HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016/07/27 - ADMIN - Minutes - Community Technology Advisory Commission - RegularOFFICIAL MINUTES
ST. LOUIS PARK TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
JULY 27, 2016
TOUR OF CENTURYLINK HEAD END, GOLDEN VALLEY
MEMBERS PRESENT: Maren Anderson, Bruce Browning, Cindy Hoffman, Abe Levine
and Rolf Peterson
MEMBERS ABSENT: David Dyer and Andrew Reinhardt
STAFF PRESENT: Reg Dunlap, Civic TV Coordinator, and John McHugh,
Community TV Coordinator
OTHERS PRESENT: Patrick Haggerty, CenturyLink Director of State Regulatory and
Legislative Affairs; Mike Janssen, Lead Engineer, Forrestt Crowe,
IPTV Engineer, and Jerry Jerome, Technician
Tour of CenturyLink Head End in Golden Valley
Commissioners met in the parking lot on the east side of the building about 6:50 p.m., and Mr.
Janssen and Mr. Crowe escorted Commissioners and staff to the room where the Prism
equipment racks were located. The large room once housed wireless equipment, but in the last
18 months the Prism TV racks and equipment was installed.
Mr. Janssen gave and overview of the Prism TV architecture and fielded questions. The cable
networks enter the building on fiber from a regional office in Columbia, Missouri on redundant
10 gigabit fiber inputs. The basis for all of their networks is to have multiple paths and
equipment so that there is no down time. A video aggregator system converts all the channels to
IP (internet protocol) video, which routes it to the network.
The networks have built in monitoring of the many channels, and the staff in Denver has access
to be able to remotely monitor any of them in case a problem is reported. Down the road, that
contact information will be provided to City staff, but it isn’t necessary at the moment because
Prism TV isn’t installed in City Hall.
Mr. Janssen showed the racks where the local PEG (Public, Educational and Government)
channel encoders were installed, and pointed out several spare encoders in case they were ever
needed. Mr. Haggerty said that CenturyLink now has activated 84 PEG channels and passed
260,000 homes in the metro area.
Mr. Janssen moved the group to another set of racks which held dozens of HP servers.
Commissioner Browning asked about their compression scheme, and said the HD demos looked
excellent. Mr. Janssen said they used MPEG4 compression to put a 24 MHz channel into 5.2
MHz of bandwidth. Mr. Janssen said that 30 of the channels now have a replay server option,
which means if the viewer sees an icon on those channels in the bottom right corner of the
screen, they can start the program over at the beginning. The down side is that they cannot fast
forward through commercials.
There were many questions raised by Commissioners and staff, and CenturyLink staff answered
all of them.
Next the group moved to a quiet room with two monitors and several work stations. ParkTV
channel 16 was displayed on one of the monitors, and on request, Mr. Crowe switched to the
Minneapolis, Coon Rapids, Edina and Bloomington government channels to show that they were
carried in HD.
The group then moved to a lunch room area to see a splicing demonstration by Mr. Jerome.
Along the route, Mr. Dunlap asked about the racks that were in cages, and Mr. Haggerty said that
was the CLEC’s (competitive local exchange companies) equipment to allow competitors on the
CenturyLink network, and that CenturyLink staff was locked out of those areas. Mr. Jerome
explained that splicing fiber was much easier now, using smaller and less expensive splicing
equipment because the fiber was much easier to work with. Chair Peterson said that the
preparation for splicing now takes a fraction of the time and expertise. Mr. Jerome showed the
tiny fiber strands, which are about the size of a hair and are color coded for easier matching
when splicing. Mr. Crowe said that the manufacturer, Corning Wear, supplied fiber cable with
pre-made connectors, so that aerial plant installation and repairs were efficient and easy.
Commissioner Browning asked if CenturyLink used single strand or multiplex fiber? Mr.
Janssen said that they used all single mode because it was more reliable.
Commissioners and staff thanked the CenturyLink staff for the tour and for answering all their
questions, and left the building at 8:20 p.m.
Respectfully submitted by:
Reg Dunlap
Civic TV Coordinator