VAN ANNUAL MEETING
2 May 2008
Bennington VT

(Note from LGD: I was under the impression that I sent these already, so forgive duplicate posting if I did).

1. Introduction from Lisa Byer – She welcomed us and provided history of the CAT-TV historic building we are lucky enough to be meeting in.

2. Welcome from Chamber of Commerce – Spoke of all the great collaboration with CAT-TV including Xmas Tree trip to DC. Welcomes us back to Bennington to visit.

3. VAN Board Members
Rob Chapman, Pres/ Treasurer
Lauren-Glenn, Sec.
Dick Thodal, VP
Lisa Byers
Jeff Tolbert
John Bloch
Tony Campos

4. VAN Membership/ Challenges/ Protecting our Interests/ Funding
Points of Pain:
- Annual Reports on Line
- Clarification on what the numbers mean and what is necessary to enter to complete the forms.
- What is the Access Plan and how to put one together.
- Opportunity to communicate through the bill.
- Program records – How link programming data with websites and program schedules
- Help with budgeting

> We suggest that VAN provide technical assistance in the areas of Annual Reports, Annual Plans, Contract Renewals and system integration.

5. Executive Session to discuss rulemaking intervention scenarios. Attached separately.

Motion: To consider new membership structure that includes: Legal Defense Fund ($17K), Technical Assistance Fund ($24K, funded in part with Surdna Foundation Funds of $16K), VAN Site Maintenance & Annual Report database revamp ($6150) and VMX Contribution ($5000).

Discussion: Questions raised about VMX not being ready with a recommended amount, funds available in VAN budget for site maintenance this year and real scope of the rulemaking.

Motion: To table new membership proposal for re-formulating and later consideration for the members. Approved.

6. Vermont Media Exchange Update
a. What we’ve learned – File transcodes will still be automated but we will now be able to do manual uploads and downloads. Audio Normalization – We need to standardize video. For national filesharing network this will be a requirement and so this is a requirement for VMX. It will affect your workflow. You won’t be able to share files unless you have a calibrated -12DB program file. Documentation is available in nonlinear editing and master control and how to send and get a file. We will use Pando for this. This is also what you will use to upload and download your files.

b. VMX – 8 operational, 14 more Comcast to bring on board, 4 more PEGs to bring on board. Considerable consensus with sustainability task force that we should keep the statehouse on the radar. Goal is to have a platform for all 27 access organization can exchange programs, common technical platform, sharing digital files of video programs and the metadata that goes with them.

c. Beta test – Roll out ready AMO’s between now and November.

d. Agreement – Developing the administrative agreement with VMX that outlines the ground-rules.

e. ACM – Coming out with national video sharing file network. VMX is compliant with these efforts.

New VMX Board Members were elected:
Lisa Byers
Jess Wilson
Jeff Tolbert

7. Keynote presentation - Tim Nulty/ EC Fiber

Tim describes Burlington Telecom, ECFiber and explain what this means about telecommunications and for PEG Access. He also poses a radical idea for protecting PEG support in years to come!

Burlington Network based on four principals: universal service to all residents, financially self-sufficient without tax payer subsidy, open access to all on a non-discriminatory basis to utilize and re-sell services (100K TV channels, enough for everyone), future proof so that it will last for the long term.

96% of the network has been completely built out. Breaking even and will be profitable before the end of the year (four years from the start). Unique for a capital infrastructure is highly unique. FIOS for example is a year older and won’t be profitable for another two years.

Resigned from BT and they don’t really need him because it is successful to try and clone this around the rest of the state. The East Central Vermont Fiber Project includes 25 towns who voted on March 4th overwhelming support. 95% in favor and unanimous in the referendum advisoring the selectboards to participate. One hundred activists—many from schools. The Selectboards, 20 towns have signed. Legally existing. 1500 miles of road. Building it out and operating losses before they become profitable halfway thorugh fifth year @ $70 million. Clone to Burlington Network. No tax payer money and should make a profit for the communities. The request for proposal for the financial markets hit the streets today. Will be difficult – 6-9 months—but have been encouraged to put the proposal forward. Start hooking people up within one year of that.

44 municipal projects in the US today. They fall in two categories: wholesale only (forbidden to run retail service). These are struggling. Those that offer retail services are doing well (2/3ds). Every single one that lasts four years are profitable or almost. Average 54% household penetration.

Fascinating thing about ECFiber: It was said that BT was a special case because it was a city and easy to build out. The EC Fiber is characteristic of most of Vermont. So this will demonstrate that it can be done in rural communities.

There are four other groups in
Windham, Northwest: Westford/ Underhill/ Jericho, Rutland and incipient movement in southwest part of the state. They are undergoing. Expect that once EC can raise funds, it will galvanize interest.

What does this mean for the state? It can be done in the whole state. Viable economically, technically, etc. But incumbent players are not going to sit by and lose their business. Most of the time the incumbent players try to stop the project through political means. As Adelphia tried to do in the face of Burlington Telecom.
They were not successful. So the next strategy is to build incumbent networks.

The key is that model that they have to respond to is well-established and be the correct model. Our success will drive competitors to include these parameters that that model should include these fundamental characteristics: Universal Service and Open Access.

- Universal – Private investor owned networks are not typically interested in “universal networks because they cost more to operate. They won’t go universal unless they have to.

- Open Access – Funds are being spent all over the US and in Washington to defeat “network neutrality”, also known to us as “common carriage”—a concept that dates very far back in our history. Carriers have always hated to do common carriage

All over the world their is a push for broadband access (DSL, wireless are sidenotes)
Broadband Properties Summit
Broadband is 70 million and slated to expand at 40-50% a year.

What is in it for access?
General interest and Opportunity to promote universal access and open networks.
If these models are established, competition will work and there will be a patchwork of public companies and private companies that match that. A very American way of doing things. All following fundamental principals.

Access interest – There are two dimension in which we have direct and immediate concern:

a. Distribution Networks – Cable TV as we now know it is unraveling and will disappear over the next 10 years. The cable industry in its current form (technical, marketing, etc) will not likely to exist in its current form. It will become less important in how we interact with the communications media in general.

But PEG is tied to the cable industry as it now exists. How do we move with the world and not get tied to a declining communications model.

We have a very great interest in being tied to a communications system that has vast and varied ways for the community gto get its message out.

Traditional Cable TV Channels: For example, BT and EC Fiber, will have 100K channel capacity. These channels are sold at $65/ month, but they give it away to organizations with the remotest whiff of public interest. What can you use? What can you fill and what can you operate.

Internal Network Capacity – BT provides access to 50mb bandwidth for communications within the network. This provides the opportunity to

How do we think about how we use these resources so that we are not constrained by the use of the money.

It makes sense for us to start to replacing the 5% PEG rule with a generalized share of the revenues that we are generating from the entire network. This would be a smaller percentage but of a larger gross revenue.

As we speak, smaller, locally owned systems such as Waitsfield Cable, Topsham, VTEL are all looking at fiber networks. Major players, such as Comcast and Charter, are thinking about it right now because they are being seriously threatened by FIOS networks. Fairpoint (the company that recently purchased Verizon in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine) has stated that it will not do fiber to the home, but when they see their competitors doing it they will have to.

As a result, we will see fiber into every home in Vermont. The opportunity is in place for Vermont’s access management organizations: If we seize it, we will change the world of access completely and expand the public service we can offer our communities.

What can access centers do to prime their commuities for public ownership.
Most communities have activists who are open and interested in public broadband ownership. It is a good thing to agitate for a project like Burlington Telecom. It is less important than every community has a facility that is owned by somebody that behaves like a system like this. Being active is important because it establishes a standard of behavior re: universal service and open networks.

There will be a political campaign against this work. Knowing that, it is important to understand be critical in your thinking about what you are reading.

Does this have an economic impact on school costs and health care costs?
Schools – People won’t move to a community that does not have broadband. As a result the student body is declining and the cost per pupil is going up. They are saying, “We need this to keep people from moving and to keep our schools open!”
On the other hand, schools in Burlington are beginning to develop distance learning projects that were not possible before.

Medical applications – With broadband, the capacity to have virtual and immediate health care, particularly for elderly people or disabled people. Check ups, monitoring vital signs, etc. provides services that is simply not possible in the non-broadband environment.

Unlike cable companies who find this onerous, we find it to be a great opportunity.

In light of cable system.
If everyone quit cable, it would be revenue neutral.
Cable is a big headache and low margin business.
We should move to some kind of system where the pecentage of revenues from the entire system. Smaller tax on a broader base.
Vermont – contract and agreement, instead of 5% of cable let’s do it as 2.5% of revenue. It is the same avmount of money so no one is being disadvangaged.
I think that you are already better off to show it and show that it works before you argue the policy argument in the hypothetical bubble. When you do that you lose to

The federal rule does not preclude. Agree and go to the PSB. We have common interests.

The future:
Broadband: Triple play is a throw away commodity.
Pure marginal cost of deliverying internet and phone is $5
Pipe is $50-80/ month
You pay for the pipe and the rest is yours.
The pipe provider will be throwing voice and internet into the cost and you are given the video as well.

We adjourned to go into work sessions: Digital Workflow, Contract Negotiations and Annual Reports.