The president of a firm seeking to build a fiber-optic cable system says he might have to drop his plans for Santa Fe because of the city's proposed telecommunications ordinance.

John M. Brown, president and co-founder of CityLink Fiber Holdings in Albuquerque, said he began seeking a franchise for a fiber-optic cable system in Santa Fe two years ago. Mayor David Coss was "positive" about the idea, he said. But meetings with other city officials led nowhere.

"I've seen bureaucratic red-tape before, and in the spirit of the Olympic Games, this takes the Gold Medal," Brown wrote in an e-mail.

CityLink's fiber-optic system in downtown Albuquerque provides speeds more than a hundred times faster than that of the copper coaxial cable connections offered by Comcast and Qwest — without wireless technology, radio frequencies or electromagnetic fields, Brown said. He said the same service could be provided to residences and businesses around Paseo de Peralta, where he plans to lay the cable.

Brown said he buries his lines underground using microtrenching between the asphalt road surface and the concrete gutter or stringing cable through sewer and storm-drainage lines.

"If the citizens of Santa Fe really want to have world-class high-speed connectivity, then there needs to be a process that encourages private businesses such as CityLink who want to come and build this," he said. "We're not looking for a handout. We're not looking for anything for free."

But late last week, after seeing the latest rewrite of the Santa Fe telecommunications ordinance, Brown called it "overly burdensome." He especially objected to its requirements for mailing notices to neighbors, buying display ads in newspapers and paying $2,500 for each application to the city Land Use Department. He said building a cable system might take numerous applications.

The $2,500 will be passed on to customers, according to Brown. Although Albuquerque customers pay about $79 a month plus $150 for installation, Brown said, the additional expense proposed could mean Santa Fe customers would have to pay $199 a month plus $399 for installation for the same service.

Brown said he didn't think either Qwest or Comcast would agree to pay the $2,500 fees. But "as it stands CityLink CAN NOT accept this and unless changed will NOT be servicing Santa Fe anytime soon," he wrote in another e-mail.

Brown also maintains that he's been unfairly linked to the dispute over the safety of wireless systems because the media doesn't understand the differences between cell-phone transmissions, Wi-Fi, distributed antenna systems and fiber-optic cable systems.

The press mostly writes about "the 'juicy' stuff, people in conflict, people yelling and cussing, the 'Wi-Fi' opponents and the issues they raise," he wrote. "As is typical, the news media has gotten it very WRONG."

But in an interview, Brown acknowledged fiber-optic cable systems have a role to play in delivering wireless because the technology can be used to link together antennas in a DAS. However, he said, NewPath Networks, which seeks a local franchise for a DAS, plans to install its own fiber-optic cable rather than use the one CityLink is proposing.

Brown said he doesn't know if wireless signals pose a biological hazard, but he believes opponents of this technology have unfairly drawn fiber-optics into the fray. "They are lobbing it all together as one big blob," he said. "And so, they want to kill the blob wherever they can kill the blob."

The telecommunications ordinance is on the agenda for Wednesday's council meeting.

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.