Advice on bringing community broadband to Los Alamos?

Former network engineer that went into management. My email is in profile if you would like more candid guidance than I can give on a public forum.

1. Not realistic, but not outside of normal for an management infrastructure/ops position. What you are writing is what you hope for, but sometimes it sends a red flag to potential applicants. The worry many high level people have is that they will be turned into the 'do everything' person. Trim a few of the less directly related requirements off of the description (e.g. Microsoft certification).

2. Yes... but also No. There are a lot of people who push through their careers collecting credentials and turning it another rung on the ladder. Chances are you will get a rosy candidate at some point, who will put in two years of aggressively spending your budget to inflate their resume and then move on. Not that a majority of people are this way, but the filters are set in such a way that this is what you are likely to end up with.

3. Other comments will say 'pay more', but it will be difficult to meet market rates for this skillset when working with local governments. If you can't get approval to raise the comp, instead try to split this role up into a team. Governments won't pay one highly skilled person 250k, but they will pay four people 80k, and one manager 120k.

4. Politically? Find someone with pull, and make sure that it's 'their idea'. Something that they can put on their win list.

Procedurally? Don't boil the ocean. Handle it iteratively. Start with commercial areas and new housing developments. White-glove your initial smaller install and it will create the broad demand from the community to expand it.

Love what you are doing. Hope this helps.

As a complete outsider, I would think of this as follows. The current status quo is a Comcast/CenturyLink duopoly. Let's imagine I wanted to start a local ISP. What would kill my company the fastest?

The thing that would pop up as #1 for me is access to poles to run fiber. If this killed Google Fiber it can definitely kill a smaller upstart.

There are gatekeepers who limit this access and they work for the county, in the permit office. The incumbents have a relationship with these people, and if they don't you better believe that their folks will start building one as soon as your project is announced. All your local contractors currently supporting Comcast are also not on your side.

It is in these people's best interest to see your project die. To make things worse, they don't have to work very hard to make it happen. All they have to do is sit on a permit application long enough to cast doubt on the project. Whereas the broadband manager has a huge hill to climb in comparison: they would have to build a relationship with all the people blocking their progress or figure out how to sidestep them.

So the person you are looking for should have high-caliber government sales skills. Good luck finding someone like that who also has a masters degree in CS and will work for 140k. This person can make millions in commissions in enterprise IT sales and they know it.

Random point of Los Alamos networking history: around 1995-1996 the school system (5 elementary schools, 1 mid, 1 high) were apparently able to get dark fiber strung between them. (I may be mis-remembering, it might have been dedicated service like T1 lines, but I thought it was a level up from that. I was the student representative on the committee setting up the first internet service to all the schools.)

It might be worth talking to these folks: https://ruralinnovation.us/

This won't answer your immediate questions, but they've been heavily involved in getting startups to move to small communities. Municipal broadband is a big part of that, and I believe some of them worked on those efforts in Vermont.

As a former Los Alamos resident I wish you luck in this endeavor, but my guess is Los Alamos is probably too small to run a cost effective ISP operation. My recommendation is to approach this from a "how do we bargain with ISPs as a single unit" perspective, not a "how do we build and operate our own network" perspective. My apartment building in Seattle just converted from cable to fiber. We're only 200 units but it was still enough of a prize to get some competition and concessions out of the vendors, and collectively LA has 50x those numbers. If you can get even 2 vendors to bid on a contract for the whole city then you may be able to get a pretty decent deal. Conceivable they'll refuse to play ball because they're scared of the community broadband concept, but at some level they are still businesses and so if the deal makes sense they may take it. Probably still need to hire a manager, but the expertise to look for is how to manage vendors and negotiate contracts more than "Cisco advanced certification", and you may be able to hire them initially as a consultant instead of a permanent employee.

You might want to contact the people who went through this in Princeton, Massachusetts:

https://madned.substack.com/p/thin-pipe-part-i

https://madned.substack.com/p/thin-pipe-part-ii

They probably have lots of contacts.

I don’t really have any constructive critiques beyond just saying that I support what you’re doing.

I think the long game that local politicians miss (or are financially motivated to not see) is that broadband is becoming as important to communities as roads. It facilitates lowering the costs of so many things, benefits companies+individuals+government, improves equality of access+opportunity, on and on.

I cannot comment on the domain but having lived and worked in New Mexico I'd posit that there is a talent shortage in the state. I believe defense contractors and the National Labs attract and retain all the talent. My anecdotal data is I once interviewed, got a rejection, then 6 months later they called back telling me "no one else in NM was able to do as well as you did on the technical interview." During that position I saw a few LANL people hire on only to go back 8-18 months later. So, I'm not saying hire them but that applicant who met the minimum qualifications just might be the best in the state who is available.

My last post was June 12, 2012, but I did a blog for over 4 years about exactly what I thought. The county has already done REDInet (Regional Economic Development Iniative) which thought it would sell little chunks of bandwidth for big prices after it was done, and somehow that last chunk of fiber through the San Ildefonso pueblo's overhead power poles never happened, and fiber between the townsite and White Rock never happened. Comcast had the only fiber between the hill and White Rock, and consumed it with TV and the relatively slow DOCSIS technology. If the county builds anything, it will be very expensive and unpopular with the voters.

Try talking with Allan and Mariela Saenz at Los Alamos Network, losalamosnetwork.com.

My blog is still there at fiberlanm.blogspot.com.

It sounds like we're the same person. I'm on the utilities board for my city and am pushing for the same thing. I meet monthly with a group organized under the Fiber Broadband Association that is focused on municipal broadband. We have quite a few members and most either have some form of municipal broadband or are in the process of getting it. If you shoot me an email (see my bio) I'd be happy to connect you. Everyone is eager to help and many of them just went through this process in the past couple years. I think that's the best route forward as they've already gone through this and can share what they know.

Please note I am not a telecommunications or networking expert. Verizon 5G Home Internet[1] or T-Mobile's[2] version appears to be the perfect fit for New Mexico.

>> "Verizon 5G Home Internet, meanwhile, is a fixed wireless access service (FWA) powered by 5G Ultra Wideband that provides ultra-fast Wi-Fi connections to the home."

[1] https://www.verizon.com/5g/home/ [2] https://www.t-mobile.com/isp

Consider talking to chris hacken of nepa fiber: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13688595 , http://chrishacken.com/starting-an-internet-service-provider... .

Also, consider looking at https://godigitalmarin.org/ on what they've done.

There's currently a test going on in Belgium about a low cost alternative ( wireless / mesh / 60 ghz)

https://pharrowtech.com/news/pharrowtech-telenet-and-unitron...

The trial is expected next year. Follow up on it and consider it later on. It could bring down the cost to a fraction and has an expected bandwith of 1Gbit/s per person.

I would look to Westfield, Massachusetts as an example:

https://www.whipcityfiber.com/

They got municipal fiber to their town and then started providing services to other towns in Massachusetts to do the same. All the tiny towns around my slightly larger town have gigabit fiber now for $79/month while I'm stuck at 25% of that for the same price from Comcast (my town is "fully serviced" by Comcast and thus not eligible).

Step 0) Have at least a few dozen million dollars and solid guaranteed access to right of way for aerial or underground fiber

Step 1) Hire somebody who has experience running a facilities based last mile gigabit class ftth isp. Sorry to say your job posting requirements and duties doesn't look anything like that right now.

Step 2) Have that person recruit the rest of the team

I may not have much experience in broadband but i’ve spent most of my career in municipal/county software. My email is in my profile if you want to reach out, I’d like to help any way i can.

Would it be cheaper to just get everyone that would use it StarLink?

I’m just weary from trying to fight horrible broadband providers blocking every step of the way. Maybe the answer is to go over their heads.

Maybe also worth looking into tge history of Longmont, CO's NextLight (https://mynextlight.com/).

Corporate democrats in the state legislature will be happy to trade away your local rights for the promise of union jobs in purple counties.

Stupid question: could it be useful to set up an associations where all broadband users are [voting] members?

I helped a similar network get off the ground in IL. I’d love to help - email is in bio.