Key Milestone for Deployment of Municipal Broadband System

This checklist of key milestones will help you deploy your municipal broadband system.

Getting Started

Identify municipal entity (City, County, Utility District, or Regional District) ready to partner.
- Local government desires participating in owning the system and having a beneficial interest of the system after repayment of the financing.
- Define broad project scope, assess market conditions
- Anticipated Contributions from Municipal Partner
  - Use agreement to sign on to use the service.
  - Support of existing municipal utility systems (if any)
  - Assistance in connecting schools, hospitals, other institutions and major local business to sign onto system.
  - Local financial support totaling appx 25-30% of project costs from:
    - Local Funds contributions,
    - State Funds contributions,
    - Contributions of existing telecom assets (and/or rights of way) which could be utilized in the new build,
    - Utilize funds awarded to the local community from ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) or RDOF (Rural Digital Opportunity Fund)
    - Private Equity Investors, and/or
    - Local investors willing to purchase Junior Revenue Notes which would be subordinate to the Senior Revenue Notes.
Coordinate Development Team, including design firms, contractor, financing firm, operator, grant writers, and legal team
- Enter into exclusive Predevelopment Agreement with Municipality,
- Engagement of Professionals, including MCM
- Qualified Design and Engineering firms, as well a construction contractor able to provide construction manager at risk, or otherwise, as directed by state laws.
- Qualified Operator on board to provide operational expertise, marketing to customers, and in certain cases provide credit support in the form of [potentially a minimum take rate]
Credit Review, Project Creation, and Building ProForma
- Fine tune Initial Project scope,
- Build detailed financial models,
- Engineering, Design Development,
- Project Pricing Estimates,
- Interaction with Municipality on a periodic basis
Create Financing Documents, operator agreements, design/build contracts, anchor tenant agreements, intergovernmental agreements, etc.
- Engagement of Bond Counsel
- Interaction with Municipality on a regular basis
Sell the financing
- Once the “solution” is fine tuned the transaction can be offered to investors interested in purchasing the resulting securities or loan (ie, Senior Revenue Notes and/or Junior Revenue Notes).
- Upon sale of securities at market rates, the transaction would be set to close and cash deposited into a Project Account held by the Trustee.
Launch Initial Pilot and Getting in Business
- Start PILOT Construction
- Operations Plan Implementation
- Marketing Plan
  - Sales Force
  - Web interface mapping for customers to pre-subscribe for service
Full System - Federal/ State Grants Submittal and Approval Process
- Process and Timing – still being defined by Federal and State broadband offices
- Involvement with State Broadband Offices
- Involvement with State Depart of Local Affairs
- Professionals will be needed to complete planning and mapping for the Federal Grant application. It is widely anticipated that likely requirements may include:
  - Detailed Business Plan
  - Detailed Mapping of the service area (requirements still TBD)
  - Detailed Engineering
  - Environmental Studies
  - Grant Writers
Long Term Full System Build Out
- Grow incrementally from:
  - grants received,
  - cash flows from operations, and/or
  - future revenue note financings after stabilization of the PILOT and growth of the system.
Other Best Practices
- Phase construction in order to not incur too much debt early on,
- Don’t build line extensions until [40%] of customers to be served on that line are pre-registered for service. Areas with higher pre-subscriptions % will be prioritized.