Jamestown Mayor Eddie Sundquist and Entry Point Networks’ Jeff Christensen discuss municipal broadband (April 21, 2022)

Just over a dozen people came out Thursday night to hear about the City of Jamestown’s ability to create municipal broadband.

Mayor Eddie Sundquist said that municipal broadband was something he had been looking at before even elected and with the Pandemic found out from families how important access to the internet was, “In many cases, they had a lot of trouble accessing it. There were issues with providers. And in some cases, families were just sharing cell phones to get onto Zoom. So there were a lot of challenges that we saw along the way. But we saw this as an opportunity to say, ‘How could we as the utility, either the Board of Public Utilities or the city itself, potentially provide an internet service?'”

Consultant Entry Point Networks‘ Jeff Christensen said the company had been working with the city for almost a year. Entry Point Networks is currently working with 35 other cities around the nation on municipal broadband.

Christensen said there are six priorities to solve, “Improve affordability, you know, that’s commonly going to be in the top three. Second, foster competition and choice. Three, improve speed and reliability. Four, local resilience and control, and I’ll talk a little about what that means. I know you know what it means but what does it mean in a network sense. Five, foster economic development and then six, digital divide.”

Christensen said Jamestown is unique in that there are two competing companies for broadband right now with Spectrum and Windstream, whereas cable has 95% of the market share in the rest of the country.

He shared what the average price per subscriber would be if the city created a municipal broadband program without federal or state grants. The breakdown is $18.64 for monthly infrastructure expense, $25.50 for monthly maintenance and operation, and $10.00 for monthly Internet Service Provider (ISP) for a total monthly cost of $54.14.

Sundquist said that total monthly cost could come down if Federal funds like the American Rescue Plan or Federal infrastructure monies were used toward building the project.

Christensen did briefly mention the broadband survey, but only 324 individuals had responded to that, which is not a large enough sample size.

The city is now looking for folks to serve on a Broadband Commission. Sundquist said, “This commission will learn of potential next steps and be the leaders Jamestown needs as we contemplate the next steps towards implementing low cost and high speed broadband in Jamestown.”

More information, including the Broadband Master Plan and the application to be on the commission can be found at www.jamestownfiber.com.

Under the settlement, Charter Communications, which does business as Spectrum, is required to issue $62.5 million in refunds within 120 days.

Those refunds consist of $75 to each of more than 700,000 active subscribers who leased modems or Wi-Fi routers unable to deliver the internet speeds promised by the company.

Anyone subscribing to a Time Warner Cable legacy speed plan of 100 Mbps or higher are also eligible for the $75 refund.

In addition, Charter is required to award an additional $75 refund to each of more than 150,000 subscribers who had an inadequate modem for 24 months or longer.

Customers don’t have to do anything to get the refunds. Charter will notify subscribers of their eligibility for refunds and disburse them within 120 days.

In addition to the refunds, Charter will offer all subscribers currently receiving internet and cable television from the company a choice of either three free months of HBO or six free months of Showtime.

The agreement between the company and Attorney General Barbara Underwood settles the AG’s consumer fraud action alleging that Charter, the state’s largest internet service provider, denied customers the “blazing fast” internet service that it advertised.

Eric Schneiderman

MANHATTAN – State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says his office is suing Charter Communications and its subsidiary Spectrum, formerly known as Time Warner Cable.

In a Manhattan news conference, the state’s top prosecutor said the 87-page complaint provides “a consistent story of bad performance and a long-term business plan built on deceit.”

The suit claims that at least since January 2012, the company engaged in a”deliberate scheme” to defraud and mislead customers about claims to provide “blazing fast” connectivity speeds. Frequently, it failed to deliver. Deficiencies were discussed in numerous corporate communications excerpted in the complaint, but were allegedly ignored by corporate officials due to the cost of capital improvements.