If you the take a look at our community broadband map, you'll see that Texas has only one citywide wired network owned by the public: Greenville. The story behind it is the same story we hear from just about every other community - but they actually spelled it out on their history page.

In 1999, Greenville, Texas' economic development leaders were unable to attract certain businesses and on the verge of losing existing companies due to a lack of high speed Internet.

In response, Mayor Sue Ann Harting asked SBC for a commitment to deploy DSL. That request was denied. The city's cable franchise, Time Warner, also declined to commit to cable modem Internet deployment.

Greenville found itself in a situation similar to one that many towns had faced years ago when railroads changed transportation. If the railroad was not routed through a town, that town just might die. What would happen to Greenville if the information superhighway did not come through the city?

Incumbent cable and telephone companies, their lobbyists, and associated "think tanks" like to claim that communities are somehow "duped" into building publicly owned networks. The truth is that just about every community wants to avoid the hassle of building a network but incumbents refuse to invest sufficiently to keep the community competitive for economic development and a high quality of life.

They build networks when backed into a corner, not because they want to. Fortunately, all that hassle almost always pays off with far more benefits than problems over the long term as communities transition from depending on some distant corporation to solving their own problems locally.

In fact, the results are often like that of Greenville:

Greenville citizens were not willing to take that chance. They took destiny into their own hands by amending the city charter to allow their revenue-only supported, municipally-owned electric system to build a hybrid fiber coaxial system to make high speed Internet available to everyone. Digital cable TV was offered as an option on that same system.

Once the citizens had committed to this venture, the city's incumbent telephone and cable franchises found ways of deploying that high speed Internet that they had only recently declared not feasible in Greenville.

In 2001, citizens began connecting to the city's state-of-the-art system that accessed all 10,000 of the homes and business in Greenville. Public acceptance has been very good, with more than 4,500 of those homes and businesses (as of June 2005) now choosing the new municipal services after less than four years in business. Financially, this non-tax supported venture was seeing black ink earlier than expected.

Public acceptance readily came from slightly lower cost to the consumer plus faster Internet speeds and more cable TV channels than the incumbents offered. (The existing cable company wasn't even offering ESPN 2 in 2000). Consumers also welcomed the chance to have these multiple services placed on one bill with "one-stop" local customer service to handle all of the municipal services - one inclusive bill for water, sewer, garbage, electric and cable TV and Internet as options.

After the community built its network, the incumbent providers finally upgraded their services and undoubtedly lowered their prices. The local Chamber of Commerce has this to say about the public investments:

Greenville is fortunate to have its own non-profit, locally operated municipal electric, digital cable television, high speed Internet, water, and wastewater utility systems. 

Unfortunately, Texas is one of the four states that have made it all but impossible for other communities to copy Greenville's success. And as long as AT&T can dump millions into the Legislature, that law will be hard to change.

Spanish Fork, a well-regarded community broadband network, is now offering triple-play services on its hfc network. Previously, the town was offering broadband and television but recently added telephone after feeling the time was right.

From the article:

John Bowcut, director of Information Systems for Spanish Fork, said 15 percent of homes signed up when told telephone service was available over the cable. The network only used door hangers to advertise at first because it intended to have a slow rollout. Then the service was promoted in the city newsletter.

SFCN's phone rollout was slow for a reason. Small neighborhoods were notified one at a time, which allowed the network to handle the load. Bowcut said they didn't want to open sign-ups citywide and then have to tell people their connection date was three months out. He said the most people had to wait this way was 10 days.

Initially about 1,500 homes signed up for phone service, out of 5,534 homes in Spanish Fork.

The new telephone service runs an economical $14.95 with a variety of features. 75% of the town takes at least one service from the network, perhaps because of the great customer service:

Perrins was a beta tester for the system. He thought going through that process was awesome. They fixed every problem quickly and fine-tuned the network. "It was fun because the employees were so excited and eager to find and fix the problems."

Prior to the telephone rollout, only some 60% of the community took a service from the network, as explained in this article

About 60 percent of Spanish Fork residents already subscribe to SFCN's cable TV and high-speed Internet. The customer appeal of the city-run communications utility is that Spanish Fork provides both the infrastructure and the service -- a practice that was actually outlawed by the Utah Legislature in 2004, though Spanish Fork was grandfathered in.

This means SFCN can cut out any middle-man service provider, which amounts to about $2 million in savings each year, Mayor Wayne Andersen said.

"I think it was a sad day when the state Legislature put the kibosh on that sort of thing," Andersen said. "This is our baby, and as long as we keep it running and working, it's ours."

This is an interesting development -- many networks are seeing fewer customers signing up for telephone services. Yet it appears to be quite popular in this community.

What is the difference when a community owns the network?

"Phone companies have been a little unfair with their customers," Bowcut said. "The cost of delivering voice service has continually gone down and the customer hasn't seen that decrease -- it's about time."

And yes, for those who care only about a private sector accounting model, the network runs in the black.

Sounds like the Scottsboro Electric Power Board is doing well. They offer fiber-optic services to businesses in addition to the cable services they offer to the general public.

Our Cable employees have also had a busy summer. We are experiencing a good bit of growth in business phone line installations and fiber optic data installations. Our phone partner Knology (based in West Point, Georgia) is doing a great job for us. Knology provides the telephone switching and long distance connections so we can concentrate on customer connections and customer service.

Knology seems to have partnered with a number of muni networks to offer telecom services.