Post by Gray Cope on Jun 16, 2012 19:45:51 GMT -8
How much income will we see from the $18 million investment in the wireless broadband system?
What is not known is how much of the operating income from the operations will reduce the debt. If you look at it from a return on investment proposition you would include any operating income from the use of the plant equipment the $18 million buys us. That could include:
1) fees paid by cellular companies or antenna leasing companies to collocate their equipment on the OPALCO wireless broadband system.
2) fees paid by the County to collocate emergency communication equipment.
3) collocation fees from any 3rd party communication network companies which could include the wireless broadband service to your home or office.
4) any separate fees charged by OPALCO for use of their fiber communications network.
Am I missing any other possible sources of income?
Any one have estimates of how much that all might be worth?
I have no idea how such things are priced, but OPALCO must make the pricing attractive enough for telecom companies to find it a better choice than to invest in their own towers and backhaul. It's the question of do you buy or rent. Neither choice makes sense if you don't have enough subscriber traffic to justify the coverage.
I assume this is something that OPALCO has been trying to get a handle on. Hopefully they have not been simply trusting a single cellular company to advise them, because such a "partner" might be motivated to distort the possible revenue just to get OPALCO to build them a network that would never make financial sense for them to build themselves.
It may be that cellular providers really prefer tall towers in rural areas over the sort of thing OPALCO is proposing. Taller towers theoretically can reduce the total number of towers needed to service an area.
So that is my feeble attempt to wrestle with the income proposition our utility might see. Numbers will have to be obtained from OPALCO for us to know if any of this expansion makes sense.
What is not known is how much of the operating income from the operations will reduce the debt. If you look at it from a return on investment proposition you would include any operating income from the use of the plant equipment the $18 million buys us. That could include:
1) fees paid by cellular companies or antenna leasing companies to collocate their equipment on the OPALCO wireless broadband system.
2) fees paid by the County to collocate emergency communication equipment.
3) collocation fees from any 3rd party communication network companies which could include the wireless broadband service to your home or office.
4) any separate fees charged by OPALCO for use of their fiber communications network.
Am I missing any other possible sources of income?
Any one have estimates of how much that all might be worth?
I have no idea how such things are priced, but OPALCO must make the pricing attractive enough for telecom companies to find it a better choice than to invest in their own towers and backhaul. It's the question of do you buy or rent. Neither choice makes sense if you don't have enough subscriber traffic to justify the coverage.
I assume this is something that OPALCO has been trying to get a handle on. Hopefully they have not been simply trusting a single cellular company to advise them, because such a "partner" might be motivated to distort the possible revenue just to get OPALCO to build them a network that would never make financial sense for them to build themselves.
It may be that cellular providers really prefer tall towers in rural areas over the sort of thing OPALCO is proposing. Taller towers theoretically can reduce the total number of towers needed to service an area.
So that is my feeble attempt to wrestle with the income proposition our utility might see. Numbers will have to be obtained from OPALCO for us to know if any of this expansion makes sense.