Idaho Falls Votes to Expand Fiber Project Beyond Pilot

Idaho Falls completed a publicly owned and operated a dark fiber network in 2010. Recently, city leaders unanimously decided to use the asset to offer citywide Internet access to the community. The vote followed a successful pilot project, commenced in March and completed this past September, which connected around 1,200 homes.

According to the East Idaho News:

Since that time, Idaho Falls Fiber officials have been gathering data and evaluating the costs and feasibility of expanding the high-speed fiber network through the rest of the Idaho Falls community.

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“This kind of a public-private partnership is exciting. It allows the city to focus on infrastructure—something we excel at,” said Idaho Falls Mayor Rebecca Casper. “And, it allows local Internet providers to offer their internet services to residents where they previously could not get this type of infrastructure to deliver a reliable high speed Internet product. It captures the best of both worlds.”

Idaho Falls worked with UTOPIA Fiber on the pilot project, which included four local Internet access providers offering services via the Idaho Falls publicly owned fiber optic infrastructure. The open access network will continue to expand over the next four years within the Idaho Falls Power service area. UTOPIA Fiber will continue to work with the city to expand the network.

“Designing a system like this is a complicated operational and engineering function,” said [General Manager Bear] Prairie. “That’s why the Council approved the agreement for us to partner with UTOPIA Fiber, a not-for profit entity like Idaho Falls Fiber that has the experience in operating successful networks similar to our design. We are excited to have successfully demonstrated that utilizing our existing power utility infrastructure to install fiber lines coupled with UTOPIA’s software that opens the network to local Internet providers to use has proven to be an economic success for our city.”

Residents and businesses and sign up and express interest at the city's website.

Watch Mayor Rebecca Casper discuss the initiative: