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The scheduled meeting of the 91st Day Subcommittee held in the Town of
Abingdon Municipal Building was opened by Chairman F. H. Moore, Jr. There were
twelve members present. These included:
Minutes of the 14 May meeting were approved as presented. Dr. Moore noted that we left the 5/14/96 meeting with a clear understanding
of the limits of the Phase 2 demonstration project and that David Taverner was
to enlighten us as to design elements and costs. David Taverner then gave to
everyone a document entitled "EVA 91st Day Committee Fiber WAN
Proposal" in which these matters were detailed. David had divided the
project into five parts:
Dr. Moore asked if Sprint would be interested in helping to finance the
system or if financing could be built into the overall cost of the system. David
stated that Sprint could help with financing, but that Sprint could not defray
the cost of individual connections, which will be a substantial part of the
total cost. Jay Cox said that he felt that this was an excellent overall plan. He could
now run the numbers to come up with a monthly charge. Steve Galyean noted that
the totals, given 50 users for the hardware/fiber connections, would come to
$158,750 for version 1 and $149,250 for version 2. Jay further noted that we
could divide this project into two parts; #1 being Plumb Alley where there are
fewer connections and #2 being the immediate Courthouse area where there are
dense numbers of users waiting for connectivity. Dr. Moore asked if we separated the two parts, how would we connect the other
users to the Municipal Building? David Taverner suggested that a T1 line and
router could be established from the Sprint Central Office. Jay further stated that these combined components could embody full video and
other capabilities and that expensive though they might be that the costs of
this system have to be regarded as recoverable over the lifetime of the system.
That lifetime could be as much as thirty years. Jean Luker stated that $158,650 total represented $3,173 per user for the
whole cost including the backbone and electronics which were partly there
for future growth. These parts should be regarded as are streets and sewer
lines; that they are necessary for the growth of the system and not necessarily
to be repaid immediately. The user specific parts, connections costs, came to
about $90,000 and this was the part to be factored by the number of users and
over the life of the project. This would come to less than $2,000 per user and
would probably amount to a user fee of around $25 per month. Dr. Moore said that there would be other costs to factor into this equation
such as maintenance and a part-time employee to do updating, plus the costs of
billing for the services. Jay Cox noted several ways of spreading out the costs
for such a system and noted that however it was done, it would have to be
applied evenly for all users. Bill Chaffin stated that the next study should be modeling of system costs
and arrival at a monthly charge to reduce debt and arrive at a break-even point.
Bill suggested that we give this study to 1 or 2 people to 'cost out' and
determine the feasibility of doing this project. Bill also asked who would sell
and promote the system. Jay responded that his company would do so as they
believed in it. Dr. Moore appointed Jay Cox, Jean Luker and David Taverner to model the
project costs, proposed revenues and report back on the feasibility. The next
meeting was set for 4 June 1996. Respectfully Submitted,
Albert C. Bradley, Secretary |