Program Description

  Office of Broadband Programs and Infrastructure Modernization

The Office of Broadband Programs (OBP) is responsible for Countywide broadband governance, planning, implementation, and operations; encouraging broadband related economic development; and enabling digital equity initiatives. This office leads the County Executive's digital equity programs; manages the County's cable television and telecommunications franchise agreements and the Cable Revenue Fund; ensures that consumer cable and broadband services are of high quality, and that communications providers comply with safety and construction codes; enforces cable and broadband customer service requirements; promotes community and civic engagement through Public, Educational, and Government (PEG) programming utilizing multi-media platforms; and manages the County's FiberNet fiber optic network and related broadband services. FiberNet is the County's critical infrastructure communications network that enables all email, video, Internet access, and Cloud services, and supports County voice telephony and broadband and networking for County government, MCPS, MC, HOC, M-NCPPC, and WSSC.

Infrastructure Modernization: OBP is responsible for modernizing and maintaining the County's infrastructure supporting FiberNet, voice and broadband services as well as the County's data center infrastructure.

Telecommunication Solutions: The Enterprise Telecommunications and Services Division (ETSD) provides integrated communications services and solutions for County government departments and agencies, including MC311. ETSD is responsible for the programming, operation and maintenance of the County's telephone system and related services, e.g., voicemail, automatic call distribution (ACD).

OBP Community Engagement: OBP Community Engagement provides channel management for the County's cable television station (CCM) and its three cable channels, and a Technical Operations Center to support transmission of 14 local PEG channels over three cable systems. CCM program content is created by the County Council, Office of Public Information (PIO), and other County government entities. Community Engagement provides production services to record and transmit programming from the Council Office Building, production support for offsite Council Town Halls and County Executive Forums, closed captioning of programs, dynamic promotion of channel and video programming across multiple media platforms, engineering staff for the Technical Operations Center to monitor the audio and video signals provided to the Comcast, RCN and Verizon cable systems, contract administration, liaison and support services for other municipal and community media channels' PEG Channels in the County. This program was formerly part of the County Cable Montgomery and Public Educational Government (PEG) Operations programs.

The Community Engagement team also provides media services support for the Office of Broadband Programs and other County departments including website development and content management, podcast production and distribution, live/hybrid event streaming, as well as creative digital and video asset creation such as Public Service Announcements, flyers, postcards, etc. In addition, Community Engagement plays a critical role in the County's Digital Equity and XR Montgomery initiatives.

OBP Community Technology: OBP Community Technology manages use of public rights-of-way in Montgomery County by cable television providers, negotiates and enforces obligations in cable franchise agreements, provides consumer assistance with cable issues and complaints, and supports County policies addressing compensation for use of public rights-of-way by communications providers. Community Technology manages the Transmission Facility Coordinating Group to provide engineering review of applications to deploy towers and antennas for wireless services in Montgomery County, and coordination for deployment of wireless facilities among department and agencies.