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Poster:	pozar	Date:	Feb 23, 2004 9:05am
Forum:	sflan	Subject:	San Francisco Telecommunications Commission meeting tonight...

Sorry for the late notice.

The San Francisco Telecommunications Commission is setting their
Telecommunications Plan for 2004. In it, they seem to be concerned
about equal access for the folks in SF. One of our points is this
can be done via wireless networks such as 802.11 and 802.16. They
city has listened and wants to look into this in this plan.

If you have any comments about the City supporting (or not) Wireless
for community access to the Internet as well as each other, please
let your voice be heard tonight at this meeting. Please read the
draft plan at:

http://www.sfgov.org/site/telecommunications_commission_page.asp?id=22912

before commenting.

Thanks...
Tim
--

Department of Telecommunications and Information Services

City and County of San Francisco

NOTICE

REGULAR MEETING OF THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION CITY AND
COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO

Monday, February 23, 2004, 5:30 PM

City Hall

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, Room 400
SF, CA

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Poster:	carlnoe	Date:	Feb 24, 2004 2:58am
Forum:	sflan	Subject:	Re: San Francisco Telecommunications Commission meeting tonight...

So, how did it go?

I'll check for a webcast...



thanks!

p.s.

How about a little lead-time next time...

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Poster:	pozar	Date:	Feb 25, 2004 2:36am
Forum:	sflan	Subject:	Re: San Francisco Telecommunications Commission meeting tonight...

Update...

I did go there. Discussions on the plan broke down into three
areas...

Safety and Security:

* Alex E. Fagan, Director, Office of Emergency Services
* Jim Goebel, Office of Emergency Services
* Kirk Bailey, Chief Information Security Officer, City of Seattle
* Robert D. Rodriguez, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, U.S.
Secret Service

Economic Development:

* Commissioner Sunil Daluvoy, Telecommunications Commission
* Wade Randlett, Director, SFSOS

Equal Access:

* Susan Mizner, Acting Director, Mayor?s Office of Disability
* Chester Williams, Vocational Skills Program Manager, Western
Addition Community Technology Center

As you can see "security" was covered by a number of individuals
such as representives from the Secret Service and City of Seattle.
Mr. Bailey's talk was very good in the respect of concerns about
security. Seem that he had some battle wounds to show off.

Economic Development was well covered by Mr. Daluvoy pointing out
many of the hopes from the commission with this plan.

During the public comment period, SBC tried to address a number of
these points. They claim there is equal access as their broadband
service covers 97% of the city. Areas that are not covered are
sections of Bay View/Hunters Point and Treasure Island. They did
mention that not all can access broadband at a full 1.5Mb/s due to
distance from the Central Office. (ie. I get only 768Kb/s from
PacBell at my location at 45th Ave and that is only after complaining
when they originally gave me 384Kb/s.)


Of course SBC was there saying that there is already plenty of
competition for broadband. They list other DSL providers (leaving
out Comcast), all of which have to go through PacBell's copper and
pay some rather hefty prices for it to PacBell.

I made a very quick comment suggesting that the City adopt open
protocols such as 802.11, 802.16 and IP to not paint themselves
into a corner like many other cities do with proprietary solutions
and also plugging BARWN again.

This meeting was the introduction to the plan and the Commission
is looking for public comment now. From the draft plan page at:

http://www.sfgov.org/site/telecommunications_commission_page.asp?id=22912

The Commission welcomes input from the public and will hear
public comment on the draft Update at its meeting on February
23, 2004. Please direct all e-mail comments to
telecommunications_commission@sfgov.org or via regular mail
to Telecommunications Commission, 875 Stevenson, 5th Floor,
San Francisco, CA 94103. Deadline for comment is March 15,
2004.

Please read it and comment on it.

Now, whether this plan has any bite or can do anything is yet to
be seen. It really can't order any city facility, it is more of a
suggestion for a direction. I would hope that the city will consider
it when planning for the future.

You can see the meeting from the net at:

http://majestic.ipolis.net/ops/tplgen.php?X=C1001&T=sfgtv&S=R4-367

(My quick comments can be seen at 1 hour and 12 minutes 20 seconds
into the real audio file.)

Tim