
• Public Safety: Improve the City's capability to respond to and manage emergencies.
• Transportation: Proactively develop a transportation system.
• Revenue/Funding: Ensure economic viability of the City.

The question for OHIvey becomes, "If we don't want to be two horses hind ends (see the story in the "Overview" section), can we align telecommunications delivery with public policy objectives?

And the answer? In short it is, "Yes, yes we can."

Let's take the Riverton report card (with a couple of additional items) as an example:

Economic Development: Facilitate balanced economic development.	Telecommunications services are the transportation system of the 21st Century.  Without a telecommunications system that provides competitive capacity, reliability and price, economic development is significantly hampered
Community: Maintain Riverton sense of community.	An appropriately designed telecommunications system helps establish bonding within the community by providing sharable and shared experiences.  For example, broadcasting local high school sports truly enhances a sense of community.
Infrastructure: Improve City infrastructure.	Not only is telecommunications infrastructure part of the community’s infrastructure it can also be used to help monitor and maintain municipal infrastructure through such services as SCADA monitoring systems, security cameras, traffic management services and through other means.
Public Safety: Improve the City's capability to respond to and manage emergencies.	Telecommunications networks and services can be used to enhance public safety through security camera systems, intelligent alarm systems and other information delivery resources.
Transportation: Proactively develop a transportation system.	Telecommunications networks can be used to monitor traffic flows and control dynamic flow features. Furthermore, true broadband services significantly enhance the "work at home" environment, potentially taking cars off of the road.
Revenue/Funding: Ensure economic viability of the City.	It is critical that a municipally owned telecommunications system contribute to the economic viability of the City - not detract from it. A municipally owned network can first be protected by good financing principles and sound project management. The system can then help offset some City costs by providing a robust transport mechanism that would not otherwise exist. In some cases, a municipally owned telecommunications network may sponsor an enterprise fund from which excesses can be transferred to the general fund or other programs.
Education	True broadband opens the world of education to the children and other residents of a community. Nothing can replace the interaction of a teacher with his students and no one should suggest that distance learning can replace the classroom environment. However, the ability to augment a City's great schools with education resources from around the world is a great opportunity.
Conservation	The bi-directional capacity of telecommunications networks can contribute to true conservation of energy and other scarce resources. Smart meters and other tools can be put in place to allow residents the ability to see the impact of their resource use and make decisions based on that knowledge.
Quality of Life	One of the advantages of an open access network is the invitation it represents to multiple private enterprise organizations to innovate new applications that will improve people's lives. Think of the doctor who can make house calls to her patients or consult with a specialist in a distant city via high definition video and data transfer or the family able to enjoy a movie together through Blu-Ray quality streaming video. The potential for true choice on true broadband to improve residents' quality of life ends only were the imagionation runs out.

Shared Infrastructure: Airports

When cities realize the need to build an airport, they come together to form an airport authority. That organization exists for the sole purpose of building and operating the airport. The Authority builds runways and structures, but it does not fly the airplanes. Instead, private airlines come and use the infrastructure. Because the high cost of the airport is spread over multiple airlines using the facility, the cost to use the airport becomes much lower than if each airline had to build its own airport.

When an airline sells tickets to passengers, the cost of the ticket covers runway fees, gate fees, and other costs which the airport authority assess them to use the airport and pay off the bonds it was constructed with. The airport authority does not interact directly with passengers - it does not charge the passengers fees directly, nor does it consider them customers. Instead, the airlines are the customers, and the arrangement allows the airlines to compete against each other, not against the airport authority. This competition helps airlines focus on things like value and services rather than on maintenance of the airport. It also benefits customers because airlines become innovative in their approaches to win and keep customers.In this section, we will explain how public roads and public airports set the precedent for public telecommunications infrastructure.

Shared Infrastructure: Roads

Think of how ridiculous it would be if your city required DHL, UPS and FedEx to build their own roads to deliver packages to your home or business. Whichever package delivery service built the road to your address first would have exclusive access to deliver packages to you. They could charge whatever they would like for package delivery. They could negotiate deals with the other package delivery services but if a dispute broke out, they could quit delivering to you and you would have no power to do anything about it.

Of course cities are smart enough not to let this happen. Cities build roads as a shared transport medium to allow multiple carriers to compete for your business.

Shared Infrastructure: Telecommunications

Cities are smart enough to build airports to help spur economic development and spread infrastructure costs across multiple private carriers. Cities are also smart enough to build roads so multiple private carriers can compete to deliver packets to your home or business. Yet, when it comes to the natural monopoly infrastructure represented by telecommunications networks, cities hesitate to build them as public infrastructure.

OHIvey can help your community plan, implement and manage the 21st Century utility infrastructure a public/private partnership open access fiber to the premises network represents.

In this section, we will summarize the principles suggested by the policy we are trying to support. Those principles being:

• The network must be carrier class
• The network must offer high, scalable bandwidth
• The network should be open access
• The network should have an open and independent architecture
• The network should be a partnership between public and private interests

In a phrase, public policy suggests that in order to support community objectives a telecommunications network should be a ubiquitously deployed public private partnership open access fiber to the premises network.

This section will summarize the choice between relying on the ILEC, building a network and providing services, and building an open access network.

This section provides a summary of some of the municipal projects around the nation.