community broadband networks

Ottawa, located in east central Kansas, recently launched its own municipal fiber network. The community of 13,000 in Franklin County watched nearby Chanute build and establish its own broadband utility. Ottawa plans a similar incremental strategy. Both communities boast strong farming traditions and host industrial employers that could not get what they needed from the existing providers.

I spoke with Chuck Bigham, IT Director for the City of Ottawa, who gave me some nuts and bolts on the network. I also touched base with City Manager Richard U. Nienstedt, both are heavily involved in the establishment of the network.

Like in Chanute, local leaders have long nourished a vision for better connectivity. In recent years, they realized the vision was not only attainable, but necessary for the community to thrive.

Approximately seventeen miles of fiber, installed by USD 290 and Franklin County in the 1990s, was already in the ground when the project began. Students and staff connected to the Internet and linked the 8-10 school district facilities via its fiber network. These pre-existing resources became the backbone of Ottawa's new utility. Cooperation between the City Municipal Utility, USD 290, and Franklin County facilitated the configuration of the new network. Ottawa now provides business Internet access, expanded educational opportunities, and a higher level of service than was previously available.

Two years ago, the City and its Chamber of Commerce reached out to major businesses to determine the need for broadband. They found businesses in Ottawa were connected through existing providers, but were unhappy with price and level of service. The community's industrial park seemed especially disadvantaged. Businesses needed better upload speeds than the existing T1s, which ran up to $600 per month. While DS3 connections were available, they were unaffordable and there was no level of service between the two options. Businesses could not convince AT&T to offer something they could afford and, as Bigham noted, the telecom giant appeared to be "milking the cow."

This is a common complaint among communities - the big national telephone and cable companies often refuse to upgrade their level of service because the lack of alternatives for local business connectivity means the firms cannot switch away from the existing provider.

The City approach USD 290 and Franklin County and proposed a partnership. The City would use several available fibers on the existing infrastructure to serve as the community network backbone. The School District and the County would still own the fiber asset already in place, while the City would own any added segments and the routers and switches to make it work. The City and its utility would support and manage the network 24/7. The school board and county commission approved the proposal in the fall of 2012.

The School District now pays the City $3,000 per month with monitoring and network support from the City all day, every day. USD 290 gets double the bandwidth it used to get from AT&T, when it paid nearly $6,000 per month for a DS3 connection. Paying less, but getting double, seems like a very smart investment.

Ottawa followed Chanute's example by providing a floor instead of a ceiling as the foundation for service. In other words, customers contract for minimum capacity but are allowed to burst to whatever capacity is available at any given time. For example, the School District will soon connect with a minimum 250 Mbps with the ability to burst to 500 Mbps.

Over the course of ten years, Ottawa has spent less than $500,000 on its next-generation community owned network. All the revenue from the network goes back into maintenance and upgrades. City government facilities and two electric substations, which used to connect only to each other, now link to the main power plant via fiber.

Neosho Community College's Ottawa Campus connects to the network. Ottawa Cooperative Association recently joined the network to take advantage of the fast upload speeds needed to send data rich reports and get timely information on grain prices. The Coop previously had a slower DSL connection. Bigham and Nienstedt both expect to see more business customers when the network expands to the Northeast Ottawa Industrial Park, the next expansion project.

Nienstadt tells us via email:

Our main emphasis has been to use it [the network utility]  as a recruiting and retention tool and be able to say that, "We have your broadband needs solved and you do not have to worry about that issue when locating in Ottawa, Kansas."  Most assuredly, some of the businesses have been able to benefit from lower broadband costs since we  started surveying and talking about a fiber optic utility.  That, quite frankly, was one of our goals.

Ashland, Oregon, home to Ashland Fiber Net (AFN), may soon be taking aggressive steps to bring more online business to the community. According to an Ashland Daily Tidings article, the City Council is seeking public input into proposed goals for the community. A targeted effort to bring more Internet-based businesses to town is one of the draft goals. The goal seems logical for a community with a network already in place.

AFN serves about 6,000 business and residential customers in this community of 20,000 people. In addition to AFN's retail services, four other local ISPs operate on the infrastructure.

The network is HFC, a cable network, but with far fewer homes on each local loop than the big cable companies typically have. This means that subscribers are far more likely to consistently achieve advertised speeds. Residential services range from $35 per month for 6 Mbps / 1 Mbps service to $75 monthly for 20 Mbps / 5 Mbps. AFN is one of the rare community-owned networks to enforce monthly data caps.

Fiber to the business is an option, but popular business packages are $65 per month for 15 Mbps / 4 Mbps and $85 per month for 25 Mbps / 5 Mbps. AFN also offers rural wireless service to a limited area. 

Ashland also sees some common sense advantages to increasing the number of small home based businesses that use its fiber resource. To that end, AFN provides a "Home Office" business Internet package. From the article:

Councilor Greg Lemhouse has championed the goal to increase the number of Internet-based businesses.

"It's an aggressive goal that says the city is committed to growing this industry," he said.

Lemhouse said many such businesses can be operated out of people's homes.

People who want to run Internet-based businesses often are well educated and are committed to their communities, he said.

Home Internet businesses can also be family-friendly, allowing parents to work from home and stay connected to their children, Lemhouse said.

With the discussion also comes some analysis of what sort of Internet businesses are already keeping shop in town. Also from the article:

It's not clear how many Internet-based businesses exist in Ashland.

Defining an Internet-based business can be tricky.

Some Ashland businesses rely completely on the Internet, while others use it to augment their businesses, said Katharine Flanagan, director of sales, marketing and Ashland's Visitor Bureau for the Ashland Chamber of Commerce.

The majority of Ashland businesses now use the Internet as a main tool for business operations, she said. Some are like Blackstone Audio, an audio book company that has corporate-style office space but relies on the Internet to grow and enhance its business, Flanagan said.

Online e-commerce helps drive Ashland businesses like Yala, which sells everything from clothing to travel bedding, and Natura Health Products, a seller of vitamins and other health products, she said.

As we monitored Georgia's HB 282, a bill to limit the capacity of local governments to invest in Internet networks that spur economic development, we learned of many existing networks that have helped communities to thrive.

Brian Thompson, Director of Electric and Telecommunications in Monroe took some time to tell us a little about their city network.  Located in the north central section of Georgia, with a population of 13,000, the network now offers triple play services to residents and businesses. Its network started in the 1970s with a municipal cable tv network. Today, the network is a hybrid with fiber having been added as an expansion to its cable network.

Monroe's investment in its fiber began as a way to improve connections for education. The Walton County School District could not find a private provider willing to collaborate on an affordable network between school facilities. The city took on the challenge and built a point-to-point network which the School District paid for in 10 years. In the mean time, the city expanded its network in other areas. Now, the Walton County Schools have gig service between facilities and to the Internet. The District pays only $500 per month for a service that would cost five times more from a private provider.

Thompson also confirmed what we hear from other communities with publicly owned networks - prices for business and residential services are very competitive and service is superior. He notes that customers often express appreciation for local representatives, rather than dealing with a huge bureaucracy like those at Verizon or AT&T. New connections can be created in a matter of hours or days instead of weeks.

Residential service for Internet access from MonroeAccess.Net includes affordable basic service (1 Mbps / 256 Kbps) for $21.95 per month. Two faster tiers include $34.95 (6 Mbps / 512 Kbps) and $44.95 (15 Mbps / 1 Mbps). Cable tv rates vary from $15.50 to $62.95 per month and residential phone service starts at $29.95 per month. Thompson notes that, when Monroe added phone service, rates dropped for every one regardless of carrier. 

There are over 100 fiber customers and the network has been critical for economic security. T1 connections for businesses used to go for $1,000 per month; now higher capacity connections cost $250. Notable customers include Minerva, a beauty salon supplier with a large showroom and distribution center in Minerva. The multi-million dollar salon equipment company has headquarters in China but has nearly 30,000 customers in the U.S. Company owners required a fiber connection to communicate with the facility in real time. Monroe was happy to oblige.

Monroe is also home to a Hitachi plant that makes parts for several auto companies. The fiber network allows the plant to communicate efficiently with the Hitachi headquarters located in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. The plant employs about 250 people.

Monroe never borrowed or bonded to build out its network. Thompson tells us the network has always progressed slowly and community leaders leverage partnerships with local interests along the way. The city used its capital investment fund for initial construction and continues to expand slowly with revenue obtained from offering services. Thompson tells us that their approach works for Monroe and shudders at the thought of legislators in Atlanta claiming otherwise.

Monroe's network travels well outside the city limits, over a nine county area, and HB 282 could have put an end to its expansion. Fortunately the bill was defeated on the House floor and for at least one more year, this community does not have to worry that the state will revoke its power to encourage economic development locally.

Customers of Cedar Falls Utilities (CFU), in Iowa, have recently been treated to an increase in fiber Internet service speeds with no increase in price.

We have reported on CFU for several years with news on its upgrades and expansions to unserved areas. The most popular CFU home service, 12/1 Mbps, is now at 16/8 Mbps. That service is available for a reasonable $43.50 in the city and $48.50 in rural areas. Residential plans range from $29.95/$34.95 (city/rural) for 2/1 Mbps for FiberHome Basic to $137.50/$142.50 (city/rural) for the 120/60 Mbps FiberHome Extreme.

According to the CFU blog:

We’re able to make this upgrade now because we are in the final neighborhoods connecting customers to our new all-fiber cable and internet system. The all-fiber system allows us to deliver faster connection speeds and better reliability. Upgrading speeds now is also good timing because we just activated a new high speed upstream internet link. This high speed link gives us the capacity needed at a very affordable cost, and also provides geographic and provider redundancy. With this in place no single fiber cut, hardware failure or weather event will impact our ability to deliver our normal peak internet usage.

Note that while Cedar Falls has decided not to offer fully symmetric services (same upload as download speed), the ratio is 2:1 rather than the 6:1, 10:1, or even bigger gap that we often see from the national providers. CFU recognizes the benefits of faster upstream connections that allow subscribers to be more productive by being better able to share their creations with the world.