Rio Blanco County is a large, rural county in northwestern Colorado that has two population centers. The county has a sharp plan for building FTTH to the population centers and wireless across most of the county to improve Internet access in a region the national carriers have little interest in.
In this week's episode, we interview county IT Director Blake Mobley, who has long been involved in improving Internet access for community anchor institutions in the area. We talk about their plan and how they are financing it (enabled in part by the Department of Local Affairs in Colorado - which has helped many community networks).
We also discuss many other aspects of what it takes to create a project like this -- including building trust among local stakeholders -- and their particular open access approach and terminology for the different layers in the stack of entities involved. Finally, Blake tells us what they believe has to happen for the project to be successful. Read their vision statement here. Read our full coverage of Rio Blanco County stories here.
Western New York residents are welcoming the presence of a new Internet service provider, Empire Access, competing directly with Time Warner Cable and Verizon. Besides satisfied customers, no data caps, and no usage-based billing, Empire is different from the incumbents in another way - it uses nonprofit network infrastructure to deliver services.
StopTheCap writes that Empire Access utilizes the Southern Tier Network (STN) to connect to communities in Steuben, Chemung, and Schuyler Counties in its southern service area. STN's 235-mile backbone was deployed when fiber-optic manufacturer Corning contributed $10 million to build the network and the three counties contributed the remaining $2.2 million. Construction on the open access network was finished in the spring of 2014.
Axcess Ontario provides the fiber route in the northern region of the Empire Access service area. The network is also a non-profit model and similarly developed to serve business, community anchor institutions, and ISPs. The organization began 10 years ago with the establishment of the nonprofit. The Ontario County Office of Economic Development /Industrial Development Agency provided startup costs to deploy the $7.5 million middle-mile open access dark fiber network. Axcess Ontario is also over 200 miles long.
For now, the locally-owned company that began in 1896 with one telephone and grew from there, is taking a different approach then its much larger competitors. From StopTheCap:
Empire targets compact villages with a relatively affluent populations where no other fiber overbuilder is providing service. It doesn’t follow Google’s “fiberhood” approach where neighborhoods compete to be wired. Instead, it provides service across an entire village and then gradually expands to nearby towns from there.
Every now and then, we stumble across something, read it twice, and then decide we need to verify it. In North Kansas City, a municipal fiber network operating in partnership with KC Fiber, is delivering a gig to residents at no ongoing charge after a reasonable one-time fee. To get the story, our interview this week for Community Broadband Bits is with Brooks Brown, Managing Partner of KC Fiber. KC Fiber is now running the North Kansas City municipal fiber network, liNKCity.
The network delivers a free gigabit to the schools and after a one-time fee of $50-$300 (depending on desired connection capacity) residents can get a high quality fiber Internet connection with no additional charges for 10 years. KC Fiber is not your ordinary ISP, coming from the data center world where it does business as Data Shack. We discuss how this background makes it easier for KC Fiber to offer the gigabit at no ongoing cost in our interview. Read the rest of our coverage of North Kansas City.
When a community invests in a municipal broadband network, it often does so because it hopes to reap economic benefits from the network. Many people and organizations have explored the positive relationship between municipal Internet networks and economic development, including a White House report published in January 2015. Municipal networks create jobs by ensuring businesses have fast, affordable, and reliable Internet access; the old DSL and cable networks just don't cut it. These networks improve the productivity of existing businesses and attract new businesses to communities, allow individuals to work from home more effectively, support advanced healthcare and security systems, strengthen local housing markets, and represent long term social investments in the form of better-connected schools and libraries. They also create millions of dollars in savings that can be reinvested into local economies.
"Upgrading to higher speed broadband lets consumers use the Internet in new ways, increases the productivity of American individuals and businesses, and drives innovation throughout the digital ecosystem." - Executive Office of President Obama
When municipalities choose to deploy fiber networks, they introduce Internet services into the community that are not only significantly faster than DSL and cable, but more reliable. With more reliable fiber connections, businesses and individuals are far less likely to experience temporary blackouts that can halt productivity in vexing and expensive ways. And because these networks are locally-owned and operated, business owners do not have to spend hours on the phone with an absentee Internet Service Provider like AT&T in the (albeit unlikely) event of a problem.
We at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance have catalogued numerous examples of economic development achievements that have occurred as a result of local governments deploying a municipal broadband network. Below, you can find a wide range of articles, studies, anecdotes, and other resources that speak to the economic successes enabled by municipal networks, organized by topic:
Look no further than Morristown, Tennessee, for an example of job creation thanks to municipal fiber. The city took advantage of its local electrical utility, Morristown Utility Systems, to provide gigabit speeds, and businesses jumped at the opportunity. In 2013, Oddello Industries, a furniture manufacturer, brought 228 jobs to the community after investing in a $4.4 million site expansion in Morristown. More recently, a call center looking to relocate to the city was wowed by the municipal utility’s offer to install fiber for free because the city valued the future economic benefits the call center would bring to Morristown over the cost of the fiber installation.
Our economic development fact sheet outlines several of the job creation opportunities that have resulted from municipal networks.
In 2012, Spirit Aerosystems opened up a new manufacturing facility in Chanute, Kansas, creating 150 jobs that require high quality broadband Internet.
HomeServe, a home repair company, expanded its call center to 140 employees because of Chattanooga, Tennessee’s robust municipal broadband infrastructure; in Chattanooga, HomeServe employees could get faster residential service than executives had in the company's Miami headquarters.
In 2015, Hardide Coatings, a surface coating manufacturer located in Henry County, Virginia, that relies on the municipal broadband provider MiNet, added 29 high-paying jobs to the local economy.
"You can't grow jobs with slow Internet." - Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Mayor of Baltimore
The Dalles, Oregon, received a much-needed economic boost in the form of 200 jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenues when Google invested $1.2 billion in a data center that used the city’s municipal fiber network, Q-Life.
A new data center in Dawsonville, Georgia, created 12 high-paying jobs and expanded the local tax base thanks to the municipally-owned North Georgia Network.
Increased competition in Chattanooga, Tennessee, due to the city’s powerful municipal fiber network, induced Comcast to bring 150 new jobs to town.
The city of Mount Vernon, Washington has two things in common with our country’s first president, but unlike George, it boasts an impressive municipal broadband network that has attracted high-tech businesses. For example, a digital legal firm, Blank Law, relocated from Seattle to Mount Vernon in order to take advantage of faster speeds offered by the city’s municipal broadband network. While high-speed Internet was not the only reason Blank Law cited for choosing Mount Vernon over other towns (other reasons include quality of life and free parking), it played a significant role. Fiber is rarely the sole reason for a relocation, but it can often be a deciding factor.
Zeyuan, a Chinese wood floor manufacturer, and GOK International, a Chinese furniture assembly plant, built manufacturing centers in Danville, Virginia, knowing they would benefit from connecting to the city’s municipal broadband network.
"It's almost a feeling of disbelief when we tell companies today we can provide a gig to your business and to your house...These companies want to go where they can see the gig service." - Marshall Ramsey, President of the Morristown, Tennessee Chamber of Commerce
Pixel Magic, a visual effects producer, and Tapes Again, a media reproduction and processing company, both set up shop in Lafayette, Louisiana to support the state’s burgeoning film industry — and access to the municipally-owned LUS Fiber greatly facilitated these activities.
Faneuil, a customer care center, and SPARTA Inc., a defense contractor, were attracted to Martinsville, Virginia in large part because of the city’s municipal network, MiNet.
In the small Minnesota town of Gibbon, the fiber network from the RS Fiber Cooperative convinced the owner of Advocate 3D to take up residence in town where the family could live the small-town life but the business could still obtain the high-speed, reliable connectivity they needed for their 3D printing business.
Municipal networks serve existing businesses and keep critical jobs in town:
Image
The small Minnesota town of Windom nearly entered crisis mode when Fortune Trucking, a local company that employed 47 people in a town of 4,600, announced that slow Internet speeds might force it to leave town. Although the company’s headquarters were located a mile outside of the Windom’s jurisdiction, community members successfully lobbied to bring municipal fiber to Fortune, saving those jobs and stabilizing the local economy.
Alpha Natural Resources, a coal mining company, stayed in Bristol, Virginia, thanks to the BVU municipal fiber network
When the city of Princeton, Illinois set up a municipal broadband network, it kept 300 jobs in the community with the global industrial machinery company, Ingersoll Rand.
"Municipal broadband can be a powerful lever against the digital divide that condemns people to the isolation and reduced economic opportunities experienced by many of our low-income, disabled, and people of color community members" - Kshama Sawant, Seattle City Councilmember
In this Podcast, Chris speaks with Curtis Dean of Iowa Municipal Utilities about the prevalence of municipal networks in that state, focusing in on economic development results starting at 11:10. Dean highlights Hansen’s Clothing, a high-end men’s clothing manufacturer in Spencer, Iowa that expanded its online business exponentially when it connected to the municipal broadband network.
Municipal networks support home-based productivity:
In 2010, DirecTV announced the creation of a virtual call center, allowing 100 residents in southwestern Virginia to work from home, relying solely upon municipal broadband access.
150 home-based English teachers in Powell, Wyoming were connected to students in South Korea by the Korean venture capital firm, Skylake Incuvest; this unorthodox pairing was made possible by Powell's investment in FTTH.
Medical companies Ohio Health and Cardinal Health; Battelle Memorial Institute, a non-profit that relies on quantum computing to encrypt information; and numerous educational facilities use Dublin, Ohio’s municipally-owned fiber network, Dublink, for their healthcare, education and research needs.
"We are embarking on new initiatives with our local school district and regional colleges and universities to leverage broadband and to facilitate discussion between schools and the business community to strengthen, retain and attract quality workforce" - Dana McDaniel, Deputy City Manager of Dublin, Ohio
Lakeland, Florida invested in dark fiber community infrastructure, and has since reaped the rewards; the Florida Polytechnic University and Lakeland Regional Health, a medical center, both rely on the network for their operations. (Jump to 16:30 of the Broadband Bits Podcast for more details).
Municipal networks initiate tech booms and incubate start-ups:
"...in the 21st century, in this age of innovation and technology, so much of the prosperity that we're striving for, so many of the jobs we want to create, depend on our digital economy" - President Barack Obama, Speech at Cedar Falls Utilities
One Bay Area city, San Leandro, has used a city-owned fiber conduit to rival Silicon Valley tech companies, and now houses the world’s largest cluster of 3-D printing firms, along with the Westlake / OSIsoft Technology Complex, a tech campus.
The city of Dublin, Ohio, is home to the Dublin Entrepreneurial Center, a combination start-up incubator and data center located in the city’s metro center offices that now lists more than 80 tenants.
In the town of Spanish Fork, Utah, a municipal network is responsible for community savings of $2 million annually, as well as local government revenues exceeding $1 million, which can be used for community projects and initiatives.
Howard County, Maryland, has seen significant public savings (of up to $3 million a year) and impressive technological advances in its school system since switching to municipal broadband services.
Municipal networks increase home values:
Housing prices increased by 50 percent in one year when Google decided to locate a data center in the city of The Dalles, Oregon, in 2006 on account of its advanced technological infrastructure and high-speed municipal broadband access.
Another study, this by the Fiber-To-The-Home Council Americas in conjunction with researchers from the University of Colorado, showed that single family homes that can boast a FTTH connection are worth, on average, 3.1 percent more than their fiberless counterparts.
This White House report (which, by the way, utilized ILSR data!) finds that the existence of municipal networks and the market competition that these networks stimulate has tremendous economic benefits for local businesses and communities. The 37-page report highlights the successes of Chattanooga, Tennessee; Wilson, North Carolina; Lafayette, Louisiana; Scott County, Minnesota; Leverett, Massachusetts; and the Choctaw Nation Tribal Area in Oklahoma.
The New York Times highlights municipal fiber in a recent article: “For the Tech Savvy With a Need for Speed, a Limited Choice of Towns With Fiber.”
A report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), “Federal Broadband Deployment Programs and Small Business,” argues that municipal broadband access positively affects small businesses by allowing them to streamline operations and improve efficiency.
Why do many municipal broadband networks end up being built in conservative districts, crossing political lines? Jim Baller, Joanne Hovis, and Ashley Stelfox of the Coalition for Local Internet Choice, in conjunction with Broadband Communities’ Masha Zaegar, argue that job creation and economic development is the “killer app” for local fiber networks.
Robert Pepper, Vice President of Global Technology Policy at the multinational tech company, Cisco, published an op-ed in The Huffington Post, which highlights the need for universal broadband adoption. Read: The Key to Social and Economic Development? Broadband Adoption.
"The message to policymakers is clear: If you want to increase economic growth, focus on broadband." - Robert Pepper, Vice President of Global Technology Policy at Cisco
Corporate site selectors have been placing more and more emphasis on broadband Internet access as they look for locations in which their companies can thrive. For more on this, read: “The Importance of Broadband to Economic Development.”
Does Broadband Boost Local Economic Development? ask researchers at the Public Policy Institute of California. They find that broadband access has a statistically significant economic benefit in the fields of business management, utilities, and technology.
A Novermber 2016 report from the consulting firm Analysis Group and funded by Fiber-to-the-Home council shows how competition drives lower prices and better download speeds for everyone. Specifically, the report focused on markets with Gigabit service.
Chris interviews Michael Curri, President of Strategic Networks Group, an organization that provides technical advice regarding broadband Internet to both firms and municipalities; Curri indicates a multiplier effect of ten times - meaning a return of $10 for every dollar invested where economies effectively utilize broadband.
Many communities, like Bozeman, Montana, view municipal broadband as a potential economic growth model that will allow them to catch up to other cities that have embraced high-speed Internet access; in this Community Bits Podcast, Chris speaks with Brit Fontenot, Economic Development Director for the city of Bozeman; David Fine, Bozeman Economic Development Specialist; and the President of Hoplite Industries, Anthony Cochenour.
"Having the infrastructure in place around technology, as well as the asset of this really historic and charming downtown, is a really interesting intersection and I think a lot of people are drawn to that." - Kimberly Van Dyk, Director of Planning and Community Revitalization of Wilson, North Carolina
A Knoxville news station, WBIR, covers Chattanooga's municipal network, focusing on the economic opportunities it has created - opportunities that Knoxville has missed out on because of its lack of high-quality service.
Changes in leadership in Chanute have put the community's FTTH plan in suspended animation. In April, the City Commission decided to delay financing shortly before the scheduled bond sale. It is unfortunate that residents and businesses will lose the opportunities the fiber deployment would bring. Nevertheless, they deserve the right to make their own choices, good or bad.
The community of Chanute deployed a network incrementally with no borrowing or bonding in order to improve efficiencies, save public dollars, and control connectivity for municipal facilities. Local schools and colleges, struggling to compete, began taking advantage of technology in the classroom and expanded distance learning. The network eventually created a number of economic development opportunities when community leaders started providing better connectivity to local businesses. We told Chanute's story in our 2013 report "Chanute's Gig: One Rural Kansas Community's Tradition of Innovation Led to a Gigabit and Ubiquitous Wireless Coverage."
Chanute made history when it was the first municipality in Kansas to obtain permission from the Kansas Corporation Commission to issue bonds for the project. They also became the first municipality in the state to seek and receive "eligible telecommunications carrier" (ETC) status. Chanute was awarded over $500,000 in Rural Broadband Experiment Funds from the FCC. Whether or not they will still be able to take advantage of those funds remains a question. After taking action and putting so many of the necessary pieces in place, it is disheartening to see the plan abandoned by politicians.
Regardless of the future of the FTTH project, Chanute has the infrastructure in place to encourage more economic development, connect community anchor institutions, and allow the community to control its own costs. The FTTH project is still a possibility.
When we talk to municipal network leaders about lessons learned, they often tell us that marketing is an area where they feel a particularly vulnerability. Whenever we see a great piece of marketing from a municipal network, we like to share it.
When Longmont rebranded its FTTH network under the name NextLight, they released this awesome video. Check it out!
As we have learned, communities with municipal networks have tended to be politically conservative. Nevertheless, conservative state level politicians have often supported measures to revoke local authority to encourage local Internet choice. Recently, Alabama State Senator Tom Whatley, a Republican from Auburn, expressed his support for local authority in AL.com.
Whatley introduced SB 438, which would remove service area restrictions on municipal providers and remove the currently restriction preventing other municipalities from providing voice, video, or Internet access services. As he notes in his opinion piece, the bill did not move beyond the Transportation and Energy Committee, but he also asserts that he will be back next year to press for the measure.
Auburn is near Opelika where the community has deployed a FTTH network to serve residents and spur economic development. If the restrictions are eliminated, Opelika could expand to Auburn and even other rural areas nearby.
Whatley makes comparisons to the strides America made with the national interstate system. He also acknowledges the way Chattanooga's network has transformed what was once described as the "dirtiest city in America." Whatley takes the same approach we encounter from many communities where, after failed attempts to entice private providers to serve their citizenry, eventually decided to take on the task themselves.
He writes:
As a Republican, I believe the private sector is usually the best and most efficient method for providing a service. But when private companies, for whatever reason, make a decision not to serve an area, we should not handcuff the people of that region if they decide to use a public entity to receive that service (in this case, broadband Internet) in order to compete today for the jobs of tomorrow.
The expansion in Champaign-Urbana has begun! On May 8th, iTV-3 held a ribbon cutting to celebrate the start of its plan to bring fiber to the homes of neighborhoods that sign up for service. IllinoisHomePage.net reported on the event with the video below.
An April press release announced the celebration that kicked off efforts to meet iTV-3's ultimate goal:
This will enable iTV-3 to expand the network and provide Gigabit service to more than 250,000 homes including 45,000 households and businesses in the Champaign-Urbana area.
The company has promised to expand to neighborhoods where they achieve a 50 percent commitment.
Earlier this year, the ISP increased speeds for free in order to offer service that meets the minimum speeds as revised by the FCC. The lowest tier available from iTV-3 via the UC2B network is now 30 Mbps. All speeds are symmetrical.
The UC2B partnership with iTV-3 has been heralded by public leaders. UC2B's private sector partner, iTV-3 is an Illinois company with a track record of business decisions that support local communities. Their agreement is structured in such a way that will protect the UC2B nonprofit and subscribers in the future. At the event, a representative from iTV-3 briefly described the company's approach to the communities it serves:
"We own and operate the Family Video stores nationwide as well, and for us, we've always enjoyed being part of the community and this in and of itself is a community wide effort," said Trevor Rice, who is the marketing director for iTV-3. "Without the community's involvement, we're not going to be able to expand."
Urban real estate investors take note: FTTH has come of age in the multi-dwelling unit marketplace. (MDU). When looking for new homes, many more renters and owners are now considering FTTH a necessity.
Several studies have established that fiber raises the value of single family homes by $5,000 - $6,000 on a home valued at $300,000. A July 2014 survey, commissioned by Broadband Communities magazine and conducted by RVA LLC indicates that similar results influence MDUs. Clearly, access to FTTH adds measurable value to real estate.
The study examined numerous factors related to knowledge, use, satisfaction, and adoption of FTTH related to MDUs. RVA broke down the results by age, economics, and education attained. While some results were surprising, others were predictable. For example, level of education attained is not necessarily consistent with knowledge of the benefits of FTTH. The study reflects that those with a graduate degree did not have the same appreciation for the technology as those with some college less than a four-year degree.
The level of satisfaction when comparing FTTH to cable, DSL, wireless, and satellite options was not surprising. Of course, fiber-to-the-home far out performed any other technology.
The survey also found that access to broadband has become as important as other utilities:
Overall, survey respondents indicated that broadband was, indeed, their top amenity. This finding confirms other recent polling and provides finer-grained details: For MDU unit owners, access to good broadband is now the top amenity by a large margin. Renters rated broadband second in terms of amenity importance, close behind “in-unit washer/dryer.” Broadband was valued highly in all types of buildings but especially in student housing and in luxury buildings.
FTTH can influence sale value by 3 percent and rental value by 8 percent. The additional revenue to the building owner far outweighs the initial investment:
For an MDU building owner, outfitting an apartment with FTTH would yield $972 more annual rental revenue and $209 more revenue from lower vacancy rates, the survey shows. Having FTTH at the site would also result in a $120 savings in marketing, administration and maintenance stemming from 31 percent lower churn and more word-of-mouth advertising, according to the survey.
The first gigabit city in Wisconsin, Reedsburg, has a municipal fiber network operated by the city-owned electric utility. This week, we talk with General Manager of the Utility Commission, Brett Schuppner. Reedsburg fiber goes back to 2003, which makes it one of the oldest FTTH networks in the nation. Located about an hour outside of Madison, Reedsburg has seen more investment from local industrial businesses because of its fiber network.
They received a broadband stimulus award to expand their network into some surrounding rural areas and are now considering how they can continue expanding the network deeper into surround Sauk County without federal assistance. We talk about what goes into these expansion discussions - what is the dynamic when one community has a great network and the County would like it to expand? Read all of our Reedsburg coverage here.
