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As a twelve year old girl, I came across the Space Invaders video arcade game and was mesmerized by the relentless thump-thump of the advancing aliens, the satisfying sound effects, and the addictive simplicity of the game play.  Soon thereafter, I convinced my parents to buy my first computer, an Atari 400 with its awkward membrane keypad, and became entranced by the potential of building my own interactive experiences.  I set out to teach myself the BASIC programming language and learned how to make pixels move around the screen.  While I never developed a full-fledged video game, before I finished high school I went on to write a grading application for teachers at school, build a voice command interface demo at the local Army post, and teach at a computer summer camp.

After completing a Computer Science degree at Stanford University, I went on to work as a software engineer in Silicon Valley.  I found myself coding up algorithms and routines for this or that function within much bigger projects.  The analytical puzzles kept me challenged, but it was less than fully satisfying.  As part of a bigger team, I missed designing how the product would work, interacting with real users, and weighing which features were most important.  I became drawn to management positions that would give me this broader purview, solving real problems and designing complete solutions.  It is this tangible aspect of real world problem solving that I believe is key to engaging more girls and women (as well as boys and men) in technology -- make the work tangible and relevant.

Please provide comments to the issue below as part of the 2012 WCB cost model virtual workshop for inclusion in the record. Comments are moderated for conformity to the workshop’s guidelines.

Background

Hybrid Cost Proxy Model: The HCPM builds loop plant directly to customer locations via individual micro-grids. At the time the HCPM platform was adopted, micro-grids were hundreds of feet across. This approach allowed for an error of up to a few hundred feet in determining customer locations. The model defines customer "lots" within each micro-grid based on the customer population. The model allows for spanning-tree optimization of routes, although this is recommended only in sparsely populated locations. The feeder network is built on explicit spanning-tree algorithms, with user-defined inputs to select various approaches (e.g., airline v. rectilinear distance, allow artificial junction nodes).

CQBAT: The CQBAT model builds loop plant along road segments. It utilizes a spanning tree algorithm in order to find the optimal route (i.e., the lowest cost route) to serve all customer locations along road paths—a minimum spanning road tree.

Welcome to the home page for the Wireline Competition Bureau's (WCB) cost model virtual workshop, through which the Bureau is soliciting input from the public on Connect America Fund (Connect America) Phase II cost model design and inputs. A notice announcing this virtual workshop was released on September 12, 2012.

The virtual workshop will take place over a period of weeks sufficient to allow public input on all material issues. Discussion on multiple related topics will be facilitated through the various subject matter-specific discussion forums listed below. The Bureau will announce which topics will be discussed in which timeframes by Public Notice and on this page.

If you would like to make longer posts, we encourage you to place them in the Commission’s public comment site (ECFS) as an ex parte and place a summary of the post with the relevant URL in the forum. Similarly, if you would like to include an attachment to a post, include the URL for the attachment in your post. To ensure security, the forums will not support live links or attachments. ECFS can be reached here.

At the close of the virtual workshop, an electronic copy of all posts will be placed in the official record of the relevant dockets, much as a transcript of a hearing would be placed in the record.

If you have any questions about the format or operation of the virtual workshop or have any difficulties accessing any of the subject matter forums, please contact Katie King at 202-418-1500, katie.king@fcc.gov.

Comment Guidelines

Comments are moderated for conformity to the following guidelines:

Please provide comments to the issue below as part of the 2012 WCB cost model virtual workshop for inclusion in the record. Comments are moderated for conformity to the workshop’s guidelines.

Background

Hybrid Cost Proxy Model: In developing the HCPM, the Commission concluded that a clustering algorithm should group customer locations into serving areas in an efficient manner to minimize costs while maintaining a specified level of network performance quality. Efficient clustering of customers leads to a least-cost and most-efficient network design that is consistent with forward-looking modeling principles.

The HCPM limits clusters by engineering constraints. It attempts to group customers so that they are no further away than allowed by network design, and so that no more customers are attached to a digital loop carrier remote terminal (DLC) than is permitted by network design. Initially, the model groups all customer locations into one cluster, then divides the cluster if one or more of the engineering constraints is violated. The model then uses several optimization routines that reassign certain customers to different clusters in order to lower the cost of constructing distribution areas.

CQBAT: The CQBAT model largely uses the same clustering approach as the HCPM, but uses road-based routing to determine the maximum size of the clusters. Thus, clusters defined by CQBAT are likely smaller but more realistic estimates of cluster size; by using road segments in clustering, CQBAT avoids the problem of having the length of some loops along roads exceed maximum loop length.