by
dane » Fri Feb 09, 2018 9:47 am
PG&E's cost for the trench is going to be very high. As a result, we won't join because we were not in it prior to the fire, so the cost wouldn't be covered by insurance.
We believe that the City can condition their permitting on inclusion conduit for the benefit of the City itself. This is the dig once model that Brentwood implemented, so there are good prior examples. And the actual cost to add a conduit to an existing trench is negligible. Then once built, the municipality would go through a selection process to choose a carrier who could put fiber into that conduit. Or the City could do so itself, run an open network, who knows - lots of options. But they'd be in charge of their own infrastructure at that point, and could set policies (net neutrality, etc) and such if they wanted to.
I'm unclear if Santa Rosa or Sonoma County will take this step as part of the utility infrastructure reconstruction.