Another Kind of Banjo
Walking by the City Tourist Park my smartphone had a whopping strong WiFi signal
from Shaw GoWiFi. Being a Shaw internet customer these are becoming prolific and
making mobile wifi available in more spots everyday.
I suspected this came from the Nelson city tourist park.
Wouldn't you know it, this is the city tourist park office. Later the attendant came along and we spoke, he told me he was a city of Nelson employee and the tourist park operated under the city Youth centre umbrella.
Notice the sign on the door stating they provide Shaw Go WiFi. And in the office is a Shaw Hitron broadband modem supplying this to all campers with a strong signal. My speed test on my smartphone at that time showed over 55Mbps download and 16Mbps upload. That should allow about thousands of simultaneous text messages or 8,000 skype voice calls. Maybe half the campers could be streaming live Netflix movies, while the rest surfed the internet at speeds unattainable a few years, maybe months ago.
My thought was "Why doesn't the city campground use its own Nelson Fibre internet?"
Easy to answer. Cost.....unaffordable.....
Directly above the tourist park is the hospital and Nelson fibre passes right by. But their is no breakout. The banjos are there, but no customers were dumb enough to by in, certainly not the hospital, I am sure they must make business decisions.
Pictured above the Nelsonfibre optic cable behind the hospital, above the city tourist park. There is no break out box because there are no customers. The banjos are just a loop of cable that allows slack so the cable can be brought down inside of the mobile clean room to make a fibreoptic connection inside a breakout box. Connecting glass fibre together so there is no light transmission losses requires special clean precision work by trained technicians. When the connection is made the cable is put back up and the slack goes around those banjos, you can't allow it to hang loose.
What you are looking at is the Nelsonfibre optic cable behind the hospital loading dock area. And I am guessing you can figure out why this fibreoptic cable view is often termed the banjo.
So what is that all about? This particular location has no breakout, otherwise there would be a large black cylinder, its anticipating a customer(maybe the hospital) but obviously they aren't on board with Nelson fibres offering. A breakout is an expensive device, in the 10 km of Nelson fibre most of the system has no breakout, because they have no customers, but they have lots of these banjos.
FIBRE OPTIC SPLICING IS A DELICATE OPERATION
Optical fibre cable connections/splicing is a very precise operation requiring a clean room.
That is a mobile trailer where the cable can be dropped down into this trailer(thus the banjo's allowing all the slack to let this drop into this clean room trailer to make connections.
A cleanroom is a controlled environment that has a low level of pollutants such as dust, airborne microbes, aerosol particles, and chemical vapors. To be exact, a cleanroom has a controlled level of contamination that is specified by the number of particles per cubic meter at a specified particle size
Connecting fibre optic cables is a precision and expensive proposition.
This all adds up to why the Nelson city tourist park is using Shaw for their internet service provider instead of the cities own internet service.
To the left is a Nelson fibre pole line breakout box,(equivalent of a splitter for cable tv for example) you will see these right alongside of Shaw and Telus fibreoptic breakouts.
My educated guess is to bring in a clean room, purchase the breakout box, run a new fibre optic single strand down to the city tourist park to another fibre optic breakout to baseband could cost upwards of possibly $10,000. Then the city would have to purchase internet service from some ISP(internet service provider) not Shaw or Telus thats $350/mo. I suspect the city wouldn't have to pay themselves their one time $250 admin fee or the $150/mo for dark fibre(its like water pipe with no water) you need to get internet service "light it up" (put water in the pipe) from an ISP.
I'm not sure if that $350/mo includes the modem, but then you would have to buy your own WiFi equipment, hardly competive. All of that and higher speeds from Shaw for $139.95/mo total cost free install.
From Shaw my last quote for a commercial install, including modem and Free Shaw GoWiFi hot spot, $139.95/mo instal fee waived and faster download at 150Mbps
Any questions why Nelson Fibre is a dead end? A complete waste of money, Thanks to mayor Kozak and people who have no idea what they are doing, just like the community solar garden project another $500,000 down the toilet, I suspect this nelsonfibre could be double that cost! Don't let the mayor leave town again. She went to Europe came back with visions of solar panels. Then New York City, and we get broadband internet!
When I was looking into city finances trying to find the costs for running nelsonfibre to the commons , which I didn't locate, my FOI request for what I thought was that for $35,000 was actually for a $22,000 door at city hall(I am sure it was about nelsonfibre's secure server access).
THE CITY ALREADY HAD SECURITY CAMERAS BUT APPARENTLY NOT ENOUGH?
But $15,000 of that $35,000 was for 8 security surveillance cameras at the city works yard. My question is does the city follow its procurement policy regarding getting quotes. Possibly these costs are legit and the low bid. My guess is they are not, I would have to submit another FOI request for that information.
Does the city follow their procurement policy? I would like to feel confident that they do. Maybe someone at the city can explain these costs, show that RFQ's went out.
You can see the city procurement policy click here.
I have my own security cams, viewable anywhere in the world on the smartphone. When I was in Australia I put a camera on inside and outside thermometers to ensure my furnace wouldn't quit, it once did, which always leave one insecure.
My system about $200, I did all the installation etc., I have 4 cameras, the image below is a screenshot from my smartphone, the center picture with the circle is updating and thus a little fuzzy and showing that circle update.
I am using the free version App to monitor my system on the internet, thus the ad at the top.(Words with Friends) My system is set up to record on motion, thus saving memory. Although my 80GB hard drive can likely store months all retrievable remotely or locally by a simple date and time search. It can alert me if the hard drive fails or video, by email etc.
Its a long stretch from my 4 camera system for a couple hundred bucks to the cities 8 cameras for $15,000.
Have you noticed your Nelson hydro bill has increased 40% since about 2009, or taxes up and up and up.
To pay for the mayors feel good solar garden and nelsonfibre. Coming next, the big wood stove, aka biomass boiler down near the airport burning wood to heat water and run hot water pipes along the airport and into town, to where ??? who knows. Once the hospital, no longer, the rec center and pool, nope, too expensive to retrofit, city hall, they just put in high efficiency gas boilers.....but they have a GRANT!! so we can chase that with increasing tax and hydro bill dollars forever. Maybe wind turbines next.
So just exactly what is the mayor saying in New York about Nelson that we are in the running for an award now in the top ten "intelligent?" communities in North America. What if we win and they come here and find out what is going on....what then Mayor Kozak?
What if the residents here can't afford Nelson hydro power increases of over 40% in the last few years, or city taxes up 6.8% and I expect this will get worse....can we sell the over 10km of fibre optic cable that does nothing, or the $500,000 real cost of the solar garden doing nothing....your legacy is too expensive Mayor Kozak.
So just exactly how did this city get in the internet business? Playing in the sandbox with Telux and Shaw.....who is responsible for this?
