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Friday, November 20, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
NYS CIO/OFT confirms NYCCF's funding eligibility
I just received an email from the NYS CIO/OFT office confirming NYCCF's eligibility for ARRA Broadband funding!
Your project proposal was assigned to CIO/OFT for review and evaluation against the grant provisions contained in the ARRA legislation.They provided some clarification about the grant distribution process as well, saying -
Based on your project description, your project proposal appears to meet the eligibility criteria for one or both of the federal grant programs.
Both broadband grant programs (NTIA and USDA) are administered by agencies of the federal government. The State of New York does not make any final determination with regard to eligibility or awards. Both federal agencies are currently developing specific grant guidelines. We are anticipating a common grant application process for both grant programs. Grant guidelines and a Request for Proposals (RFP) is expected to be issued in summer, 2009. The first round of grants is expected to be awarded in early fall 2009.I heard some talk on the street that NTIA and RUS are working a custom web application for proposal submission, project evaluation and ultimately scoring? Should be soon. Next week perhaps? We're certainly looking forward!
Monday, June 8, 2009
Project Update
Below is a list of some of the more significant meetings we've held in the past few months. Not included in the list is phone calls with a variety of equipment vendors, construction firms, network consultants, as well as advisory sessions held with the Brooklyn Law School's Technology Incubator program.
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March 5: Testified at the final NYC Broadband Advisory Committee meeting. Asked that the city open its fiber assets for community use.
March 6: Met with the Mount Hope Housing Company, a fellow 501(c)3 non-profit which owns and manages 32 buildings/1200 units of low-income housing in the South Bronx.
March 12: Met with Howard Wach, Director of IT Initiatives at CUNY BCC and Steve D'Agustino, Director of the RETC Program at Fordham University. At both meetings we discussed the possibility of establishing peering relationships.
March 18: Signed Memorandum of Understanding with the Mount Hope Housing Company. This agreement authorizes NYCCF to pursue connectivity for their 32 buildings.
March 30: Attended NYS CIO/OFT Broadband Stimulus event in Albany. Met Melodie Mayberry-Stewart (CIO, NYS CIO), Sharon Cate-Williams (Deputy CIO for IT Delivery Services, NYS CIO) and David Salway (Broadband Program Office Consultant, NYS CIO). Also met several SUNY IT managers who expressed an interest in developing peering relationships.
March 31: Presented NYCCF at Diversture 2.0, an ISOC-NY and NYU co-sponsored event.
April 7: Attended NYC Council Franchise Oversight Hearing, at which DoITT testified as to the state of Verizon's Fios rollout in NYC.
April 15: Met with a vendor-neutral fiber optic consultant whom I have been speaking with since January.
April 23: Met with the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT). Presented a Letter of Authorization by which NYCCF could enter into the Empire City Subway (ECS) conduit system for the purposes of network planning and project budgeting.
April 30: DoITT submits revised Letter of Authorization to ECS.
May 5: Met with CUNY CIO's office, discussed NYCCF and ways in which CUNY and NYCCF could collaborate.
May 7: Followup discussions with the Mount Hope Housing Company.
May 11: Spoke with NYC DOE, discussing ways in which we could establish peering arrangements. Introduced to the NYC DOE's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative in the South Bronx (PS 5).
May 11: Spoke with Tom West of the National Lamba Rail (NLR). Discussed connectivity options, applications services and pricing.
May 13: Spoke with Dana Spiegel, Executive Director of NYCWireless. Discussed potential collaborations including connectivity for the NYC DOE's OLPC initiative.
May 19: Met with Empire City Subway (ECS). Discussed work flow and service options, including Rodding and Roping of conduits/ducts. Obtained AutoCAD files which identify manhole routes.
May 28: Followup call with ECS. Discussed specific manhole routes, requested bid on rodding and roping of these routes.
June 3: Attended day 1 of the Center for Non-Profit Success NYC Fundraising Summit during the day. Attended the Summer of Gov meetup in the evening.
June 4: Attended day 2 of the Center for Non-Profit Success NYC Fundraising Summit during the day. Attended the ISOC-NY meeting in the evening, at which I gave a briefing on the progress NYCCF has made in the past few months.
---
March 5: Testified at the final NYC Broadband Advisory Committee meeting. Asked that the city open its fiber assets for community use.
March 6: Met with the Mount Hope Housing Company, a fellow 501(c)3 non-profit which owns and manages 32 buildings/1200 units of low-income housing in the South Bronx.
March 12: Met with Howard Wach, Director of IT Initiatives at CUNY BCC and Steve D'Agustino, Director of the RETC Program at Fordham University. At both meetings we discussed the possibility of establishing peering relationships.
March 18: Signed Memorandum of Understanding with the Mount Hope Housing Company. This agreement authorizes NYCCF to pursue connectivity for their 32 buildings.
March 30: Attended NYS CIO/OFT Broadband Stimulus event in Albany. Met Melodie Mayberry-Stewart (CIO, NYS CIO), Sharon Cate-Williams (Deputy CIO for IT Delivery Services, NYS CIO) and David Salway (Broadband Program Office Consultant, NYS CIO). Also met several SUNY IT managers who expressed an interest in developing peering relationships.
March 31: Presented NYCCF at Diversture 2.0, an ISOC-NY and NYU co-sponsored event.
April 7: Attended NYC Council Franchise Oversight Hearing, at which DoITT testified as to the state of Verizon's Fios rollout in NYC.
April 15: Met with a vendor-neutral fiber optic consultant whom I have been speaking with since January.
April 23: Met with the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT). Presented a Letter of Authorization by which NYCCF could enter into the Empire City Subway (ECS) conduit system for the purposes of network planning and project budgeting.
April 30: DoITT submits revised Letter of Authorization to ECS.
May 5: Met with CUNY CIO's office, discussed NYCCF and ways in which CUNY and NYCCF could collaborate.
May 7: Followup discussions with the Mount Hope Housing Company.
May 11: Spoke with NYC DOE, discussing ways in which we could establish peering arrangements. Introduced to the NYC DOE's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative in the South Bronx (PS 5).
May 11: Spoke with Tom West of the National Lamba Rail (NLR). Discussed connectivity options, applications services and pricing.
May 13: Spoke with Dana Spiegel, Executive Director of NYCWireless. Discussed potential collaborations including connectivity for the NYC DOE's OLPC initiative.
May 19: Met with Empire City Subway (ECS). Discussed work flow and service options, including Rodding and Roping of conduits/ducts. Obtained AutoCAD files which identify manhole routes.
May 28: Followup call with ECS. Discussed specific manhole routes, requested bid on rodding and roping of these routes.
June 3: Attended day 1 of the Center for Non-Profit Success NYC Fundraising Summit during the day. Attended the Summer of Gov meetup in the evening.
June 4: Attended day 2 of the Center for Non-Profit Success NYC Fundraising Summit during the day. Attended the ISOC-NY meeting in the evening, at which I gave a briefing on the progress NYCCF has made in the past few months.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
NYC Broadband Briefing - with slides!
On July 28, 2008 the NYC Broadband Taskforce and members of the public were briefed by Chris O'Brien, of Diamond Consultants, on the state of New York City's broadband marketplace. While copies of the two-year, $300K report were publicly requested the day of the briefing (by yours truly), it appears that neither the City Council, the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications nor the New York City Economic Development Center have publicly release them...
Well, the NYC Community Fiber Project is pleased to announce that we have managed to finally get our hands on what appears to be a full copy of the Powerpoint presentation (and accompanying statistics) that were shown to the public nearly *seven* months ago!
The file was found while doing an exhaustive search of all PDF files hosted on NYC.gov, where it was found in an unbrowsable folder of PDF files. At the time of this post there isn't a single webpage linking to this file - nothing from the Council, DoITT or the NYCEDC!
Here are the slides: NYC Broadband Landscape and Recommendations - Diamond Report (hosted on our Google group) or download it directly from DoITT's unbrowsable pdf folder.
The video above is from ISOC-NY's coverage of the event. View their original post here:
http://www.isoc-ny.org/?p=313
The final hearing of the NYC Broadband Taskforce is scheduled to occur March 5th, 2009, details are on NYCWireless.
Well, the NYC Community Fiber Project is pleased to announce that we have managed to finally get our hands on what appears to be a full copy of the Powerpoint presentation (and accompanying statistics) that were shown to the public nearly *seven* months ago!
The file was found while doing an exhaustive search of all PDF files hosted on NYC.gov, where it was found in an unbrowsable folder of PDF files. At the time of this post there isn't a single webpage linking to this file - nothing from the Council, DoITT or the NYCEDC!
Here are the slides: NYC Broadband Landscape and Recommendations - Diamond Report (hosted on our Google group) or download it directly from DoITT's unbrowsable pdf folder.
The video above is from ISOC-NY's coverage of the event. View their original post here:
http://www.isoc-ny.org/?p=313
The final hearing of the NYC Broadband Taskforce is scheduled to occur March 5th, 2009, details are on NYCWireless.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Recent Activity in our Google Group
Check out our Google Group for new documents and mailing list activity:
http://groups.google.com/group/nyc-community-fiber
http://groups.google.com/group/nyc-community-fiber
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Broadband Stimulus
The House passed its version of the stimulus bill earlier this month, of which $6 billon dollars was allocated for broadband deployment, and now the Senate Appropriations Committee has released a draft of its broadband stimulus package, of which $9 billon has been allocated. Yochai Benkler has done an indepth assessment of the two broadband stimulus packages, highlighting some of the new terminology the House bill has added:
"The House bill adds some explicit important definitions for understanding broadband. It defines "advanced broadband," for which 75% of the money is marked, as 45 Mbps downstream, 15 Mbps downstream. Now, I continue to be baffled about the willingness to formalize asymmetric speeds as the measure, but this is the first time any formal regulatory requirement has even begun to speak in 21st century terms about what counts as broadband."Agreed - I also noticed that the Senate bill calls for 100 Mbps down/20 Mbps up (though this is only defined for tax credits, not direct spending), which is asymmetric (its a read/*write* web folks) but encouraging in that they are clearly interested in raising the bar in terms of what the telcos have been trying to pass off as "fast enough".
Introduction
I've setup this blog to share the research, notes, and ideas surrounding last-mile connectivity issues here in NYC, as well as the world at large. I hope you'll join me in this pursuit, both on this blog and in this Google group I've established -
http://groups.google.com/group/nyc-community-fiber
If you'd like to be a contributing author on this blog, drop me a note and I'll add you to the author list. Many thanks and I look forward to working with you!
http://groups.google.com/group/nyc-community-fiber
If you'd like to be a contributing author on this blog, drop me a note and I'll add you to the author list. Many thanks and I look forward to working with you!
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