Status Report - November 24, 2008

Here is the ARE-ON status report for November 24, 2008:

1. ADVA DWDM equipment: The meeting with State Procurement to hear ePlus and Cisco present their concerns expressed by the protest filed in the award of the DWDM equipment was held on Monday, November 17. A follow-on conference call took place on November 19. We anticipate the decision by State Procurement to be announced this week.

2. Little Rock/Monroe IRU: Now that the route survey for Monticello is done, I can now provide the information that we needed to place in the IRU document and will proceed with completion of the acquisition of this route this week.

3. Little Rock/Time Warner Telecom: We have had no further updates from the Little Rock city attorney on the TWTC agreement. I believe it is time to move on to other options since there seems to be no hope of any timely completion of the agreement.

4. Ritter/Jonesboro: David Adams called me late on Friday to give an update on Ritter’s progress. Ritter has completed the construction for their portion of the project from Harrisburg to Vanndale (just north of Wynne) and are now working with Arkansas State University-Jonesboro to complete the build-out to the campus demarc. WEHCO is making progress on building between Wynne and Vanndale, with completion expected in mid-December. David did not have up-to-date information on the WEHCO project to build from Forrest City to the Level3 and McLeod POPs in Widener.

5. Suddenlink: The proposal for the two Suddenlink routes in Russellville and Arkadelphia are still on the table as alternatives to doing our own construction.

6. McLeod/OneNet/Tulsa: This project is on hold pending the outcome the Alma project (below). All indications are that we will not need any additional fiber in Tulsa and can ask OneNet for a refund of an IRU for cross-town fiber to reach their demarc at the OSU Tulsa campus.

7. Juniper Routers: Steven Karp continues to work with Juniper on resolution of two problems that have been plagued us for nearly a month. After the outage we took on Sunday, November 16, Steven requested a conference call with Juniper management that took place on Monday, November 17, during which time expressed frustration with the level of communication by Juniper TAC. Juniper promised better communication and gave us insight on the progress that they have made with the problems. They also helped us understand better how to approach the JTAC duty manager when we need status information or have a need to escalate a problem.

8. Fiber Laterals Engineering: The approval of our selection of the construction manager is still pending at the UA System Office. Dr. B. Alan Sugg will take it to the ARE-ON board for their approval before we can award the contract.

Since we have been unable to get the permits that we need from the AHTD to do construction along controlled access highways (interstate highways), we have approached McLeod and Level3 for their assistance in completing these builds. I contacted Level3 and have begun the process of getting them to build from their splice points to a demarcation point where we can meet them with our fiber. Scott Ramoly will be doing site visits with a Level3 engineer on December 3 from which Level3 will create a scope of work and estimate of cost. CT&T will be accompanying them. McLeod is proving to be a bit more flexible. CT&T contacted them and they have agreed to front the permitting with the AHTD for us, but work through CT&T on the engineering and construction.

Here are brief status updates on each of the fiber lateral projects:

a. Alma/MBO: The signed easements have been forwarded to James Ezell at UAF, who is taking them to the UA System Office and Board of Trustees for approval. He is seeking a blanket approval for these easements since we will have a number of them. The UA System Office legal counsel made a slight change in the DBA name under which ARE-ON is operating for the purpose of these easements.

In our weekly status meeting with McClelland, we went over preliminary designs for the fiber hut that we must construct near Alma. Steven produced a 3D representation of his ideas using Sketchup. McClelland send Steven their current draft of the Autocad drawings, which he was able to import into Sketchup McClelland will incorporate our ideas in their next draft.

CT&T will be working with McLeod on the engineering of the short build on I-40.

b. Fort Smith/UA Fort Smith: I met Cox Communications and MBO in Fort Smith on November 17 to verify that a proposed splice point near the Garrison Avenue bridge was viable for our use. Now finally having two connecting points to our existing MBO fiber, CT&T can complete the measurements so that we can have this ready for construction whenever the construction manager contract is completed.

c. Russellville/Arkansas Tech University: The northern route to the ATU campus is completed, and CT&T should have drawings ready within a week. CT&T will work with McLeod on the build necessary along I-40, plus they can now complete the measurements for the eastern route to the campus. I am uncertain at this point whether it will be necessary to get more private easements to complete this route.

d. Conway/University of Central Arkansas: We are still awaiting the proposal from Conway Corp on the northern route to the UCA campus. CT&T will work with McLeod on the short build needed along I-40 to a pole where we will meet Conway Corp’s fiber. CT&T has begun developing the southern route to the campus. Scott and I found a new splice point on the McLeod fiber that is closer than the original one that we identified. If this proves to be a viable splice point for our use, we will not need to build along I-40 controlled access right-of-way.

e. North Little Rock/Level3 POP: Preliminary route selection is complete. We are considering eliminate these builds in favor of a much shorter fiber build at the North Little Rock McLeod POP.

f. Pine Bluff/UA Pine Bluff: Preliminary route selection is complete. We are still waiting on a proposal from WEHCO Video on the alternative for the southern route to the UAPB campus. CT&T will work with McLeod on the short build along I-530.

g. Monticello/UA Monticello: CT&T has completed measurements and drafting for both routes to the UAM campus. It is ready for construction as soon as the construction manager contract is completed.

h. Arkadelphia/Henderson State University: CT&T has completed the route diagrams for the north route to the HSU campus, and has completed the measurements for the south route. Since Suddenlink’s alternative for the south route will likely be less expensive, we placed further work by CT&T on this route until we have a chance to review the Suddenlink proposal. The north route requires a lateral crossing of I-30, which should pose no permitting problems from the AHTD. The southern route, if we choose to build it, will require some construction by Level3 due to AHTD restrictions on permitting. We are working with Level3 on a possible proposal for this build. The Suddenlink proposal has the advantage of not requiring us to obtain the AHTD permit.

i. Magnolia/Southern Arkansas University: CT&T arranged two meetings with Community Cable and South Arkansas Telephone Company on December 2 in Little Rock. Unfortunately, South Arkansas Telephone Company has asked for a postponement, which may indicate some reluctance in working with us. We are going ahead with the Community Cable meeting and will try to reschedule the meeting with SATCO. These meetings could provide extremely important in our efforts to get fiber between Monticello and Magnolia.

j. Little Rock/UALR/UAMS: CT&T has completed a preliminary route design and estimate for a route between two Level3 splice points in Little Rock through the UALR and UAMS campuses. Given the uncertainty of the TWTC fiber, I think we are close to making the decision about building this route.

k. Monroe/University of Louisiana – We are awaiting the MOU with LONI before we can proceed with this project.

9. Arkansas One-Call & ARKUPS: The application for ARKUPS (the non-profit organization that will contract with us to do utility locates) has not yet come in. When we receive it, we will file it along with the application for Arkansas One-Call.

10. Commodity Internet: As a part of our discussions with Level3 about fiber construction along the interstate highways, we opened dialogue on the possibility of obtaining Level3 commodity Internet service. Level3 identified on-net locations in Nashville, Memphis, and Dallas where we can obtain free backhaul. Nashville is out of the question, but Memphis and Dallas could both be made possible by lighting the paths to those cities. Level3 is checking into what they can provide in Little Rock. They offer service through the metro fiber network (formerly Telcove), but the cost may be higher and is not covered by the Quilt contract. We will continue to pursue this with them.

We continue to receive information from Qwest about their commodity Internet and other services. Qwest is checking into handoff of services to locations where we have fiber terminations in Dallas and Tulsa. We are looking for any location where we can avoid having to pay local loop or backhaul costs to reach a Qwest POP.

Late note: A letter from Richard Weiss, Director of the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, went out to all state agencies, boards and commissions, and institutions of higher education in which he informed all that all of these agencies are required to use the state core network operated by DIS for commodity Internet. Our legal counsel is reviewing this document. At face value, it could pose a problem to our intent to offer commodity Internet services to our members.

11. NOC: We made no progress on this project.

12. DIS Peering: We still plan to work with DIS on migrating their Fayetteville connection to the new MX960 router.

13. Training: Scott Ramoly attended a class on outside plant cabling in Albuquerque November 17-21. This class will be key to the construction of our fiber hut in Alma and will also be useful for producing the detailed site preparation documents that we will append to the collocation agreements with our member campuses.

-David Merrifield, Chief Technology Officer
Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network