community broadband networks

Arlington County, Virginia is taking advantage of a series of planned projects to create their own fiber optic network, ConnectArlington. The County is moving into phase II of its three part plan to improve connectivity with a publicly owned fiber network.

Some creative thinking and inter-agency collaboration seem to be the keys to success in Arlington. Both the County and the Arlington Public Schools will own the new asset. Additionally, the network will improve the County Public Safety network. Back in March, Tanya Roscola reported on the planing and benefits of the ConnectArlington in Government Technology.

Arlington County's cable franchise agreement with Comcast is up for renewal in 2013. As part of that agreement, the schools and county facilities have been connected to each other at no cost to the County. Even though there are still active negotiations, the ConnectArlington website notes that the outcome is uncertain. The County does not know if the new agreement will include the same arrangement. Local leaders are not waiting to find out, citing need in the community and recent opportunities that reduce installation costs. 

Other communities, from Palo Alto in California to Martin County in Florida, have found Comcast pushing unreasonable prices for services in franchise negotiations. Smart communities have invested in their own networks rather than continue depending on Comcast.

Like schools all around the country, Arlington increasingly relies on high-capacity networks for day-to-day functions both in and out of the classroom. Digital textbooks, tablets, and online testing enhance the educational adventure, but require more and more bandwidth and connectivity. From the article:

Through ConnectArlington, Arlington Public Schools will be able to take advantage of Internet2 for distance learning. At no cost, students will be able to communicate with teachers and access electronic textbooks and online courses from wireless hot spots.

The County wants to use the network to provide continuity and expansion of its essential telecommunications services. Additionally, according the the County's Spring 2010 Telecommunications Overview (check out the PDF - there are some informative maps here), the County and the School District want to reduce the uncertainty of continued dependence on Comcast.

Three projects, all happening within a relatively short period of time, came together to solidify the planning and enthusiasm for ConnectArlington. 

1) Upgrades to the County's Intelligent Traffic System (ITS), funded with a federal grant, will involve significant digging up of streets to make way for new conduit and fiber. The ITS construction provides an opportunity for ConnectArlington to install additional conduit for expanding the fiber network. ITS uses fiber optic cables to allow real time monitoring and control of intersections for immediate traffic control. Additionally, the fiber allows Emergency Vehicle Preemption technology (EVP). Thirty-one additional intersections will be added to the network and outfit with EVP. From a County Press Release:

"Emergency vehicle preemption technology is critical to saving lives by giving responders safe, speedy passage through intersections and cutting precious minutes off the time it takes to get patients to life-saving care at a hospital,” said Chief James Schwartz of the Arlington County Fire Department.

EVP gives emergency vehicles the right-of-way at signaled intersections with an automatic green light. The emergency responder is able to safely navigate the intersection, while drivers and pedestrians are clearly directed to cede the right-of-way via the traffic signals.

2) A public bond, dedicated to replacing the current microwave emergency system, will  connect six public safety radio towers with a new fiber backbone. ConnectArlington will also lay fiber along that route. From the Roscola story:

When fiber goes through the county's approximately 168 traffic signals, these signals will become routers on the network. That will allow police and fire personnel who set up command villages for an event to connect to the network through traffic signals.

They'll be able to access broadband and wireless for video, audio and data connectivity during events including the Marine Corp Marathon and ceremonies at the Pentagon.

3) Lastly, local electric provider Dominion Power will be upgrading its power grid. The County will co-locate dark fiber with Dominion's fiber, saving even more on installation.

ConnectArlington will be a series of fiber optic rings that overlap in strategic circles to provide paths that avoid any single failure points. Arlington's present system is a patchwork of County-owned facilities, lines leased from commercial providers, and Comcast's fiber-optic network, is a "star" or "spoke and hub" topology. With the new lay out, any failure will be remedied with data traffic reroute, providing redundancy.

"It's going to take time to realize the cost benefit out of this," said Belcher, who also directs the county's Department of Technology Services. "You're going to have to invest a lot of money that could go elsewhere. But you're putting it here because you see a value to be achieved, and that's significant."

Santa Monica's approach to building community owned broadband that puts the community first has been wildly successful. They have not focused on providing residential connections, and likely will not in the future, focusing instead on meeting their municipal needs and businesses to spur economic development.

They can deliver up to 10Gbps to businesses that need it and they have connectivity throughout the City for whatever projects they choose to pursue. This includes free Wi-Fi in parks, controlling traffic signaling (prioritizing mass transit, for instance), and smart parking applications. On top of all that, their investments have saved more than a million dollars that would have been wasted on slower, less reliable connections provided by leased lines.

In the matter of controlling traffic signals, Santa Monica wants all intersections with fiber-optics.

Arizona Avenue, the Mid-City area and the city's office district will all be getting makeovers if the City Council approves two contracts that will connect 40 signalized intersections to City Hall's centralized traffic control system.

The work represents the fourth phase in a five-phase effort to connect all of Santa Monica's intersections using fiber optic cables. Some signals will need to be fully replaced, while others can get by on smaller upgrades, according to the staff report.

Don't miss this hour long interview between Craig Settles and Jory Wolf, the brains behind Santa Monica's success.

Around 45 minutes into the interview, Jory Wolf talks about the ways the free Wi-Fi network promotes local businesses in partnership with a Buy Local campaign. I was thrilled to hear this as a colleague of mine at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance is a great friend of buy local campaigns because they are proven to help the small, independent businesses that contribute so much to communities.

If you want to learn more, particularly about how Santa Monica's approach has created many new jobs (that's right, smart public investments in broadband create jobs!) check out .

For more information about Santa Monica, check out this article from Broadband Communities Magazine.

-Though the city provides Internet access directly, it also makes the network available to third-party providers on an open-access basis. “The incumbents have chosen not to use our assets,” Wolf says, explaining that larger providers are often reluctant to operate over networks where they cannot control the user experience and that their marketing and support organizations are not geared to using other companies’ networks. 


However, other ISPs have shown interest in the network now that it is becoming successful. Currently, two ISPs offer services generally over the network, and other ISPs serve the Santa Monica offices of businesses that they deal with in other locations. Wolf says, “We have the opportunity to handle the business any way they prefer. … We’re not an obstacle; we’re an enabler. We don’t see ourselves as competitors, but as filling a void.” 


City Net’s revenue from current business customers totals about $300,000 per year, enough to fund network operations and maintenance and to support an extensive system of free Wi-Fi hot spots throughout the city. Wi-Fi is now available at parks, beaches, libraries, public buildings and other open-space areas. On any given day, about 2,000 of Santa Monica’s 87,000 residents use the 27 Wi-Fi hot spots. 


The city also has $190,000 of its capital funds remaining, which it uses as a revolving capital improvement project account. This account funds construction for network expansion, which is repaid by customers as the network is extended to their premises. 


An indirect benefit of City Net is that it has forced competing networks to lower their prices. Wolf’s office estimates that nonparticipating providers have lowered their bandwidth prices by 20 percent or more, making bandwidth generally more affordable throughout the city. “If that’s all we had accomplished, we’d feel that we’d done what we intended,” Wolf says.

See also a webinar hosted by Broadband Communities [Cisco WebEx] where Jory discusses Santa Monica and nearby Long Beach talks about a similar approach they are using.

Finally, check out a recent segment of Santa Monica Update that discusses Santa Monica City Net (fast forward to 9:20 in the video to skip right to it).

Video: 

Time Warner Cable's bill to kill competition by limiting the right of communities to build their own broadband networks will have a committee hearing this week in North Carolina's Senate. Stop the Cap! has details in its action alert -- we encourage people to continue contacting their Senators as well as contacting local officials and telling them to contact Senators.

We have seen some interesting news coming out of North Carolina recently, including Salisbury connecting its 500th customer to its publicly owned Fibrant network [pdf]. Additionally, some nine nearby communities have told Raleigh they want to preserve their right to be served by Fibrant (the bill would greatly limit the territory in which Fibrant can expand, unlike private companies which have the freedom to expand across the state). The story starts with a church in one of the communities, Faith:

Mahoney said his church, Faith Baptist, would like faster Internet speeds but can’t afford the $20,000 Time Warner Cable would charge to build a business-class circuit for the church.

Church members are not satisfied with DSL service from Windstream, Mahoney said. But it’s their only option since they can’t afford Time Warner’s price tag, he said.

If Salisbury extends Fibrant to Faith, the church would have another choice for high-speed Internet, said Mahoney, who owns Rowan Onsite Computer Solutions in downtown Salisbury and has Fibrant.

This bill, inaptly named "Level Playing Field" creates new restrictions for publicly owned networks like Fibrant, which under current law can offer services to any community requesting them.

Stop the Cap supplemented this article with more information from a local resident:

“Isn’t it simply amazing that Fibrant is being bashed as a failure-waiting-to-happen by the sponsors of this bill while mayors across two counties are absolutely clamoring to get the service to their residents,” said Stop the Cap! reader Andy Brown who lives near Landis. “How can Marilyn Avila and Tom Apodaca have the slightest bit of credibility on this issue when you see town leaders literally falling all over each coveting a service that these legislative-Friends-of-Time-Warner-Cable have predicted is a certain failure?”

“I want Fibrant in Landis myself, if only for the competition,” Andy shares. “You know, the kind of competition legislators are supposed to support.”

A new bill has been introduced in the Senate to more heavily regulate community networks but in a less heavy handed manner than H129. This bill would totally exempt the existing networks, as opposed to H129 where the sponsors have consistently lied about how it impacts existing networks.

Salisbury, Wilson, Morganton, Mooresville and Davidson argue it’s not fair for the state to change the rules after they borrowed millions of dollars to legally build or buy broadband networks.

“The state approved our debt and Salisbury’s debt,” Shows said. “To retroactively go back and change that is simply unfair. Municipal broadband operations must be run like a business, and like a business, either they’re growing or dying.”

Chapel Hill has joined the list of communities showing concern about how H129 will damage their long term plan to build the essential infrastructure for their digital future.

The town is trimming trees to make way for fiber optic cable, primarily so it can be used for traffic signals. The town plans for the cable to eventually connect town buildings and the wider community with high speed Internet.

But with the possibility of the broadband bill passing, Kleinschmidt said the cable might not be used to its full potential.

“The worst case scenario is that the fiber optic cable will only be used for our traffic signal and its full use will never be tapped,” he said. “The best case scenario is also using it for municipal services too, but even that could be at risk.”

Chapel Hill has been opportunistically adding fiber assets as opportunities arise and having a discussion about whether it wants to create a town-wide publicly owned network. This bill will take that decision out of their hands -- a bunch of politicians in Raleigh will decide for them, after taking a ton of campaign donations from Time Warner Cable and other incumbent telecom companies.

For those who are curious, Chapel Hill is currently doing what a number of other communities have done, adding fiber-optic connections to run traffic signals. As long as the fiber is going in, they might as well get more use out of it and are planning to leverage it over time… if the Legislature doesn't tell them to but out of TWC's exclusive club.