Auburn Broadband: Rate Proposal

[Mike_Walter]

On its agenda for Tuesday night, Feb. 5, the Auburn city council has a resolution (No. 01-2008) that "authorizes and approves" the rates for the Auburn Essential Services (broadband) system now under development. I'm all for broadband, but I'd like to be able to point potential customers to something that will tell them exactly what they will pay for a particular set of services (e.g. "Phone, internet, entertainment: $??.??/month"). Unhappily, this resolution won't let me do that. It establishes ranges so broad that they are practically meaningless. Another agenda item, Ordinance No. 2008-02, appears to give the AES manager the authority to change the rates at will within the given brackets, subject to council approval annually. But the lack of clearly-defined bundles of services and narrower price ranges in the rate resolution bothers me. Below is the rate schedule as set forth in the resolution. See if you think you understand it:

AUBURN ESSENTIAL SERVICES
RATE SCHEDULE
(In Ranges)

DATA SERVICES Per Unit Price

Small Business Internet Data $10.00 to $500.00

Enterprise Business Internet Data $100.00 to $2,000.00

Residential Internet Data $10.00 to $200.00

Enterprise Business Private Data $100.00 to $2,000.00

Small Business Private Data $50.00 to $500.00

Other Data Services $2.00 to $150.00

PHONE SERVICES

Business Phone $15.00 to $300.00

Residential Phone $15.00 to $200.00

Business Phone Trunk Up to $2,000.00

Other Phone Services $1.00 to $200.00

CO-LOCATION SERVICES Up to $1,000.00

SECURITY SERVICES Up to $2,000.00

HOSTED / MANAGED SERVICES Up to $1,500.00

EQUIPMENT LEASE Pursuant to Customer Agreement

OTHER SERVICES & CHARGES Pursuant to Customer Agreement

SERVICE TAXES & SURCHARGES Pursuant to State and Federal Tax Rates and Customer Agreement

CUSTOMER ONE TIME CHARGES Pursuant to Customer Agreement

PENALTIES $10.0 [sic] to $50.00

DISCOUNT Up to 10%
(City full-time employees)

[matt_s]

While I agree, that those rates are pretty broad. An ordinence is not a marketing document. It is meant to meet many long and short term needs which means it needs flexiblity.

[Mike_Walter]

While I agree, that those rates are pretty broad. An ordinence [sic] is not a marketing document. It is meant to meet many long and short term needs which means it needs flexiblity.

Flexibility is one thing. Unbridled discretion is something else. When the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission approves a schedule of electric rates, those are the rates. Period. I very much understand that we are feeling our way in setting up the broadband system, and I'm more than willing to accord temporarily a large measure of flexibility to the AES administrator. But ordinances and resolutions are legal documents. They define rights and duties. This proposal seems overbroad to the point of conveying no practical information. It needs work.

[matt_s]

So if I am understanding what you are looking for correctly, you want a document that says something to the effect of "When we go live, here are the rates we will be using!".

I can understand where that would be useful to know and to have as a potential consumer. Has a pricing study been conducted of other municipal systems and local competitors to determin more specific rates or is that going to be one of the first tasks of the AES Manager?

My brief read of the ordinance on the city web site leads me to believe that the final word on pricing is had by the AES manager with the board having a requirement to review at least once per year. If you want greater oversight then you need to tighten the relationship between the council and AES Manager when it comes to prices.

https://documents.ci.auburn.in.us/do...ance-Rates.doc

[Night Fire]

I think pricing needs to be investigated a little further before the ordinance is passed.
The price ranges listed on the original post would actually put the city out of the competitive price range. No faster way to have all the customer base jump ship than to be to high in price.