Image
Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
Arvig Buys Business-Facing Municipal Fiber Network in Alexandria, Minnesota
By
on
In an announcement last week, Alexandria, Minnesota's (pop. 15,000) electric and water utility (ALP Utilities) announced it would be selling its business-facing fiber network to Arvig, a 40-percent employee-owned Internet Service Provider (ISP) that has 54,000 subscribers across urban and rural Minnesota. The deal was for 130 business accounts, including 77 routes miles of fiber and 13 additional miles of conduit, for a total of $3.25 million. Consideration of the move goes at least back to October of last year.
A Practical Solution With Added Local Benefits
Image
The move sunsets the last of the city's retail municipal network infrastructure, which began as a joint project with Runestone Electric Association in the 1990s that offered DSL service to homes and businesses before expanding to include some fiber offered to local businesses in the early 2000s, and continued today with some additional dark fiber offerings as part of its portfolio. The goal, then as now, was to see how the utility could intervene to improve connectivity options for residents in the area. Christopher spoke with General Manager Al Cowser in 2016 about the efforts' origins and progress in its first two decades of life.
To that end, the deal made sense, shared current General Manager Ted Cash in an interview with ILSR. The financial modeling the utility did when it considered expanding the fiber network to a larger proportion of the city, including the hiring of the staff required to run services in-house, didn't return the numbers they needed to make it work, he also said.
The final Board vote took place on January 17th via Resolution No. 2023-01, with no opposition.
What Happens Next?
The sale to Arvig allows ALP Utilities to continue to focus on its core services (electric and water), while doing what it can to use its assets to partner with a provider with a good track record of working in the area. Business subscribers should see no interruption of service, and Arvig has indicated plans to expand in the area, including out beyond town limits where options are considerably fewer. Arvig and the utility, Cash shared, also plan joint trenching projects as the utility continues to underground its electric services over the coming years. Arvig also provides some network services to the city at present.
Geoterm
Related Stories
Upcoming Tribal Broadband Webinar on Network Sovereignty and Current Opportunities
“Nuts, Bolts, and Cables: Opportunities in Tribal Broadband” is being hosted by the the Center for Indian Country Development in partnership with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and the American Indian Policy Institute at Arizona State University. Slated for next week, the webinar will bring together researchers, advocates, network operators, and federal policymakers
Open Access Fiber Network Comes to Rural Enclave in Washington
The Whatcom County Public Utility District is now leading the charge in one of the most difficult-to-reach parts of the state in building an open access dark fiber network that will bring high-speed connectivity to over a thousand homes and businesses in Point Roberts.
Activists Say Time Is Right To Renew Fight For Community Broadband In Portland
Portland activists are renewing their calls to prioritize the construction of a municipally owned broadband network in the Oregon city of 635,000. With an historic infusion of federal subsidies and a looming shakeup of city politics, advocates for community-owned broadband say the time is right to finally revolutionize city telecom infrastructure with an eye on affordability.
Ponca City, Oklahoma Finishes Municipal Fiber Build, Says Business Is Booming
Ponca City, Oklahoma officials say they’ve completed construction of a citywide fiber broadband network both ahead of schedule and under budget. And now business is booming. The finished network is now providing affordable, uncapped, multi-gigabit fiber access to every local resident in the community or 24,100 residents of Northern Oklahoma city.
Boulder, Colorado Gets Ready to Roll on Citywide Fiber Network
With the construction of its 65-mile dark fiber backbone nearly complete, city officials in Boulder, Colorado are now ready to move into the next phase of their plan: build out a citywide fiber network. Last week, the city issued a Request for Information (RFI) “to gauge the interest of for-profit and nonprofit entities in forming a public–private partnership (PPP) with the city to make Gigabit per second-class bandwidth available to all Boulder homes and businesses.”
Nearly $1 Billion in Rescue Plan Funds Heads to Six States
The U.S. Treasury Department announced another six states have been approved to receive nearly $1 billion in Capital Projects Funds from the American Rescue Plan to bring new broadband infrastructure to more than 180,000 homes and businesses.