Our household has fiber now for $20 a month from Sonic/AT&T. It’s terrific.
No way would we ever get 5G.

Let’s see, the fiscal hawk and the two council members with the most business knowledge are not convinced *for very good reasons* and the proponent is already thinking about slogans like “surf local” to compete with giants who I much prefer to call with a problem than the City. And won’t the city have to borrow money to take this risk?

I’m thinking just shoot me that this is taking up anymore time from our City government.

It'll be like MySpace.

A $35k stake from 10% of the population ... will that even cover the numerous "studies" that will have to be performed just to figure out where to put the tents for outreach?

My favorite quote: "multi-million-dollar decision and that's easy to explain to people" -- Would it sound like, "We spent your multi-millions to bring you what you already have." ?

Then, "would require 25 new full-time equivalent positions and $58.6 million in staffing costs over the next two years" - HOLY COW! GET ME ON THAT PAYROLL!! $1 million a year per employee?? That can't be right! If it is, where do I file a job application?

I guess it's not quite as easy as they think, to explain to people how they spent multi-millions.

@MyFeelz. The $58.6 million in staffing costs is for a 10-year period, not two years as initially stated. Sorry for the error.

I have AT&T Fiber and its 1 gig. I usually get almost 900MBit downstream and upstream. Exceptionally low (fast) latency. No problems so far. At the same price as City Fiber to the home will offer in four years. For myself City Fiber to the Home will provide no additional value over what I have today. However, for folks who will only ever have Comcast they would benefit from City Fiber to the Home.

1. This project requires significant capital investment and borrowing.
2. It requires significant and expensive labor to manage and maintain.
3. It hasn't happened despite 10+ years of trying
4. There will be significant competition from large entities with superior financing, technical and labor resources, and marketing capability.
5. It's a huge risk to the taxpayer.
6. The monthly cost to the users could be quite high, so there would need to be private competition in any case.
7. The technology will change fast, and may be supplanted by wireless technology. Why should Jane and Joe Taxpayer assume this risk of obsolescence, or spending ever more to keep up?
8. The Council again is taking its eye off its pressing issues of train crossings, pension financing, housing, and traffic.

So, doesn't add up. Perhaps the fiber backbone could be sold to a private entity. But it's like the idea of a City-funded gym--it's not the City's place to supplant private enterprise, and private competition can do the job much more easily.

I think it would be great to push this effort slightly more forward if for no other reason than to push the competition to lower the prices and to build more infra. Definitely, in our parts of Palo Alto we are not getting 1GB, so this fibre is a much welcome !

"On Monday, as council members reviewed the latest survey results, business plans and cost estimates, they found themselves in a familiar position: agonizing over whether the risk is worth the reward."

When will the city stop basing decisions on totally flawed surveys?? Does the city ever bother to review the consultants' work? This survey was so ridiculous It was widely commented on neighborhoods boards that there was no way to say people REJECTED the idea of a city fiber network in the surveys and was merely a transparent way to collect advanced deposits for a non-existent network.

"Loren Smith, who serves on the utilities commission's Fiber Subcommittee, said money is not really an issue. The city can rely on a revenue bond and gradually pay off the bond through revenues generated by the fiber system."

What an absurd statement. Bonds have to be repaid just like credit cards, Nothing is free and we've got LOTS of more important priorities than this consultant-enriching boondoggle.

The city is way too late on this. AT&T is rolling out fiber as we speak. It is unclear to me that there is any business case for the City to provide a competing service at this point given the time and expense required to construct the network and the highly uncertain return on investment once completed. Let's not repeat the mistakes of the late 19th century railroad promoters.

I’d rather see the city do a better job on other things instead. The survey was absurd with no chance to say no thanks. Whatever happened to under grounding all utilities or is that just for the wealthier northern part of city like other decisions that favor that part of the city over others?

Will Palo Alto have control over infrastructure? or will it be like cell towers, where the city has no authority to reject a location?

Can anyone name any project that the City has done on time and on budget? Or that the City can't even manage the existing utilities how will they every provide better service than AT&T or Comcast.

/marc

@Felix: "Our household has fiber now for $20 a month from Sonic/AT&T. It’s terrific."

The current new customer price for fiber is $65/mo. at the Sonic website. I would be interested in fiber at $20 a month, if such a price really exists! Is this the price variability we can expect with a Palo Alto fiber network?

I have fiber from AT&T, and it replaced Comcast. I want to highlight that Comcast Gig and AT&T Fiber Gig are not equivalent. AT&T's Fiber offers the same gigabit speed up and down, and these "channels" are independent of each other. Neither of these things are true with Comcast. Why is this an important distinction? Upstream is Zoom, Teams, etc. If you've ever had 2 or more people working from home, you'd see the difference.

That said, when CPAU offers fiber and it's within the ballpark, I'll switch.

@KOhlson,

"That said, when CPAU offers fiber and it's within the ballpark, I'll switch."

And I probably won't so we cancel each other out.

How's the switching to electric going for the City? Looks like we have to PAY to achieve the City's goals.

Individuals can say anything and Council throws darts all the time, but this is a few dozen million dollars too many... for something nobody really asked for. The people who "dreamed" of this are against it.

It's not a bake sale where the city can just wing it based on feeble indications of demand.

We love our AT&T fiber, even more every time we hear about Comcast problems. We have NEVER had an issue with ours. Local government entities can never compete with great American companies. Don’t you wish EDD and other California disasters were run by free enterprise??

Thanks for the clarification, Gennady. I was already sharpening pencils to fill out an app and take a pre-employment exam. Darnit.

This has been talked about for so long that it now is meaningless, except for the fact that we do not have excellent internet infrastructure. Having visited and experienced internet with family members living in other areas I can see just how poor our options and services are.

However, although I think of this as an essential utility, I can't see that it would be any better than the utility power service we have. Since we depend on our power coming through wires dangling on poles draped through trees, and subject to outages caused from anything from wildlife and weather, to balloons, planes and car accidents, can we expect anything better from our utilities to provide such an important infrastructure?

The new pedestrian bike bridge has finally been completed after years if not decades of talk! Is this going to be the same?

Forget this nerdy distraction from reality. Palo Alto has two far more important HUGE it MUST DO in the near future:
1. PA must build four 4-way Auto/Truck/bike/ped underpass rail crossings at Charleston, E Meadow, Churchill (yes, it's necessary fools), and where Alma joins El Camino just South of Menlo Park. And it must mimic the 4-way highly effective design at Page Mill Rd. ALL must be designed, finalized, planned, contracted & funded, and built ASAP to prevent a traffic jam nightmare along all of Alma and at all of the above mentioned intersections when electrified Caltrain starts running A LOT more commuter trains. Ignore noisy flakes and replicate the solid 4-way crossing at Page Mill. PA is a NOT a True Democracy, thank God. It is a Representative Democracy. Time for its elected Representatives to suck it up, vote, and take some heat. They wanted their jobs? Now DO THEM. Governing is not a social popularity process. It is a dirty, nasty, and necessary business.
2. Palo Alto already is in the beginning stages of an electricity supply crisis due to 30+ years of political neglect for its pathetically outdated, self-owned (HUGE mistake), and grossly inadequate power distribution system. If PA follows City, County, and State mandates, it will need to increase capacity of its electrical system by at least 3x and probably 4x by 2035 to 2040. So that means: 4x new guaranteed power supplier capacity, 4x new substation capacity, and 4x local transformer and lines on poles capacity by 2035-2040.
Good luck with that!!! PA can't do afford it, either politically or economically.

The real question here if if we can hold all of the politicians and their "advisors" accountable for their grossly inaccurate decisions. Remember they're not true power engineers. They're just whatever technically ignorant fools that politically correct colleges allow to graduate while grossly ignorant.

This is terribly like High Speed Rail. Great idea in concept, but the details are not favorable. The project will be hugely expensive, competing for money that SCREAMS to be allocated elsewhere. Like on grade separation, affordable housing, public safety, and doing whatever can be done to stabilize and fortify our electricity utility.

Online Name makes a good point about bonds: they have to be repaid. There's an existing reserve for this project but as Nose pointed out, if the fund plus projected revenue cannot cover the bond payment, the General Fund will be on the hook for what is due, creating a mandatory city expenditure that will compete with other demands.

Unfortunately, this issue ties into the business tax issue. Palo Alto needs a relevant business tax, not the paltry one that is on the ballot. The projected $9 million in revenue will flow to the general fund and, IF promises are kept, will be spent on housing, public safety, and grade separation. That is in jeopardy if there's a mandatory draw on the general fund.

I listened to the discussion on Monday and I think it is good that there's hesitation because of the details.

Annette,

“This is terribly like High Speed Rail. Great idea in concept, but the details are not favorable. “

I sure hope not. Details for HSR would have been worth working out instead of Palo Alto fighting it as it did,..at least for the generation now left to instead be stuck with a one car per person culture. What’s the worst that can happen if the City doesn’t do fiber?

I would like to see this done in Palo Alto on the municipal utility model.

We’ve had to maintain 2 services through the pandemic because of how unreliable they all are. One of them, mentioned above, basically provides dialup speeds (“up to” some speed we never get near is basically false advertising, but…) The other, mentioned above, sporadically cuts out for hours. I had to stop doing digital darkroom hobby years ago because of abysmal upload speeds of the first. City fiber won’t be nearly as expensive or unreliable.

This is something we should just do. No, it’s nothing like HSR. It’s a utility, and we are lucky here to have our own. Nothing is perfect, but it’s better than the alternative by far.

@Citizen, what makes you think a service run on the municipal utility model will be any more reliable than electrical service now provided by our municipal utility after years of experience? How many power outages have we had recently?

William Hitchens is a little harsh and not wrong. He omitted two giant upcoming capital costs: City's share of subsidizing several billion dollars of affordable housing, and an unstudied and unpriced sea level mitigation plan.

Any talk about Citywide utility undergrounding or redevelopment at the airport site is nothing but unfunded fantasy

@resident3: HSR will become mandated. The current global warming movement will move mountains to cut air travel in favor of a fast, comfortable, less polluting, train.

@SR Don't we also have a big underfunding of City employee retirement plans?

Canceled, baby! I've finally lived long enough!

People are right to be concerned about the risks this project would bring. That's premature, though, before we ask why we need a city-run ISP.

When I saw an email asking me to take a survey I went to the city's web site for fiber, looking for a business plan that explained simple things like what the city needs that's not already provided by commercial services, how much it will cost per household that's not well served by commercial services, how the service would be staffed, and how long the city expects to be in this business. All I found was happy talk about how great it is to have broadband so school kids can read things on the Web and attend classes using Zoom. There was nothing about why a city-run service is needed. Magellan's report talks about profitability of the service if it can attract about a one-third share IN COMPETITION WITH COMCAST AND AT&T. What sense does it make to talk about competing if the goal is to provide a needed service for residents who are not well served by the incumbent providers? If that's not the goal, why does the city need to do this at all?

A few weeks ago I asked Tom DuBois, in an online discussion, to show me the business plan for this project. He dodged the question twice. We deserve more when he's asking us to commit $140 million of the city's credit to fund his hobby horse.

I wrote to City Council objecting to this project and noting PA has no expertise in running such a service when it can't even handle basic power outage updates and Tom DuBois responded, "Oh don't worry. We'll outsource Customer Service" and presumably anything else the city can't handle.

That begs the obvious question: WHY BOTHER?

When Pat Burt heard various objections about how losses from this could be "catastrophic" unless it achieved major market penetration, he dismissed those concerns because PA has such a "great track record PROFITING" from the services it sells to residents like utilities and the airport.

Greer Stone had to remind him that those are monopoly services where we have no choice. Has the mayor forgotten that the city lost the lawsuit for overcharging us for utilities and that we've been waiting years for the court-ordered refunds??

@Online name,

“When Pat Burt heard various objections about how losses from this could be "catastrophic" unless it achieved major market penetration, he dismissed those concerns because PA has such a "great track record PROFITING" from the services it sells to residents like utilities and the airport.”

The City ‘s job is not to be speculator but even if that was their job, the City’s bandwidth to handle anything beyond what’s on their plate has not been proven. If 100 million expanded the City’s ability to handle issues, maybe that could be worth borrowing money for but it’s the opposite with this monster project with a million places where some things can go unexpectedly very bad. It’s lose, lose, lose for everyone except for a minuscule number of homes unhappy with their connections which I find *very hard* to believe that it’s even a real problem. Explaining the problem that is being fixed can’t just be a flawed survey.

@resident3, I totally agree. Enough with these poorly planned monster projects.

I'd much prefer that they spend the money to ensure we have reliable electrical service, adequate police and fire and restored library hours -- real current needs.

I'd like to hear some common sense from the city council candidates.

I'm apparently not popular in Embarcadero Oaks/Leland though I don't know who "Densely" or "Online Name" are. I'm happy to talk about the Fiber opportunity for Palo Alto and I'm easy to reach.

We have a Fiber reserve fund with revenue generated by the current Fiber busines and an oppountity to use that money along with broadband customer subscription fees to fund the rest of the network. This is not an "either/or" choice. These same dollars (and staff) are NOT available for affordabe housing, police, fire, library hours, rail separations, etc. The city is a large organization that can walk and chew gum at the same time.

The survey and people plunking down cash was a measure of willingness to switch providers. We hired Magellan to write the business plan. They've built networks for many US cities successfully, places with competition and where they did not have the benefit that we do of existing fiber revenues.

The headline is correct here. People and competitors will sow FUD (Fear, uncertainty and doubt). I suspect some of these posters work in telecom or broadband and don't want the compeition. But sadly the state of US broadband is below par. While a few people in Palo Alto have access to resaonable service, many do not. And we pay far too much for what we do get.

What the article didn't make clear, is that the first subscribers would be online in 12 months, and more neighborhoods will be lit up all the time, with the entire city taking up to 5 years. The project is cash flow positive quickly if we can ensure the buildout is well planned. This already includes paying the bond payments and maintenace - we could pay off the bond early if we wanted to or use that cashflow for other things.

In terms of naming projects that the city does on time and budget - nearly all the city projects are. We do over 100 projects a year. Mitchell Park Library was on budget but was delayed. We held the contractor to their agreement and did NOT pay more.

Tom, this isn't about your personal popularity but rather how decisions are made and justified. Many people beyond Embarcadero Oaks have commented on how meaningless the Fiber Survey was because there was no way to say they /we did NOT want Fiber from the city at all.

Beyond Embarcadero Oaks, check out the folks from Crescent Park and search the comments on the CPNA (neighborhood association) list. They're even more critical than the above posts, questioning the city's ability to manage a cost-effective competitive network AND blasting the flawed survey which they saw as more a tactic to "crowd source" advanced deposits than a real opinion survey.

Instead of assuming the project's critics work in the telecom industry and don't want not want competition, isn't it more likely that advocates plant to reward their folks with lucrative consulting and outsourcing contracts??

Try looking at and responding to the arguments logically instead of attacking the messengers and cavalierly dismissing our arguments. After the business tax debacle, resident-taxpayers are tired of being ignored.

If the city has extra funds from the Fiber Reserve Fund, how about using it for something useful: a reliable power grid, more cops, etc.

Tonight's City Council has an agenda item to spend $625,000 on a presumably more reliable power outage reporting system to replace the long-time flawed one.

How about using the Fiber Reserve Fund for that?? We don't have unlimited funds and lots of other priorities.

@Tom Dubois,

“I suspect some of these posters work in telecom or broadband and don't want the compeition. But sadly the state of US broadband is below par”

Sounds like online name struck a cord but you don’t have to be an insider to understand competition, or how the City is not good at selling things. The 100 projects a year, did the City have to sell their purpose and value to anyone that is accountable?

Seriously, sounds like you’re saying that the City’s goal is to improve the nation’s broadband. Is that a City responsibility? However laudable disrupting broadband may be, our problems are not fiber to the few people who put in a deposit based on a survey everyone else saw through.

Can we get more detail? Per this article, this two-part project will cost $142.9 million. The article also SUGGESTS that the system COULD start making money after about a decade of operations and COULD improve reliability in municipal operations and make internet connection for businesses and residents faster, cheaper and more reliable. Suggest, would, and could are words that do not fit comfortably with a $142.9 million municipal price tag. Nor does ten years of operating in the red.

Also, if revenue projections are not realized and the bond obligations have to be met by the General Fund, what happens to other services that rely on the General Fund? Will Palo Altans be forfeiting libraries for fiber? Police and Fire for fiber? Those promoting the passage of Measures K and L consistently tell us that the City needs the revenue or we will see service cuts in two years. That tells me that the General Fund needs a steady revenue stream that is greater than what it is now. How can we afford to add this fiber project?

Also: if businesses are to benefit from this proposed system, why shouldn’t they pony up specifically for that? As is, they raked us over the coals vis-à-vis the proposed business tax. It’s galling to think that Palo Alto residents would be adding yet another element to City infrastructure that businesses benefit from but do not contribute to at a proportionate rate.

TomDuBois and other proponents: what am I missing? If this is financially feasible, please make that clear.

Thank you.

Thanks, Annette. For $142.900,000 you'd think we'd get some real answers.

See also Diana Diamond's recent blog on all the non-answers she's gotten from the Utilities Department on if it's ready for the increased demand for more electricity.
Web Link

It's the same type of NON-answers we get when asking questions about Fiber and countless other PA projects.

@Annette,

“ It’s galling to think that Palo Alto residents would be adding yet another element to City infrastructure that businesses benefit from but do not contribute to at a proportionate rate.”

It’s pretty much the main feature, to reduce costs “for doing business” which explains a lot about how we’re being used with “fiber to the home” as if we’re in the middle of nowhere. Like we need more jobs to come to Palo Alto for cheap and cheaper.

This project can’t be meant for Palo Alto homes when the majority of homes are fine, we’re not in the boonies without options and I don’t care that broadband is not good enough for Amazon.

We had Palo Alto FTTH for a few years. It was solid, reliable.
The commute issues and housing pressures could be alleviated by a communications infrastructure that virtually placed the participant in the conference room, the classroom, or the office. Zoom falls far short of this. Much more bandwidth would be needed for a real build-out. Schools, businesses, everyone would benefit. Traffic would be reduced, and savings in transportation and housing could be seen as cost benefits of the new technology. Indeed, ATT and Comcast have met most people's needs for today's market. We are talking about the future.
By the way, as bandwidth requirements rise, wireless internet chokes to death.

@AllenPod,

"Traffic would be reduced, and savings in transportation and housing could be seen as cost benefits of the new technology. Indeed, ATT and Comcast have met most people's needs for today's market. We are talking about the future."

Sounds like a horrible life, everything reduced to an online world. It's not even a good future for a business park in the middle of nowhere.

Tom DuBois has once again dodged the substantial questions Palo Alto taxpayers have asked, which I can boil down to two, for a start:

1. Need: What benefit will Palo Alto families receive from a city-owned network that they can't get from the commercial providers? Twenty years ago when the fiber ring and the FTTH trial project were built there were no such alternatives. That was then. The proposal to spend a lot more money is now.

2. Risk: Why should we expect that city staff can choose and manage contractors to run a business that will compete on an equal basis with the incumbent internet providers for the decades that it will take to pay off the city's investment?

I invite Mr. DuBois to consider how successful he would be if he presented this proposal to venture capitalists rather than to the City Council and told the VCs "You're just spreading FUD" when they asked him basic business questions like the ones above.

After years of abuse from the Comcast/Xfinity monopoly, ATT finally showed up w/ a real fiber to the house and allowed me to cancel Comcast. Even so, I welcome the opportunity for another competitor!

After years of abuse from the Comcast/Xfinity monopoly, ATT finally showed up w/ real fiber to the house and allowed me to cancel Comcast. I still welcome the opportunity for another competitor!

There was an article in yesterdays PA Post on how the Council's split re the $144M fiber project but I was out of town and missed the paper and only part of its article is online. Web Link

Could someone update us? Thanks in advance.

Online Name, I can't find it either without hitting a paywall. It's funny that little towns all across America have figured out how to put their city council meetings online so everyone can see live or later when they get time.

Here we have approximately 10% of the population of PA who "voted" with their dollars in the form of an advance payment for service they may never see come to fruition in their lifetime. We have about 50k adults. So, about 14% are willing. The cost to build this "someday in the future" (oh please can we have more studies???) network will cost $10 MILLION DOLLARS per interested respondent.

Is it the best mouse trap ever known to mankind? Can it reach to the moon with it's signal? Will it help the average user order their Door Dash faster? Oh, and let's not forget affordability. They want to make this affordable for those who will support this with monthly fees.

Let me calculate ... 10 million divided by 480 per year comes to 20833 being the number of years the 738 residents who expressed interest will have to pay before their share of their oh-so-desperately-needed super special ISP reaches the break-even stage.

And we can't even figure out how to build 500 affordable housing units? We are going to need to increase our population, and we are ALL going to have to live in pods, to make this fiber network a reality.

Yes, I know, math is my worst subject. But I'm pretty sure this doesn't pencil out as being useful or profitable.