Last week a letter fell into my hands that takes a look at a very different perspective of broadband – the vendor side of the action. It’s a letter from Occam shareholders who are very unhappy with the recently announced acquisition of Occam by Calix. Their point is that the timing and price are wrong. I’m less interested in talking about whether their assessment is right than at looking at their method and process and how folks – especially folks in communities thinking about deploying broadband – can apply the same techniques.

First and foremost – it is heartening to see that three individuals (albeit who hold or represent 19% of Occam’s shares) have gone through this deal with a fine-toothed comb, found it lacking and are speaking up. A team like this would be a gift to any local community. They’ve read the research, they aren’t afraid to ask the board the hard questions. I guess one key is having smart people who have a little skin in the game. But also they have stayed focus on their key issues, which are financial.

For folks who have, plan or are speaking up – I think their process of using publically available reports and data and their focus on key points (financial) are worth imitating. It is amazing to see how the vendors use survey, research and statistics. They use market research, notes from public and/or shareholder meetings, speeches from FCC Chair Julius Genachowski, cite past court rulings and more. The National Broadband Plan emphasizes transparency and reporting. In theory more of this data will be available to a greater number of people – this letter is a nice study in how to use it.

Also it was very interesting to see industry’s perspective on ubiquitous broadband and the broadband stimulus package…

With each passing day, it is increasingly clear that the deployment of high speed broadband to all areas of the country, but particularly rural America, is one of the defining items of our national agenda and that there is strong bipartisan support for this agenda. While Washington continues to be mired in divisive politics, it is clear that both sides of the aisle have come to understand that the universal availability of true high speed broadband holds not just the key to renewed economic vigor but is also becoming an increasingly important determinant of our entire national standard of living, from social equality to education to health care to consumer entertainment to national security.

As we hope you know, the Obama administration has allocated over $7 billion in stimulus spending for the improvement of our rural broadband infrastructure. The last time we met with Jeanne Seeley, your chief financial officer, she noted that this—in her words—represented the “opportunity of a lifetime.” More recently, on your second quarter earnings conference call, Bob Howard-Anderson, your chief executive officer, expressed a similar sentiment, calling the stimulus a “unique once in a career kind of opportunity to see this kind of funding flowing into a market, and now we can actually see it flowing in.”

…

For ourselves, we believe that the government’s broadband stimulus program is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, and that significantly larger and more important reform lies ahead. While the FCC has already proposed a $400 million annual carve out to improve broadband access for rural hospitals and health care facilities, we believe that its proposed National Broadband Plan is potentially far more important. One way or another, we feel, the inevitable reform of the Universal Service Fund will direct billions of dollars annually toward the cause of upgrading our rural broadband infrastructure.

I found that heartening too. If businesses think there’s profit in deploying to rural areas – they will deploy to rural areas.

Again it’s not the Occam/Calix debate that interests me – I would have published this sooner if there was a reasonable way to black out the names involved – but I think there’s a lot to be learned in what has happened and how you can try to turn things around – and I felt the glimpses into the industry perspective were interesting.