DRAFT

The Halifax Broadband Committee meeting was called to order at 6:35pm Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at the Halifax Town Office. Present were committee members Earl Holtz, Curtis Carroll and Jessica Bruno. Members of the public present were Margo Avakian and Steve Towne.

Bruno moved and Carroll seconded that the minutes of the May 9, 2012 meeting be approved as written, and the motion passed 3-0-0.

New Business Website Posting Procedures It was agreed that Bruno will continue to post various miscellaneous items to the website. She will put a link to her e-mail on the site so if people have suggestions for improvements, they can contact her. Large projects involving the website will be discussed as a group. Should maintenance of the website become too cumbersome, the Committee will re-visit the division of responsibility. It was noted that the policies and procedures book may have some outdated or irrelevant data in it. Bruno may ask the Selectboard to review which policies are up-to-date before posting to the website.

Cell phone service in town US Cellular- Holtz brought a US Cellular coverage map, which indicates that some parts of Halifax have 4G phone coverage. The map can be found here: http://www.uscellular.com/coverage-map/coverage-indicator.html

AT&T- Bruno shared information from www.atttowers.com regarding the collocation process. There are checklists, overviews of the process, and an application ($2500 application fee). Other providers may have similar agreements. You can also find out where existing towers are located if you register. Bruno had tried to register, but has not yet received a log-in id or password.

Google Intercepting Wi-Fi communications Becker had submitted an article to Holtz regarding Google’s potential violation of wiretapping laws. A similar article can be found here: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/04/doj-google-streetview/

“Google, along with other companies, use databases of Wi-Fi networks and their locations to augment or replace GPS when attempting to figure out the location of a computer or mobile device. Google has said it didn’t realize it was sniffing packets of data on unsecured Wi-Fi networks in about a dozen countries between 2008 and 2010 until German privacy authorities began questioning what data Google’s Street View mapping cars were collecting.”

Broadband Target Community Meeting A meeting sponsored by Governor Shumlin’s Connect VT initiative and the Vermont Telecommunications Authority will take place Tuesday, June 26 at Memorial Hall in Wilmington, VT at 5:30 pm. We should be able to ask questions about VTel’s progress. All are encouraged to attend!!

Hearing of Visitors A re-cap of the VTel grant requirements was discussed. The option of waiting for VTel versus getting satellite service now was discussed.

Holtz encouraged everyone who has not done so to report their address as an unserved area on: http://www.broadbandvt.org/broadband/report-unserved-area.php

The meeting was adjourned at 7:38 pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Jessica Bruno