Hey guys, we're still waiting on a response from the mayor's meeting with another member of bellinghambroadband.org about a month ago. I sincerely hope it's not just more stalling. I have my doubts though because , in the meantime they have shoe-horned through all of the legislation Verizon wanted for 5G and Small Cells without consulting local experts or giving any real consideration to proper installations of the gear. I also wanted to pass along this article about how AT&T is expected to throttle First Responder connections just like Verizon did recently. I mention this because documents I received from the COB show that the Sehome Hill facility, rented by AT&T from the City of Bellingham, was justified partially by the FirstNet system. This system was supposed to be public in the first place and was later privatized. However, the $1.3 million dollar Sehome Hill facility came with a COB public fiber hookup for AT&T, and the COB paid almost $1 million of the cost to meet AT&T's specs. That's right, we gave fiber to AT&T from the public system we're refusing to let the citizens that paid for it in the first place use. We also guaranteed them rent for 15 years, and it will take us almost 20 years to even break even on the project. After that we will make virtually no profit from the deal. So, it was pretty much corporate welfare for AT&T and now, the FirstNet system won't even be really reliable. Oh, and again they're using the public fiber, from the existing network, that the City's IT Director and Public Works director insisted wasn't usable in December 2016. This is the same year they worked out this corporate welfare deal for AT&T. Also, AT&T will make millions off of both FirstNet and traditional services provided by the tower. The specs in the documets show at least T-Mobile also has interest in using the facility. So these companies will make millions is perpetuity, but they can't even foot the bill on remodeling them to meet their specs? Do you know any small business owner paying rent that gets this good of a deal from their landlord? Yeah, I don't either.

Here is a big article on FirstNet if you want to read more on the specifics. https://nwcitizen.com/entry/att-firstnet-the-stasi-super-highway/writer/2970