Status Report - 8 December 2008

Here is the ARE-ON status report for December 8, 2008:

1. ADVA DWDM equipment: We are still awaiting the final decision by State Procurement on the protest filed by ePlus and Cisco.

2. Little Rock/Monroe IRU: We will be wrapping up the IRU for the Little Rock to Monroe route with McLeod/Paetec this week. We will be making adjustments in the collocation sites to make the North Little Rock POP the major Little Rock metro area fiber crossroads rather than the Level3 POP.

3. Little Rock/Time Warner Telecom: We have begun to pursue an alternative plan to using the TWTC metro fiber in Little Rock. This includes fiber builds off the Level3 fiber that passes through Little Rock to the UALR and UAMS campuses.

4. Ritter/Jonesboro: Ritter has begun construction of fiber in the Jonesboro area to the ASU campus, but that build was put on hold pending completion of easements and rights of way across the ASU campus.

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 reports that Juniper found and fixed one of the two problems he filed with JTAC regarding broken policy when non-stop routing (NSR) is enabled. The fix is due in release 9.3R2 in the third week of December. The second problem regarding routing engine (RE) failover issues has not been reproducible. Steven has instructions from JTAC on additional logging and what information to capture if we have to do an emergency reboot due to RE problems.

8. Fiber Laterals Engineering: The approval of our selection of the construction manager is still pending at the UA System Office.

With the denial of permits by the AHTD to construct fiber on controlled access highways (interstates), we have pursued alternatives through our long-haul fiber providers, McLeod and Level3. CT&T has secured an agreement with McLeod in which McLeod will do the permitting, but our construction crews will build the fiber. We have one unresolved issue about ownership and maintenance of the fiber that we hope to resolve this week. For fiber along Level3 routes, Level3 policy is more restrictive. They will build fiber from their splice points to a new handhold just off the interstate right-of-way where we will meet them with our fiber. Scott Ramoly met with Level3 and CT&T last Thursday in Little Rock and Arkadelphia to review each project. We are awaiting a pricing proposal from Level3.

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

a. Alma/MBO: The signed easements are awaiting approval by the UA System Office and Board of Trustees for approval. We are seeking blanket approval for future easements to speed the process as we work our way through other cities. Also, Steven Karp produced a 3D SketchUp drawing of our ideas for the fiber hut that will be built at this location, which McClelland is using the produce the final engineering plans for its construction.

b. Fort Smith/UA Fort Smith: CT&T is working to complete the route survey and diagrams for the two routes in Fort Smith to the UAFS campus. There is a pending question about the need for a city franchise agreement.

c. Russellville/Arkansas Tech University: The northern route to the ATU campus is completed, and CT&T has preliminary route diagrams ready. McLeod will obtain permits from the AHTD for the eastern route, and CT&T is engineering the longitudinal route along I-40 to the point at which we will divert across ATU property to reach the ATU demarc. There are no easements other than that of ATU required for this route as long as we can build longitudinally along the highway.

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 is engineering the short build from the McLeod splice point to a pole where we will meet Conway Corp’s fiber. CT&T is still working on the southern route to the campus. The splice point that Scott and I found along Dave Ward Drive is not viable, so we will use the original splice point. Brent Herring of UCA wrote last week to say that there is no available conduit from a point near where the Conway Corp fiber terminates near the UCA campus, but that a need exists to build new conduit that we could share the costs on.

e. North Little Rock/Level3 POP: We will almost certainly not be building these two routes, instead favoring a much shorter build at the McLeod POP at the intersection of I-40 and I-440.

f. North Little Rock/McLeod POP: CT&T is working on measurements and drawings for this route, which replaces the two routes we had originally planned for joining the McLeod and Level3 long-haul fibers at the Level3 POP.

g. 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.

h. 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.

i. 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. Scott visited the site along I-30 with Level3 and CT&T last Thursday. Level3 is preparing a proposal for building fiber for us from their splice point to a location just off the interstate right-of-way.

j. Magnolia/Southern Arkansas University: CT&T arranged a meeting with Community Cable last week during which CC agreed in principle to provide fiber from Monticello to Warren, plus additional fiber from Warren to Fordyce and East Camden. The latter route might be useful if we are unable to get a similar agreement from South Arkansas Telephone Company. Mike Abbiatti had a conversation with the president of SATCO and we were encouraged to hear that SATCO may be receptive, at least to further discussions to develop a proposal. I am less confident that we will find a low-cost route from Monticello to Magnolia, but having these discussions now is important as we look to the possible closing of the southern fiber ring.

k. Little Rock/UALR/UAMS: Working under the assumption that the TWTC fiber in the Little Rock metro area will not be available for our use, we are having CT&T develop plans for fiber builds off our Level3 fiber to the UALR and UAMS campuses. Scott met with Level3 last Thursday about these builds, and Level3 will provide a proposal for building short spans off their fiber to meet-me points where CT&T will engineer the remainder portion of the routes to the campuses.

l. 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: We have had several conversations with Level3 and Qwest about commodity Internet service. We are working with them to identify the most cost-effective connecting point. Both of these providers, along with others on the Quilt contract, provide free backhaul as long as we have a certain minimum bandwidth commitment.

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.

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