I've designed services for cable and other residential broadband, and evaluated vendor proposals for WAN services. Now, though, I have a new responsibility: being on the Cable Advisory Committee for my small Cape Cod town od Chatham, MA. We're the easternmost point on the continental US, have been around for 300 years, and even was the original Marconi transmitter site and a WWII SIGINT intercept base. We have, however, more Great White Sharks than technologists. The town has a blue-collar fishing population that is dwarfed by summer vacationers/summer home residents. Has anyone else been in such a civic role? Can we share experience? Its first role is evaluating performance of Comcast, the incumbent, and deciding whether to recommend renewal or make a preliminary denial. This gets into an overall "ascertainment of needs" requirements process, possibly for new features to be built into the renewed contract. There are other issues to examine, such as subscribers cutting the cable or getting other digital access. Since the municipality gets revenue from the franchise fees, this may mean a drop in funding for Public Access, Education, and Government video channels. While it's not within the original committee charter, we may well look at overall communications architecture, including municipal fiber and Wifi, cellular infrastructure, emergency communications, etc. -- Howard C. Berkowitz 95 George Ryder Rd. Chatham, MA 02633 sy@netcases.net (508)241-1362 cell (866)262-6579 fax