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Regular Council Meeting Minutes <br />12-15-08 <br />Page 20 <br />Council President Buckholtz asked Mr. Jones if he wants to add what is going on with <br />fiber. <br />Mr. Jones said his company is located at 660 Beta Drive near the Hilton Garden. They <br />have been in business since 1947. He is the Marketing Manager for utility technology. He <br />gets involved with utility companies and as it turns out some municipalities that have <br />utilities that are getting involved with fiber and services to their communities. <br />Municipalities are getting involved because they would like to generate revenue for their <br />communities and services. Depending on where these communities are, there are some <br />benefits as far as legal aspects and so forth, but what you find are communities that are not <br />getting the attention. They want to just go ahead and try on their own, providing internet <br />service and so forth to their communities. They will go ahead with the process and start it <br />up. It typically starts out with a fiber ring and then we get into expanding the use of their <br />basic backbone to other services in the community and then we go beyond that. For <br />example, there are folks that moved from up north down to Florida. As taxes got higher, <br />they started to come back up north and stopped in the Carolinas. They moved up but still <br />want the broadband service they had down in Florida. They are actually bringing <br />broadband or fiber to these areas that are very rural. They are trying to get that service out <br />to these people that command that service. It's a pretty hard driven market right now. <br />Council President Buckholtz stated that this makes the point. He noticed there is <br />something in here about University Hospitals having moved in the area and are waiting for <br />the fiber. We have all read business plans. It's impossible to pin down the numbers. Ted <br />tried to take what already happened with the three companies that we did and extrapolated <br />over what we would hope would happen, but Council President Buckholtz does not think <br />we will see another opportunity like this. That's his opinion. <br />Mr. Marquardt said he certainly thinks the marketing study should continue because we <br />should have more data to work on. We need to have the information before we do anything. <br />Council President Buckholtz said the marketing and the promotion. If Ted has done this <br />kind of work in this short of time to put this together, then he needs to be able to run with <br />this and get it out there. <br />Mayor Rinker added that he thinks that a lot of what you have seen is the product of <br />certainly increased communication between the Building Department and what Ted has <br />been doing. In other words, Mayor Rinker thinks that you are sharing a lot more <br />information. A lot of times John or Debbie may be the first people to get wind of it and <br />from what Ted's been telling Mayor Rinker, sometimes almost on a daily basis if not a <br />weekly basis, just comparing notes and getting feedback, it's helped us. Mayor Rinker <br />could not agree more. Marketing is something that we can always be working on to <br />improve what we understand and how we can promote it. <br />Council President Buckholtz asked if anyone else had any comments.