Title
Approving the Franchise Renewal Committee's recommendation for the City of Saint Paul to negotiate an agreement with Ramsey County for dark fiber on the County-owned network.
Body
WHEREAS, the City of Saint Paul currently maintains a cable franchise with Comcast of St. Paul, Inc., which franchise since 1998 has included the provision of an Institutional Network (I-Net) without direct costs to the City; and
WHEREAS, the I-Net is a critical piece of infrastructure that provides two-way wired services, including data, Internet, telephone and video, connecting to 104 active City of Saint Paul sites/facilities, and a total of over 300 sites within Saint Paul, including connections to Ramsey County and the State of Minnesota; and
WHEREAS, the I-Net's infrastructure is comprised of approximately 20% fiber optics and 80% hybrid-fiber-coaxial cable (HFC), the latter of which is an outdated technology; and
WHEREAS, according to Comcast the HFC portion of the I-Net is "unsustainable," resulting in an ever increasing number of outages that disrupts the ability of the City to conduct business; and
WHEREAS, while the City has the right to continue to use the I-Net, in 2008 Comcast indicated to the City that, after the current franchise expires in July 2013, it no longer intends to provide I-Net services on a free use basis, but instead would offer a leased business service arrangement to the City; and
WHEREAS, with the knowledge that the current cable franchise would expire on July 30, 2013, and of Comcast's intent to charge for the I-Net in the next franchise, the City started to plan for and explore other possible options to replace the current I-Net; and
WHEREAS, one of the City's possible I-Net replacement options is to work with Ramsey County and a private fiber provider, the Minnesota Fiber Exchange (MFE), for the County and MFE to build and own a dual-conduit Institutional Fiber Network, with the County government conduit reserved for use by government agencies...
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