Exchange Regarding DVI and BPL at April 27, 2004 Penn Yan Village Board Meeting

Attorney Brockman: We had a meeting last week regarding Broadband. Present were representatives from DVI, myself, Ed Balsley, Mike Christensen, and Les Rhode. A new contract will be submitted. The one that had been sent to us we felt was totally inadequate. Apparently DVI has a new attorney on board who is familiar with this type of thing and they'll be redrafting it from the ground up. We should be receiving it in the near future and we'll review that.

Joe McCoy: There's been a number of meetings, just so everyone knows the level of activity that's going on to address various concerns. And I think Les Rhode raised quite a few concerns and those have either been addressed or will be addressed in the new agreement. And I just want to thank everybody for the time and I know Mr. Mayor you said it was going to go fairly slowly. In the scheme of things it's going at the right pace to address all of the issues. I'd like to thank everybody for their support in moving this forward. We'll have that consolidated agreement sometime next week and we look forward to being able to schedule another meeting. We don't want to just drop the agreement off, we'll schedule a new meeting with you, Ed, and with whoever else is necessary. Probably Les, as well, and maybe some of the trustees. To go over that so we don't have any issues regarding terminology or anything else in the agreement. So thanks for all your time.

Norm Koek: What about the ham operators?

Attorney Brockman: We received that and we discussed it. DVI does not believe that that's really an issue. Les Rhode, I think, is looking into it and we should be able to address that when we… Obviously if there is interference then that's an issue. Apparently it's a question of what band they're actually using.

Joe McCoy: I can address that a little bit. And not to get into too technical a thing or take up too much of your time. The ham bands use certain frequencies. As of last…um.. I believe it was.. not this past Monday but the Monday before, we turned the network out of those frequencies. What we had done prior to that was tune it out of the frequencies of your local ham. Your local ham base has now expanded to everybody in the US. Everybody came down here and wanted to see how the radio worked. We've solved that issue. In doing so we had a problem with one end of one of our legs and some of you may have experienced some up and down time on just that one box on the end of the leg. Right now I think that the gentleman, Dave Hallidy, who originally filed an FCC complaint and posted an issue regarding noise complaint came down on Monday night - or Tuesday night, I mean, the following day, and he discovered that it was interference free, so much so that he thought the network had been turned off. So I think we've got that on the run. We'll continue to work with the community if there's any issues. There's a whole process the FCC has that we follow for those issues.

Mayor Marchionda: I think we need to keep an understanding here that as we the village move forward and explore this - we are not the regulating authority. We're very much like a landlord and someone's sending a letter of insurance basically. So the ham operators are protected by the FCC. I mean, it's against the law as I understand it to interfere with their frequencies.

Joe McCoy: Doug is correct. There is a label on this equipment. This equipment has to abide under the FCC regulations. It's an unlicensed frequency band. The licensed frequency bands such as the ham radios and the emergency broadcasters use have priority over these bands. If we cannot address the issue over this being interference free, we have to turn it off. Or use a different technology. And that's exactly the approach that DVI is taking and what Doug said is correct. It's not a community issue it's the FCC that governs these regulations.

Les Rhode: The FCC has also issued amendments to Part 15 to help accommodate BPL. I mean, FCC and Chairman Powell are very interested in BPL and obviously they want to see it succeed. There's a way to do band pass notching of these frequencies and this is what DVI is trying to do and everything that I've seen so far - and I've been very difficult on these people - they're trying to comply with our wishes. I have no complaints about their efforts. Now Ed and I - Ed Brockman and I, obviously are just trying to make sure that the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed. And that the village is protected.

Norm Koek: Well I think it's important that we are, before we commit to anything.

Mayor Marchionda: I applaud both DVI's efforts and the village efforts to make this cohabitate and these two entities get along. We have all received e-mails and phone calls and some of them threatening about interfering with different radio frequencies and it's beyond my level of understanding as far as which frequencies are which. But again we need to understand that we are not the regulating authority here. We as the village are going to rent pole space and sell electricity. We're not going to be regulators. That's what the FCC is for. And with that said, though, we still have to listen to our ham radio operators, emergency radio operators, and all other radio frequencies. So, I don't know about anybody else but I've had a pile of phone calls and e-mails. Some of them understanding and some of them downright nasty. And from great distances away. So we are the village of Penn Yan, not Cleveland or the West Coast or wherever else these people are e-mailing in from. But again, we're not moving slowly because that's the way we do it, we're moving slowly because we have to. We all want to believe when we're done, come to an agreement, and be proud of it and not have any problems with it. And I believe that's what we're hearing.

Joe McCoy: What the mayor has said is entirely correct. The basic tenants of the agreement is that the municipality is providing space or use of their electric system for purposes of Broadband Communication, but effectively it is a landlord model, if you will, where your liability would be that of a landlord providing space. And I think those are the issues that we are crafting and working on in the new agreement to make that very clear.

Mayor Marchionda: And there are a lot of issues. Your people have been working, full time, on this for a year now . That's a very over simplified version. I still believe that we need to keep moving forward and try to make this work. Because it is working in some places.

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