nDanville has been operational since the fall of 2007, and is the first municipally owned open access, open services network in the United States. Design Nine has been providing open access broadband planning and project management services to the City of Danville, Virginia since the spring of 2006. This is a regional project with a service area not only in the City of Danville but in three adjacent counties. The City had a fiber network in operation for several years that had been used exclusively for government and educational use. Design Nine helped the City specify and select a state of the art network management system, and Design Nine wrote the specifications, and assisted with the RFP procurement process.
All services are provided by private sector service providers, and one of the local service providers delivering services using nDanville has only one complaint: That the City is not connecting new businesses and residents to the network quickly enough. Design Nine continues to provide broadband planning services and financial analyses, and the City has employed Design Nine to assist with a major residential expansion in the summer of 2009.
- Assist the Danville Utilities Department with the development of a business model that provides for conservative financial management of the network while providing a significant new revenue stream for the City's General Fund.
- Provide network architecture and system recommendations, including vendor product analysis and recommendations.
- Assist with the development of grant proposals and RFPs for the purchase of equipment and services. Assist with proposal review and vendor selection as needed.
- Develop funding strategies for the construction of the network. Identify public and private funding sources, evaluate funding sources, and make recommendations.
- Provide long term (ten year) financial analyses of the financial performance of the network, including capital expenditures, operational costs, staffing, maintenance, revenue, income, depreciation, service projections, take rates, and cost of debt