After five years and more than $1.7 million in setup costs, Lompoc's foray into the world of broadband Internet service has created a citywide network and drawn more than 1,000 regular users.

But while the system could eventually save money for some city departments, such as utilities, police and fire, it is still losing money.

City Councilman DeWayne Holmdahl helped initiate the project and continued his support through this month, when his tenure on the council ended.

“We've added 32 new family plans in November. That brings us to 1,250 regular users now,” he said during the Dec. 2 City Council meeting.

In spite of a growing user base, the Wi-Fi network remains a mixed blessing - filled with potential, but still unable to pay for itself, according to city Broadband Administrator Richard Gracyk. He estimated that the subscriber numbers must reach 2,000 for the city to stop losing money.

Gracyk, who was hired in December 2007, said the last year has been one of overhauling Wi-Fi's operation, including changes in staff, software, and crucially, the management philosophy of the utility.

“This whole project was designed by consultants, for consultants to operate and to keep the city at arm's length for most things,” Gracyk said.

Advertisement

Within the last half-year, Gracyk said, improved customer service, now run through the city, and improved signal strength has helped subscription numbers stabilize, and even grow slightly.

The city currently operates 215 connection nodes, most of them attached to municipal light poles. Each node uses radio waves to connect computers to City Hall, which in turn connects to the Internet.

Utility Director Ron Stassi echoed his broadband administrator's confidence in the current level of service.

“There are, I think, less than a dozen homes in the whole city that we haven't been able to provide adequate service to,” Stassi said.

Gracyk said his department aims to provide download speeds of 700 to 800 Kbps, with upload speeds of around 350 Kbps, comparable to some DSL speeds, with the help of receiver hardware that the city provides at no additional cost.

Beginning in 2009, Gracyk and Stassi say, electric meters in the city will begin to be read remotely through the wireless network, thanks to a small transmitter already added to more than half the city's meters.

The slower process of adding transmitters to updated water meters throughout the city has also begun.

“It'll help us identify leaks, theft of commodities, helping to pinpoint outages, help measure effectiveness of conservation efforts,” Stassi said.

Another application, beginning in 2009, will allow police to share more computer information with squad cars in the field.

“We have this mesh, this tool, in every corner of the city. It's what we do with it now that's where the future lies,” Gracyk said.

While city officials see fiscal self-sustainment and growing potential for the technology, the utility's history to date has been plagued by disappointment.

At the City Council's suggestion, a high-speed Internet connection feasibility study was conducted and released in December 2003. By September 2004 a plan was in place, and the council voted unanimously to start building an Internet service to place the city on the leading edge of Internet access. The wireless network was to be a first step in that direction. Original plans called for a fiber optic network to be installed throughout the city by 2008.

The wireless network was installed by consultant Mark McKibben, and was ready for testing by the start of 2005, but the project soon ran into technical problems and delays. An alpha test of the network, with city employees acting as the test subjects did not get underway until April, the originally general release date, and had unsatisfactory results. After months of testing, 70 more nodes were added to the system, even as a January 2006 ribbon-cutting date passed.

The service, with its admitted flaws, has met with harsh criticism from the political arena, and from the technical users.

A person on the LompocConnect community forum with the forum name grumpy3b was one of several users to complain about erratic Internet transmission speed in late 2007. After receiving no reply from the city, grumpy3b dropped the service.

Gracyk said the canceling of a customer service contract with Siemens Communications, and bringing the management of the wireless network in-house, has allowed the city to save money, and allow technicians to help customers at a “personal and face-to-face level.”

Gracyk says the city now fills an important niche in the Internet market, particularly for households still using a 56Kbs dial-up modem for access.

“We provide low cost, residential Internet access to causal users,” Gracyk said, adding that the service could work well for people at Vandenberg Air Force Base and visitors in River Park.

“Bring some ID and your utility bill and we can get you connected.”

December 30, 2008