Title
The Community Broadband Network Project Design and Business Plan Completion.
Body
The Community Broadband Network (CBN) project was initiated on April 19, 2011 and the presentation of the CBN business plan to County Council is the final deliverable for the study project. Since the last presentation to Council, where the design was 95% complete, comments from the independent review of the network design have been incorporated and the design has been finalized. The majority of the work in the last six months has been to complete the CBN Business Plan. A comprehensive approach was taken in the development of the business plan that was based upon the network design and included market research, the business model and the financial model to complete the Community Broadband Network Design and Business Plan.
BACKGROUND
CBN has been designed to provide a secure, reliable and dedicated 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) fiber-optic connection to every residence and business in Los Alamos County (ca. 8,610 premises). Furthermore, CBN is designed to provide County citizens with access to basic local community services such as library, recreation, permit, public safety and utilities resources. In addition, CBN is designed to provide County citizens with a broadband marketplace to purchase ultra-fast Internet, telephone and high definition video services from the service provider of their choice.
The CBN business model is based on “Open Access” principles where Los Alamos County would serve as the wholesale network operator, not a retail service provider. Retail service providers would purchase wholesale network services from CBN thereby allowing any qualifying service provider to have equal and fair access to CBN services.
MARKET RESEARCH
Market Research was conducted on many different occasions to aid in the development of the business plan. Telephone, online and in-person survey instruments were used to gauge community opinion.
Research & Polling, Inc. conduc...
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