Former City Councilor Andy Montroll and former Burlington Telecom boss Tim Nulty, along with Ron Cassel, Stanton Williams, Paul Guiliani, Rick Royer, Paul Millman, Richard Donnelly, and Don Mayer make up the so-dubbed “group of 9” – the cadre of technical professionals and investors who have offered to step in and cover the late payment on BT’s debt in exchange for being given the reins of the whole operation (or in Nulty’s case, re-given… is that a word?). Calling themselves “Reboot Burlington Telecom,” the group has a website up detailing their proposal (ht CandleBill).
RebootBT has already done the impossible; carved out a growing space for those who think the whole endeavor is a hopeless disaster under the Kiss administration, but really don’t want to see it abandoned. That’s a space that hasn’t existed for months – really, ever since Progressive Party leaders tried to make the whole thing into a partisan referendum, setting up a “you’re with the mayor or you’re against BT” dynamic.
They certainly succeeded in that, but the results of that now-polarized dynamic have hardly gone their way. Now, the only realistic hope for salvaging the situation – particularly in terms of public confidence – would seem to be in accepting Reboot BT’s offer.
Thankfully, the City Council is filling the void and moving forward on their own as – naturally – the mayor and Jonathan Leopold have all but ignored the offer. After all, going with it would be a tacit admission that they screwed up.
It’s called the first deadly sin for a reason.
and very little knowledge of the back-story, the Reboot concept sounds like an effort at stewardship by the local business community that one would think would be welcome right now.
and several others who choose to draw a political stamp on all BT, most of the people who really care about business development in the city or the growth of the existing job engines, know that a viable and growth optioned high speed network is the backbone of that growth potential. I dont see Dealer.com hanging around if BT fails and Comcast takes over or drives it into the ground…. the DOT Com being the operative idea here…
BT has been a breath of fresh air in terms of quality service, who cares about value, it just works… consistently…
So to bite on the offer of salvation from people with access to money and the skills to actually MARKET a quality product based on smoething other than walk-ins???? Genius
I’ve got no investment here, either, just a question or six: if this consortium of private businessmen takes over BT, does the city ever get it back as a utility? Is it still considered a public utility — and should it be? How would that kind of management structure compare with another city-owned utility, like, say, Burlington Electric? And do the members of the gang of 9 have skin in the game — as in, are they investing? Are they paying off the debt to the city? So then who exactly would own BT?
I ask because it seems to me that the reason anyone outside of Burlington even cares about what happens to BT is that many of us would like to see telecom services — phone, entertainment, broadband — treated like a public utility and not a bottomless well of sky-high fees for crappy service. Not to mention the “last mile” problem of broadband access in rural areas that will likely only ever be addressed by a truly public utility. If they can’t manage that in the densely populated neighborhoods of the state’s largest city, then there’s not much hope for us poor suckers out in the boonies stuck with Comcast and Fairpoint.
NanuqFC
In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying. ~ Bertrand Russell
A crisis caused by the private sector, the economic meltdown.
The PSB jumped in, and smacked BT hard. But, the private sector entities they regulate, FairPoint and VT Yankee have been coddled in spite of anything they do.
FairPoints many transgressions have been forgiven by the PSB to the tune of 9 million.
Vt Yankee’s transgression have been ignored by the PSB. It was the legislature’s task force that has held VT Yankee’s feet to the fire, while the PSB has tried to roll over and play dead.
The built in bias in our system is being ignored.
When something is done for the common weal, it is held to standards no other entity is expected to follow.
When something is done for profit, it is allowed to replace all standards with PR.