In the world of the crystal ball, where new ideas are born in a flash of inspiration, major accomplishments can be made in a mind's instant. However, in the real world of local government and the political processes which can sometimes rule in that arena, engineering designs and ideas must pass through a birthing process which may alter and modify the original plan such that the completed product looks totally different than that envisioned in the original crystal ball. Such was the case in Stillwater.

The following paragraphs contain a summary of occurrences which lead to the construction of the fiberoptic system within the city of Stillwater. During the process, the design went from a "to the house" full-fiber system back to a bare bones design and then to state of the art system constructed with a partner building it with capacities beyond anything originally dreamed at the time the project was a glimmer in a crystal ball. During the 5 year gestation period, the actual "state of the art" matured also and the system now being constructed will take advantage of the improvements which have since developed. Through this process, the City of Stillwater will benefit from the enhancements employed on the system designs, so the time required was worth the effort.

Chapter One
A False Start

During the fall of 1994, a group of computer "techies" and utility representatives got together and dreamed of a fiberoptic system for data, telephone, cable TV, and meter reading services. The services were to be delivered "to the home" via fiber. The services were to be sold by the city as an additional utility.

The Stillwater Electric Utility (SEU), now called Stillwater Power (SP), owned and operated by the citizens of Stillwater, was a major contributor to this system design in conjunction with representatives of the Oklahoma State University Computer Department. This group designed a fiberoptic telecommunications system consisting of a 24 strand single mode loop that passed by major customer locations and supplied five major communications nodes. Equipment in these nodes provided communications to fibers which were then routed to homes in the nearby areas. The group met with a local manufacturing company which stated it could build the "black boxes" needed on the houses to convert the fiber signal to the electrical signals used for data communications, telephone, CATV signals, and automated meter reading. All construction was planned to be placed overhead on SP poles in these older areas of town areas. In newer underground residential subdivision areas, additional plans were made for installing the fiber underground.

The system cost was determined to be $35,000,000. For a community of 40,000 people, the idea was not affordable. After approximately 9 months of design work and a presentation to the city fathers, the idea was dropped for lack of funding, but it was a forward looking concept for 1994. At that time, the general public was just becoming aware of the Internet and the search engine called Yahoo! was barely known. The City of Stillwater, however, had initiated the first local government webpage in Oklahoma at www.stillwater.org. The ideas for this system were scrapped but the files were kept. Though unknown at that time, the work which went into defining a backbone route for that original system was to be reused, so the efforts were not wasted.

During the fall of 1995, the Stillwater School Board approved a Plan for Instructional Technology for computer education which required the networking of all the schools and instructional facilities. That fall, the Stillwater Power was considering running fiber to various electric substations for SCADA communication to the electric distribution system substations and for computer interconnections to several of the remote city operating building sites. Four people who represented computer and communications personnel in the City of Stillwater (Todd Chancellor), the Stillwater Public School system (Jim Ryan and Eddie Boujaoudi) and Stillwater Power (Mike Herron) shared their plans and initiated a cooperative effort. SP's proposed fiber route to the electric substations was along the planned route of the original system and located near each elementary school. SP proposed linking the schools as part of the project to make it more economical for the schools than the T-1 lines provided by the local telephone company, Southwestern Bell Telephone Company (SBTC.)

Representatives from the Oklahoma Department of Vocational and Technical Education and the Stillwater Medical Center joined the original four technical people along with interests from their respective organizations to be part of the planned system. Both the medical center and the state vo-tech offices were added to the proposed "fiber loop" as communication drop sites..

A preliminary cost estimate of $491,000 was prepared and presented to the Trustees of the Stillwater Utilities Authority for the construction of a fiberoptic communications system limited to the transmission of data among the group of government entities listed above. The proposed system was to be a dual, single-mode, FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Interface) ring architecture backbone operating at 100 MBPS to five node sites which then provided 10 MBPS drops to 26 end-use sites. The concept was that all the attached sites would "ride for free" for the communications which they needed. The system would handle data and limited point-to-point video conferencing. It would have the ability to "hard wire" connections between schools for more sophisticated video learning capabilities in the future.

This proposal caused concerns with the local telephone company. Those concerns took the form of questions challenging the technical expertise of the "techie" group doing the system design and asking whether the system would ever work or not. Additional comments concerned the group's inability to provide adequate maintenance for the system and storm restoration resources. When the Trustees heard the concerns, they directed the "technical committee" representing the governmental units to seek a third party review of the plan to determine if is was viable. This review added about 6 months to the project timeline.

The Stillwater Power Director, Mike Herron, and Stillwater City Manager, Carl Weinaug continued to look for ways to get the maximum benefit from the fiber loop. Growing public interest in the fiber loop attracted more attention from Southwestern Bell officials who began contacting the other governmental units in an effort to secure the SBTC customer base in town via long term contracts for communications services, mainly in the telephone utility. Although SBTC did have some fiberoptic service in Stillwater, it was minimal, so data communications on the SBTC system were mainly limited to T-1 lines.

Fearing that the larger governmental units with the most technical expertise would be offered better rates from SBTC than the smaller governmental units, the Stillwater City Manager proposed forming "The Stillwater Fiber Optic Alliance", later termed simply, "the Alliance". When grouped together, the Alliance could simultaneously negotiate with SBTC for better rates and pursue the fiber optic loop possibilities. The Alliance also pursued discussions with the local cable company, TCI, to determine if that company would consider a fiberoptic system upgrade for the city. The City Manager suggested each entity could share in the cost of construction of the fiber lines with each having ownership of their own fibers. This proposal was not successful even though other companies have given it serious consideration as one way to bring improved service to non-metropolitan areas.

Stillwater is a Tier 3 city, and as such, is well removed from the list of cities being targeted for fiberoptic upgrades and general system improvements by the major telecommunications utilities. SBTC was constructing fiber systems in Oklahoma City and Tulsa where the markets were larger and the possibility of a better return on investment was greater. Stillwater was not a priority city and the Alliance saw this as a significant negative factor for attracting new industry and business to Stillwater. This lower status was a further incentive to the group to do this project on its own because that approach was viewed as the only way that higher bandwidth telecommunications would ever come to Stillwater, Oklahoma given the corporate views of the communications utility in Stillwater. At this juncture in the design process, the alliance saw the possibility of providing some of these more enhanced services commercially to the public. This income opportunity could further aid the city coffers and help pay for the system used by the governmental agencies.

The third party review requested by the Trustees was completed. The changes recommended increased the system cost to $580,000. The consultant recommended SP consider a full communication system for both data and voice. Such a system would, however, cost much more. The consultant's suggestion would provide a system that could have competed directly with Southwestern Bell Telephone. Although not opposed by the company on the local level, at the state legislature efforts were underway to prevent municipal ownership and operation of telecommunication systems in Oklahoma.

In any case, this option was not considered after its original presentation. The City Commission did not feel that the city workforce had the technical expertise to compete effectively in the communications business and that "starting from scratch" would take too long.

In the background, several local companies were privately expressing concerns about not having the telecommunications infrastructure that they needed to expand. City staff and Chamber of Commerce officials felt Stillwater's ability to attract new business was already being limited by the lack of competitive telecommunication service rates and services being provided by SBTC. At this point, SBTC publicly stated that fiberoptic services were "available" in Stillwater, but the facts were that any company wanting them would have had to pay for installation charges from the locations where fiber existed in town to the company location. In essence, fiber was only available if the interested company was willing to pay SBTC to build its system to get to the interested company.

Since the SP Trustees did not view the electric utility as qualified to operate a communications utility, the only apparent option for SP and the Alliance was to partner with a company which could provide those services. The next effort was then to determine if one of the new competitive local exchange carriers (CLEC's) might be interested in such a partnership. Both the regional "Bells" and the CLEC's, however, were concentrating their expansion in large metropolitan areas with high concentrations of businesses demanding faster and cheaper communications. Communities with populations of 40,000 were not appearing in any telecommunication company news releases. Fearing Stillwater might be left in the very "still" backwater of the telecommunications revolution, the City Manager sent out letters making the following offer.

"We have the right-of-way, we have the utility poles, we have $500,000 in the budget for a fiber optic loop, and we have electric line crews ready to install the fiber above ground. On top of that, we will offer you our telephone business if the rates are below the current rates now paid. Let's make a deal!"

Eight companies made inquiries about this offer with most coming to Stillwater to explore the possibilities. Brooks Fiber Properties was one of the companies. With facilities in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, a link to Stillwater made sense to them. After visits to Stillwater by many levels of the Brooks corporate management, negotiations began.

Once Brooks Fiber Properties and SP came to general agreement on the concepts of a joint alliance, it was agreed that all parties should have an opportunity to submit a proposal.

Request for Proposals for a Fiber Optic Services Provider & Partner in Fiber System Construction and a Dial Up Modem Services Provider were issued.

Proposals were received from Brooks Fiber Communications and Southwestern Bell.

A public hearing was held for each company to make a formal presentation to the Trustees and public. Based on the presentations and analysis of the proposals, the Trustees approved entering into contract negotiations with Brooks Fiber for the fiberoptic services partnership and one with ioNET of Oklahoma for Internet access services.

Trustees approved an Internet services contract with ioNET of Oklahoma and the SP became an exclusive reseller of Internet service under the name ioNET of Stillwater. Rates provided by SP are one dollar below the competition and one dollar from each monthly bill is contributed to the Stillwater Public School computer network.

Negotiations with Brooks Fiber involved several corporate levels but progress slowed to a standstill just before an announcement that WorldCom had purchased Brooks Fiber Properties. Inquiries were made with WorldCom to determine if they would consider the project. No response was received; the deal was "off".

The Alliance realized that it had to start all over again. This time they decided to court smaller telecommunication companies in Oklahoma. Every company registered as a CLEC with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission was contacted with the same "let's make a deal" letter sent to Brooks Fiber. Several Oklahoma companies responded and provided input on possible partnerships.

SP revised the fiber RFP document and published it for comment from telecommunications companies. The purpose of this posting was to seek input as to whether the project was still viable and to obtain comments on any parts of the RFP which would prohibit individual companies from submitting a proposal. General meetings were held with various companies throughout December and January.

Brooks Fiber officials also assisted with suggestions about what it would take to make the Stillwater project more attractive to a CLEC. Brooks Fiber said the project barely met their investment standards. The City would have to demonstrate more opportunities for business customers to make the deal attractive.

Based upon this comment, the Alliance group was then expanded to include industrial and commercial clients who might benefit from having competitive telecommunication providers in town. The new members joined the governmental units in providing information about their monthly bills and future needs for communication services. The new members included Stillwater National Bank, TMS-Sequoia, Esker (formerly known as Teubner & Associates), National Standard, and MerCrusier. This billing information was "aggregated" to demonstrate the customer potential. The Alliance members again pledged their telephone service if the rates were competitive to the current rates.

A second Request for Proposals for a Fiberoptic Services Provider & Partner in Fiber System Construction was issued. The RFP included the proposed Contract developed with Brooks Fiber but simplified after discussions with the local Oklahoma companies.

Four proposals were received including responses from Chickasaw Holding Company, MBO Corporation, Southwestern Bell, and TSC (Telecom Services Company). These responses were provided to members of the Alliance and were reviewed in a group meeting on April 9, 1998. From this review session, additional groups of questions were provided to each of the bidders with responses requested by April 17. Three sets of responses were received with MBO dropping out of the competition by not responding to the questions.

The Alliance representatives met again on April 22 and discussed the responses. Based upon the information contained in this group of responses and the proposals, the Alliance found the Chickasaw Holding Company proposal to be the most promising for the Alliance. The Alliance recommended that representatives from Chickasaw Holding Company be invited to the May 4^th Stillwater Trustee meeting to make a formal presentation of their proposal. Each company passionately elaborated the merits of its proposal in comparison with the others. The members of the technical committee asked each company many questions during the public debate to obtain specific answers. The technical committee then recommended they be permitted to enter into negotiations with Chickasaw Holding as the Alliance's first choice.

The Chickasaw Holding Company proposal provided the necessary fiberoptic system in cooperation with Alliance contributions and in-kind services. The proposal includes free data communication services to the 29 Governmental Alliance sites. It also includes free video communications services necessary for the schools to operate distance learning, as envisioned by the original technical committee. Chickasaw offered to provide telephone services at a quoted percentage rate less than that of the local provider. Internet access would also be available via high bandwidth connections. All these services would also be offered commercially once the system was in operation and Chickasaw would pay the city a percentage of gross revenues thus earned.

The Stillwater Utilities Authority approves a contract with Chickasaw Holding.

Stillwater Fiber Project Kick-Off Celebration. Work on the fiber installation began in earnest with two line crews working on it full time. Crews were assigned to this duty for a period of two months and then put back on other line work to rotate the construction activities.

The fiber system has grown from the original 24 mile backbone to one of approximately 55 miles. The backbone bandwidth had increased from 100 MBPS to 1,000 MBPS (1 GBPS). The bandwidth for the drops was increased from 10 MBPS to 100 MBPS to the 31 Alliance sites with the same changes in system architecture.

System fiber capacities were also increased in the final design. Whereas the original group design had been for a cable with 24 singlemode and 12 multimode fibers, the Chickasaw system backbone uses cables with 276, 192, 120, 96, 48, and 24 fibers, depending upon where the cable exists on the backbone.

November 24, 1999,

Stillwater Power crews completed the installation of the original fiber backbone system, approximately 50 weeks after starting. They had placed 312,681 feet (59.2 miles) of fiber cable in the air. The SP labor cost were $168,970.24 for an average of $0.5404 / ft. This total also equates to approximately 164.5 man-hours per mile, or about 1 crew-week per mile. Chickasaw crews were making fiber terminations and splices on the system and checking segments as the terminations are completed. Internet access was available to selected customers on a test basis. The main phone switch is installed and under test. The beginning of commercial operation was planned for January 1.

The Alliance members of the group have data communications systems interconnected via the Chickasaw fiber system. The City's departments have a high-bandwidth LAN interconnecting the designated sites listed in the original plan for the system and allowing high speed internet access through a server at City Hall. Individual department interconnections operate at 10 MPBS. Many of the City sites are connected to the Chickasaw telephone system allowing for lower rates. The schools have an operational LAN interconnecting their sites.

Chickasaw has established and populated a local office with folks who are available to set up new accounts, take payments, handle problems, and provide equipment, as was required in the RFP. Chickasaw is now in a mode of connecting new telephone and data customers to its system. Telephone and Internet access are available to residential, commercial, and industrial customers. Chickasaw has constructed a digital phone system utilizing the fiber backbone to interconnect local digital towers and digital telephone service is now available via the Chickasaw/Sprint system. Chickasaw is continuing fiber construction in the downtown area with construction of duct banks in the alleys on each side of Main Street to further enhance their backbone system.

The agreement between the City of Stillwater and Chickasaw Telecom includes the following major items:

• 10 year term with annual renewals thereafter if neither party objects
• First 3 years, city receives payment of 5% of Chickasaw net recurring revenues from operation of the system (for telephone, data communications, and any future "end user" billed services derived from the network.)
• From year 4 through year 10, City receives 7% of gross revenues from operation of the system.
• 31 Government Alliance data system sites will be connected at 100 MBPS and operated at no charge for data transmission services.
• Schools will receive full motion video services for distance learning at no charge.
• Phone service rates to all alliance members are to be 5% less than those for comparable services from the existing provider
• Alliance members contract to use Chickasaw for telephone service for a period of 5 years, provided that the rates remain 5% below SBTC.
• SP pays or provides services totaling $580,000 to Chickasaw; up to $125,000 of this can be provided in the form of SP labor for installation of the overhead system.
• The Stillwater Public Schools pay or provide equipment valued at $100,000 to Chickasaw.
• SP will provide future construction services for overhead fiber extensions on SP poles at no charge to Chickasaw.

As quoted in the Chickasaw proposal to the City and Alliance group, a 10 MBPS drop for data communications services can be obtained commercially for $490 per month. As noted above, the Alliance sites all have access to this level of communications at no charge during the contract period. (In fact, since the system upgrade, those sites will now have 100 MBPS access.) For the schools, this means the district will receive $647,000 worth of free services over the 10 year contract period. The city will benefit in the amount of $882,000 over the same period just in the saved expenses for these services.

The Alliance entities will also benefit from lower cost telephone service expenses, and as previously noted, the City and schools will receive a percentage of the Chickasaw income from the commercial operations of the system.

9/29/00

wmh/sp