essamconsulting

For the past 8 years Essam has facilitated broadband expansion throughout Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and Ohio. First at Zayo and since 2012 at State of Illinois. The focus has been on fiber based broadband, expanding scalable broadband to community anchor institutions and commercial service providers. Essam has facilitated and managed all aspects of broadband deployment including broadband feasibility studies, broadband planning, fiber mapping, cost estimation, engineering, architecture design, market development, negotiation, agreement creation and update, and sales.

Essam has personally sold dark fiber, lit service including Ethernet circuits and Internet access and colocation. Deal volume is in the millions of dollars.

Essam has advised municipalities, school districts, hospital networks and retail service providers on broadband expansion including funding sources. Essam is very familiar with funding sources, including the schools and libraries fund and the rural health care fund from the Universal Service program and other funding sources from federal agencies.

Essam has submitted the following filings to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA), and the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) in addition to technical publications.

• ICN Steps into the Future with High Speed Digital Learning – Quilt Circle 2020 page 21
• Election Security – ICN Chosen as a Trusted Partner of the Illinois Cyber Navigator Program – Quilt Circle 2019 page 17
• ICN: Illinois Cloud First – Helping Transform to a Smart State – Quilt Circle 2018 page 8
• Lighting the Way to Smart Cities – Illinois Municipal League Magazine Article – April 2018
• Public Wi-Fi Supercluster Blueprint – Procurement Chapter – August 2017
• Net Neutrality- July 2017
• E-rate Eligible Services List – July 2016
• Internet of Things – May 2016
• Illinois Century Network (ICN) Chapter of Quilt Circle 2016 – January 2016
• Lifeline and Link up Reform and Modernization – August 2015
• Broadband Opportunity Council Request for Comment response – June 2015
• E-rate Eligible Services List – June 2015
• E-rate Modernization – May 2014
• E-rate Modernization – April 2014
• Expression of Interest – Rural Broadband Experiment – March 2014
• E-rate Modernization – September 2013

During the 2000’s Essam worked at Nortel Networks in Dallas, Texas on 4G and LTE wireless technology. Essam was a product manager specifying requirements, working with design engineers and presenting to customers. While researching 4G wireless architectures to address customer needs, Essam invented two wireless technologies. The following patents provide the invention details.

Patent number 7,443,867 “Method for Performing Network Services”

Patent number 7,496,104 “Enhanced Encapsulation Mechanism using GRE Protocol”

Essam is an expert in the Schools and Libraries Universal Service Fund, commonly known as E-rate. In 2014 Essam submitted filings to the FCC regarding E-rate modernization, met face to face with FCC personnel and has held multiple webinar and training sessions for Illinois schools and libraries regarding E-rate.

Essam maintains a blog and informational website at www.schoolfiber.com providing up to date information on E-rate rule changes, and how to interpret and thus implement correctly the rules.

Essam has advised school and library districts on building fiber networks while obtaining maximum E-rate subsidy for the build. Most recently Essam met with Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) officials regarding correct interpretation of service options, which Essam has disseminated to schools and libraries via a blog post at www.schoolfiber.com.