RFP Staff
♦ Salisbury’s City Hall is getting desperate. They’ve actively sought expansion for Fibrant into parts of the county they wanted Rowan County’s Commissioners to designate as “Governmental Economic Development Sites” as a means of circumventing NCGS §150A-340.2(c)(3)(b). So far, the businesses that have agreed to have Fibrant if it were available, wanted broadband redundancy and Fibrant uses means other than fiber lines to meet those limited needs. Why not fiber optic lines? There are two major reasons: (1) Cost of installation exceeds the City of Salisbury’s capacity to finance such expansion and (2) As broadband service technology advances, fiber optic lines are becoming less effective than other types of technology like wireless.
Back in 2014, the Town of Spencer invited Fibrant to wire the entire town with Fibrant. They read the Broadband Bill and were fully aware that if Fibrant took up their offer, the lost revenue from Time Warner Cable and other providers would mean less franchise fee revenue annually. And yet with increase speeds and good will between municipalities, Spencer was willing to sacrifice about thirty grand a year by inviting Fibrant into its municipal limits. What was the Fibrant’s response? No thank you.
Other than information passed through back-channeling that City Hall was going to wait out the broadband litigation before deciding how and when to come to Spencer. The leaders of Spencer were officially kept in the dark on the matter. But after looking at last week’s article in the Rowan Free Press, regarding the incredibly non-competitive broadband bid that Fibrant submitted to Rowan-Salisbury School System, it is obvious Fibrant lacks the personnel and financing to expand into Spencer.
RSSS is Rowan County’s largest employer. And when they had the chance to impress the school system back on April 11th, they were the highest price out of four bidders. A unanimous decision was made to go with Time-Warner Cable. They could immediately install the high-speed internet service. Fibrant’s expensive proposal would take a full 18 months. Instead of $34,000 per month that Time-Warner Cable would charge, Fibrant wanted $111,000 per month. No where close to competitive. You would think that after vampiring all the city’s resources they could at least come up with something.
Why do little squads of Fibrant shills keep attending County Commissioner and city council meetings and speaking at public comment, begging for a resolution to declare their little slice of heaven a “governmental economic development site”? First, the city hall-inspired squads were informed that no criteria exists in the broadband statute to prevent commissioners from designating whatever turf they choose for Fibrant expansion and second, the City hall is “astroturfing” an artificial grass roots movement, as part of an infomercial PR campaign to gain attention to how much penned-up demand there is for Fibrant’s wares outside the city were most available consumers have chosen brand “X”.
Just as certain city council members have done, their county shills are willing to slob-job the Fibrant line, in hopes that Commissioners will take up their cause. Also, creditors and bond-rating companies like Moody’s, Fitch’s and Standard & Poor’s need to read something halfway positive in their ‘Google’ searches about Fibrant. And astroturfing a false but highly public measure of support for the failing broadband utility stands as a counterbalance to all the negativity that is inhibiting city hall’s “time to shine”.
Shills have no shame. Nor does the City of Make Believe. Fibrant is dead. You can stick a fork in it. But City Hall refuses to give it a decent burial at least not until AFTER the 2017 municipal elections. Meanwhile 4 shootings in two days and people are moving out.
