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Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
Fiber to the Home
FTTH
Content tagged with "FTTH"
Tennessee Bill to Encourage Economic Development Killed by Telco Lobbyists
As we continue to report on depressing campaigns to deny people fast, affordable, and reliable access to the Internet (as Time Warner Cable is doing in North Carolina), we are also making an attempt to highlight good legislation (as we recently did in Washington state). In that spirit, we turn to HB 2076 / SB 1847 in Tennessee
From the bill summary:
Harold DePriest recognized the power of AT&T and Comcast in the Legislature, but vowed not to give up.
This bill urges all municipalities to endeavor to utilize advanced broadband systems in their operations and to encourage the construction of advanced broadband systems.The full bill is available here [pdf] but the most interesting part is what was not included. As reported by Andy Sher of the Times Free Press, the bill was intended to go much further.
The bill would have let the municipal utilities extend service up to 30 miles outside their service areas.Unfortunately, the powerful incumbent lobbying machine (including AT&T, Comcast, and others who already hate having to compete with technologically superior networks in several Tennessee communities) killed the bill, a blow to the future of economic development in the state. Neighbors of Chattanooga, including Bradley County, desperately want access to the impressive 1Gbps network Chattanooga built -- the most advanced citywide network in the country.
Harold DePriest recognized the power of AT&T and Comcast in the Legislature, but vowed not to give up.
“Well, we would like to see the bill pass, but I think Gerald was dealing with the reality of the difficulty of moving the bill through the committee at this point in time,” he said Friday. “We will be back.
Pro Community Broadband Bill in Washington Will Return Next Year
As we recently noted in our coverage of the Chelan Public Utility District in Washington state, state law restricts the authority of Public Utility Districts to offer retail services over the fiber-optic networks many have built. But at least one Representative is pushing to expand PUD authority.
Representative John McCoy has been working to improve rural broadband access and spurring more competition in Washington State. He brought a bill, HB 1711 that would allow PUDs to begin offering retail services as well as offer telecommunications services outside their traditional boundaries.
The bill did not go far this year, likely due to the considerable influence of large carriers like Charter, Frontier, and others. But Representative McCoy plans to bring it up again next year and may have more support depending on the recommendations of a current study. The University of Washington Law School is studying options to expand broadband access in rural areas. The final report is due in December and will address the option of allowing PUDs to offer retail access.
I strongly encourage people who may be interested in such developments in Washington to contact Rep McCoy or email me to find out how you can get involved. Quite frankly, we need to develop better networks to ensure citizens are aware of efforts like this bill so elected officials can be contacted in a timely manner.
At the bottom of this post, we have embedded a six minute audio clip of Rep. John McCoy discussing HB 1711 and issues around access to the Internet more generally from a Progressive States Network conference call earlier this month.
Digging into this bill, the summary of the bill [pdf] offers some history:
Public utility districts (PUDs) are municipal corporations authorized to provide electricity, water, and sewer service.
Public Testimony in Senate Finance Committee Against Time Warner Cable bill in North Carolina
We have again isolated individual comments from the arguments around Time Warner Cable's bill to strip local authorities of the right to build broadband networks vastly superior to their services. On April 13, the Senate Finance Committee allowed public comment on TWC's H129 bill. Craig Settles has posted an extended story about a small business struggling to get by with the existing paucity of service in her community.
There was no hope that I could efficiently communicate, collaborate, and share online documents and applications with clients and peer professionals. I couldn’t even buy a functional phone line. For years I paid for a level of service from Centurylink that I can only describe as absolutely embarrassing.
This bill will make it vastly harder, if not impossible, for communities to build the necessary infrastructure to succeed in the digital economy. Listening to those pushing the bill, it is very clear they have no conception of the vast difference between barely broadband DSL from CenturyLink and Wilson's Greenlight community fiber network -- essentially the difference between a hang glider and a Boeing 747. And many in North Carolina don't even have access to the hang glider! Yet the Legislature cares more about protecting the monopoly of powerful companies that contribute to their campaigns than ensuring all residents and businesses have access to the fast, affordable, and reliable broadband they need to flourish.
Thanks to Voter Radio for making audio from the hearing available. Each of the following comments is approximately 2 minutes long.
Chelan PUD in Washington Reconsiders Broadband Stimulus Grant
For the last 6 weeks in Chelan, Washington, the Public Utility District has had to make some hard decisions regarding expanding its rural FTTH network using a broadband stimulus award from the federal government. Chelan was an early pioneer of rural FTTH, operating a network that serves over 2/3 of a rugged county that offers great rock climbing and hiking opportunities (I checked it out personally).
As we reported last year, Chelan's citizens had strongly supported accepting the stimulus award and paying for their required match by modestly increasing electrical rates (which are among the least expensive in the nation).
At that time, the PUD believed its network passed over 80% of the county. But after reassessing their coverage and changing the leadership of the group in charge of the fiber-optic aspect of the utility, they found the network passed closer to 70% of the population. They also re-examined assumptions about the cost of expanding the network's reach:
The PUD’s financial review resulted in a series of revised statistics that PUD engineers presented to commissioners Monday. Of the county’s 43,000 premises — mostly homes and businesses — 30,000 have access to fiber. Some 6,000 don’t have access because they live in areas where hookups are more costly, despite their often urban settings. In these areas, the cables that supply electricity are buried directly in the ground. Fiber hookups require costly trenching and installing conduit. Another 7,000 premises don’t have access because they’re very rural. Fiber access to all but the most rural of these locations will be funded jointly by a $25 million federal stimulus grant and PUD matching funds of about $8 million.Of the 30,000 with access, some 37% are taking a service (though they have to subscribe through independent service providers that contract with Chelan PUD due to Washington State law denying the opportunity for PUDs to offer retail services on their own network. Nonetheless, they are signing up 100 new customers per month. The problem is that some of the new connections are in high cost areas (whether due to distance or underground utilities).
Cedar Falls Utilities Videos - Building a Community Fiber Network in Iowa
Cedar Falls Utilities, an incredibly successful publicly owned cable network in Iowa, is upgrading to FTTH. In these videos, they explain some basics of their system. The final video interviews some subscribers.
Their web site has more information, including a fact sheet and price sheet - they have decided to continue offering asymmetrical connections, unlike most of the modern community fiber networks.
Publicly Owned Broadband Networks: Averting the Looming Broadband Monopoly
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The Institute for Local Self-Reliance is pleased to release the Community Broadband Map and report, Publicly Owned Broadband Networks: Averting the Looming Broadband Monopoly. The map plots the 54 cities, big and small, that own citywide fiber networks and another 79 own citywide cable networks. Over 3 million people have access to telecommunications networks whose objective is to maximize value to the community in which they are located rather than to distant stockholders and corporate executives.
ILSR has been tracking telecommunications developments at the local and state level, working with citizens and businesses to preserve their self-determination in the digital age.
View the Community Broadband Map
Download the Report [pdf]
Read the Press Release [pdf]
Executive Summary
Quietly, virtually unreported on, a new player has emerged in the United States telecommunications sector: publicly owned networks. Today over 54 cities, big and small, own citywide fiber networks while another 79 own citywide cable networks. Over 3 million people have access to telecommunications networks whose objective is to maximize value to the community in which they are located rather than to distant stockholders and corporate executives.
Even as we grow ever more dependent on the Internet for an expanding part of our lives, our choices for gaining access at a reasonable price, for both consumers and producers, are dwindling. Tragically, the Federal Communications Commission has all but abdicated its role in protecting open and competitive access to the Internet.
Now more than ever we need to know about the potential of public ownership. To serve that need the Institute for Local Self-Reliance has published an interactive Community Broadband Map that gives the location and basic information for existing city owned cable and fiber networks.
Community Network Map
Communities invest in telecommunications networks for a variety of reasons - economic development, improving access to education and health care, price stabilization, etc. They range from massive networks offering a gig to hundreds of thousands in Tennessee to small towns connecting a few local businesses.
This map tracks a variety of ways in which local governments have invested in wired telecommunications networks as well as state laws that discourage such approaches.
Our map includes more than 900 communities, of which more than 600 are served by some form of municipal network and many hundreds more by cooperative networks. Our numbers of cooperatives are still being updated. (Muni numbers updated September, 2021):
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 | 83 municipal networks serving 148 communities with a publicly owned FTTH citywide network. |
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 | 57 communities with a publicly owned cable network reaching most or all of the community. |
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 | 260 communities with some publicly owned fiber service available to parts of the community (often a business district). |
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 | Approximately 150 communities with publicly owned dark fiber available. |
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 | More than 315 networks communities in 31 states with a publicly owned network offering at least 1 gigabit services. And more than 30 communities in 10 states with a municipal network delivering 10 gigabit services. |
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 | More than 330 communities served by rural electric cooperatives. 10 communities served by one broadband cooperative. (Our cooperative stats are not current and we are working on resolving that). |
Seventeen states have barriers in place that discourage or prevent local communities from deciding locally if such an investment is a wise decision. We strongly believe these decisions should be made locally, based on needs, capacity, and desire of the community itself.
Click on the pin of a network to learn more about it or click on a state with barriers (in red) to learn about the limitation. Below the map, you may select what types of information you want to display. We have written about every municipal FTTH network here. Information on rural cooperatives here.
If you want more information about a specific network, check if we have tagged it in a previous post, search our site for it using the upper right corner of the page, or check another source of information such as the database maintained by Broadband Communities Magazine.
For general information about community networks, see our Fact Sheets or read about three of the most advanced networks in the nation or an example of incremental public investments to create a network. For a better sense of how big corporations convince states to discourage community networks, see our report on North Carolina: The Empire Lobbies Back.
We continue to expand this map with other forms of publicly owned networks. Still to come are wireless networks, networks serving community anchor institutions, and more. Get updates by signing up for our one-email-per-week list announcing new stories and resources.
Please do let us know if we missed any community networks or if you want to report an error. Stay up to date with information about these networks by following Christopher on Twitter and MuniNetworks on Twitter, following us on Facebook, and/or tuning into our weekly podcast.
Media Contact: Christopher Mitchell, 612-545-5185
Credit for this map's design should be given to Eric James. The data comes from a combination of sources, notably Broadband Properties Magazine, FTTH Council, Jim Baller, and information collected for years by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Thank you to the Ford Foundation for enabling us to maintain this map.
Verizon: The Future is Wired
An unfortunately common argument used against community fiber networks is that everything will be wireless in the future. This was used frequently last year in North Carolina by defenders of the pro-TWC legislation to create new barriers against community fiber networks.
The technical among us may want to get into the math theory with the Shannon-Hartley theorem to explain why wired is more reliable than wireless and therefore capable of much higher capacity.
Others might point that wireless will have less capacity because a wireless connection is really a wired connection to a tower somewhere that is then shared among hundreds or thousands of other users. Empirically, there is no wireless connection that beats fiber-optics.
But if you are looking for an entity that is intimately familiar with both wired and wireless, you might ask Verizon. Verizon is rolling out its LTE wireless network (arguably the best large scale wireless network in the country) and has millions of customers on its fiber-optic FiOS wired network. Verizon says the future needs fiber-optics to the home and wireless in the air:
"If you get underneath what's driving the fiber in the metropolitan markets it has been the need for increased video, increased reliability and security for customers," Seidenberg said. "The way we think about it is even though we have this great 4G mobile network, you still need to have fiber to the premises because we think your home will utilize a Gigabit of bandwidth." ... "The way we look at it is we want to get fiber to as many business premises and cover as much as the footprint as we can and we believe everyone else going to do the same thing in other parts of the country," Seidenberg said.
Lake County, National Public Broadband, Go Separate Ways
For two years, National Public Broadband (led by Gary Fields and Tim Nulty) has worked with Lake County, Minnesota, to build a universal rural FTTH broadband network to everyone in the County and some nearby towns in Saint Louis County. Toward the end of 2010, the relationship became somewhat tense as some county commissioners questioned what NPB had told them about Burlington Telecom, and a number of media outlets raised questions about Nulty's relationship to BT's problems without actually investigating the story.
Now the Lake County News-Chronicle (which, over the course of this story, has taken the time to report facts rather than following the lazy lead of the Star Tribune and Duluth News Tribune), reports that Lake County and National Public Broadband are kaput. Lake County is seeking a new partner to build the project.
Lake County could not reach agreement on a permanent contract with National Public Broadband, its consultant firm for nearly two years. The two sides battled for nearly two months and couldn’t solve issues based on bonus payments and the ability for the county to fire NPB without cause and without penalty. The negotiations had bogged down work on the actual project, Commissioner Paul Bergman said, and the board wanted a fresh start.Additionally, due to the state of financial markets, the County is planning to self-fund the $3.5 million local obligation required to access to the broadband stimulus award. Lake County hoped to bond for the matching funds but the current interest rates make that an fiscally unwise approach. While this does not change the project, it will change the perception of the project and open it to increased attacks from those who don't want the County to build a network (despite the fact that private providers have no interest in providing anything other than slow DSL and cable networks). The County had long maintained that no public money would be used. However, most people will likely not care as long as the project keeps its promise to deliver fast, reliable, and affordable broadband to the community.
Upcoming Minnesota Events
As Minnesota's rural county-wide FTTH projects move forward, we have the opportunity to learn more about them in upcoming events. Thanks to Blandin's broadband blog for covering these issues!
On February 10, Cook County is welcoming Dan Olsen from WindomNet to discuss their experiences with a community-owned fiber network. You can listen to a previous interview on the North Shore with Dan Olsen. In the interview, Dan Olsen mentions that a number of residents use WindomNet to work remotely, commuting only once a week to their jobs in South Dakota.
For the rest of us, mostly located in the metro area of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, we can learn about the projects in Cook, Lake, and Sibley Counties at a Telecommuniations and Information Society Policy Forum at the HHH School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.