community broadband networks

The Massachusetts Broadband Initiative's (MBI) MassBroadband 123 network is becoming a reality. On March 28th, MBI lit up the first 35-mile stretch, linking Sandisfield, traveling through Otis, and connecting at the Springfield Technical Community College Technology Park hub. The inaugural connection was the first in a series of build outs that are scheduled to be completed by July 2013 [PDF of map and schedule].

MassBroadband 123 is the middle mile open access network snaking its way across central and western Massachusetts. The project, funded with $40 million in state bond proceeds and $45.4 million in stimulus funding, is scheduled to bring the 1,200 mile network to the anchor institutions in approximately 120 communities. While MassBroadband 123 will not offer last-mile connectivity to residents, it will bring the possibility to many rural areas that have little or no options today. Communities with their own networks, like Leverett, will be able to connect with MassBroadband 123. Hopes are that the open access nature of the network will inspire private providers to offer more last-mile connections.

MassLive.com reported on the first use of the network by school children in rural Otis. Kids at Farmington River Elementary School connected in Spanish with kids from Columbia and learned about physics from the NASA Goddard Space Fight Center in Maryland:

“It was really excellent,” said Mary G. Turo, principal of Farmington River Elementary, in a phone interview. 

...

“We are a little isolated,” Turo said. “Having the capability to bring the outside world to us, you cannot put a price on it. We want our kids to be ready for the future. In order to be ready to for the future they have to know what is going on outside their hometown .”

Judith Dumont, director of MBI, compares the expansion of the network to government efforts to expand electricity in the 1930s. From the article:

Back then, the profit motive wasn’t enough to bring electricity to small towns, so the government stepped in to help build economies.

“This project says it is not OK for these communities to be left out of the 21st century economy,” she said.

While we agree with Judith regarding the need for public and private investment, we would go a bit further to note that when the federal government stepped in with electrification, it made sure that the connections were controlled by the community via coops and local governments. We wish our present federal government learned those lessons too and didn't believe that throwing money at Wall Street firms would solve rural problems.

We believe MassBroadband 123 is an important tool to help rural Massachusetts communities but we believe further public investment will be necessary to make sure everyone is connected. And where public dollars are spent, networks should be accountable to the community - now and in the future.

Adams County, situated in eastern Washington, is now connected to the regional Northwest Open Access Network (NoaNet) infrastructure. Ritzville, the county seat and home to about 1,600 people, connected last fall, funded through a combination of American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) stimulus grants, funds from public utility districts, and surrounding communities. As with other NoaNet projects, connectivity will include community anchor institutions in Ritzville such as the library, schools, and local healthcare clinics.

NoaNet, a nonprofit corporation, is bringing wholesale fiber backbone infrastructure across the state of Washington, connecting community anchor institutions (CAIs). Schools, hospitals, libraries, and government facilities connect via the open access network and retail providers bring service over the network. NoaNet's membership includes municipal utilities, tribes, cities, and counties. The collaboration began in 2000 and received $140 million in federal stimulus dollars to connect rural Washington state. 

The community celebrated in November with a Ritzville Public Library Open House to show off the new technology. From the NoaNet Press Release:

“We’re just very excited about having consistently fast, high-speed Internet for our patrons.  The benefits will be huge for everyone from online students watching class lectures to tech junkies trying to stream Pandora while downloading YouTube videos, to library staff offering reference help to the public” said Kylie Fullmer, Director of the Ritzville Public Library. “And once it becomes more widely available throughout the community, I think people are going to be just as excited as we are.”

Local community members recognize the importance of what the new connection an do for this agricultural community. Like many other small communities across the country, rural towens like Ritzville see their youth leave for larger markets for career reasons. From an editorial in the Columbia Basin Herald:

We are pleased Ritzville has this service and hope more educational, job and business opportunities abound for the area.

We hope the project helps even the playing field for people living in the rural communities of the Columbia Basin.

Doing so could mean we have more family wage jobs and opportunities for our youth.

Mount Vernon, Washington, started building their own fiber optic network in 1995 and over the past 18 years have continued to add incrementally. While the network started as a way to connect a few municipal facilities, it has since expanded to nearby Burlington and the Port of Skagit. The network now serves government, schools, hospitals and clinics, and a broad range of businesses in the area.

We spoke with community leaders from Mount Vernon for our 38th episode of the Broadband Bits podcast. Mount Vernon owns the network and operates it out of the Information Systems office.

The network required no borrowing or bonding because initial funding came from a state Community and Economic Revitalization Board (CERB) grant. Since then, Mount Vernon has used revenue from the network and creative cost sharing with partners to expand throughout the city. When expanding into Burlington and the Port of Skagit in 2008, city leaders received a county sales tax grant to fund deployment.

The Mount Vernon School District became a partner early in the evolution of the network. According to Kim Kleppe, Information Services Director, K-12 schools do not pay a monthly fee to receive up to 1 gig of capacity for their 10 facilities. He estimates the current costs of a dark fiber connection for one facility at $700 per month. Total savings are astronomical, allowing the schools to dedicate significant dollars toward other expenses.

Mount Vernon city government saves over $100,000 per year and nearby Burlington saves over $52,000. The network has never been in debt and maintains a reserve.

Mount Vernon's network is an open access model on which ISPs serve customers via the city's infrastructure. Subscribers pay a one time fee to the city to be connected. Onging revenue comes from the ISPs, who pay to the city a percentage of what they collect in customer connectivity fees. Currently, eight different providers offer services via the Mount Vernon network, providing ample competition.

Like other communities we see that choose the open access model, Mount Vernon acknowledges that they could take the next step and provide retail services but they choose not to. Kleppe tells us that Mount Vernon wants to let the private sector do what it does best - provide retail services - while the city offers the infrastructure.

Healthcare, aerospace, engineering, banking, technology, and legal data services are a few high bandwidth industries with locations on the network. Jana Hansen, Community and Economic Devlopment Director, believes the fiber optic network is a key element in bringing new companies to Mount Vernon. Hansen decribes the network in the Port of Skagit as a "tremendous success" and notes that businesses have re-located from Seattle to the Skagit Valley. While those businesses often cite quality of life as a driving factor, Hansen believes Mount Vernon, Burlington, or the Valley would not have been considered without the fiber network.

Jana Hansen shared these thoughts from a business that moved to Mount Vernon from Seattle:

As a Seattle law firm with an integrated information security business for the past twelve years, our Pioneer Square office lease term was ending, and we needed new, larger, space. As we began the process of evaluating our options, we came to realize the significance of the fact that our customers are national, or international, and that less than ten percent of our revenues for the past three years came from Washington. This meant that as far as our customers were concerned, we could relocate our offices anywhere, provided that our new location met three important criteria: (1) access to tech-savvy workforce pool; (2) dependable high-speed business-quality internet; and (3) reasonable proximity to air transportation.

Skagit County, and Mount Vernon in particular, meet and exceed all of these. MV’s location astride I-5 means that our employees can live from Bellingham to Everett and still face a much shorter, and more comfortable, commute than if they lived in Bellevue and travelled to downtown Seattle during rush hour. This huge area is filled with energetic, technically sophisticated potential employees who appreciate the opportunity to avoid the morning grind. Secondly, Mount Vernon’s ahead-of-its-time fiber ring means affordable, dependable internet access of the highest quality. We are accustomed to paying thousands of dollars per month for bandwidth. Not only will we pay less in MV (for more capacity), but fiber optic circuits are more reliable and flexible than the older data lines we have been required to use in Seattle. Finally, the improvements to conveniently located Bellingham’s airport over the past few years have opened up routes all over the country, and more are on the way.

I suppose there are other places that would also meet these three criteria, but none of them match the most important reason of all that we are moving to Mount Vernon: quality of life. No traffic concerns, affordable cost of living and housing, great schools, proximity to major metropolitan areas (Seattle and Vancouver) without the negative points, equal proximity to all that outdoors and nature offer, and, of course, friendly and helpful people who are a pleasure to interact with. We couldn’t imagine moving anywhere else.

For these reasons, we’ll be opening our offices in Mount Vernon this Spring.

Update: Some have asked (rightfully so) for more information about the grants involved in building this network. IS Director Kim Kleppe sent this to Christopher to explain more about the financing:

We had two grants helping to fund various parts of the project. The first one was actually 2001 for $500,000 and the second one in 2005 we received $367,506. Other than that we had a lot of partnerships to help extend and push out various demarcation points and this would be hard to calculate. A lot of the areas we built around were built based on where are facilities were - for example our wastewater pump stations which really covered a lot of area which was partially funded by that utility and where other partners like the Schools, County and Hospital sites were located sharing costs for the build. It was built based on both vision for needs for both public and private needs and is still a growing process, but no debt was incurred and not much of a budget to work with.

The lesson we take away from this is that most communities have many opportunities to make investments like this. Local officials need to be creative and determined. Opportunities rarely surface themselves, they are created by building relationships and coordinating infrastructure efforts.

New Hamsphire FastRoads is making significant strides in connecting residents, businesses, and community anchor institutions in the southwestern section of the state. FastRoads is funded by a combination of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) grants, private donations, and funds from local communities.

While the network is certainly making progress and scheduled for completion this summer, it has been constrained by state laws that limit the use of bonding. As a result, many local communities that would like to benefit from connections with Fast Roads will not able to take advantage of its presence in this largely rural area of the state.

We recently spoke with Carole Monroe, Executive Director of New Hampshire Fast Roads, in a Broadband Bits podcast interview. She told us about a bill in the New Hampshire General Court this year that would remove restrictions that limit how local governments can finance network investments.

In past years, New Hampshire legislators took up several bills that would remove the restriction preventing local communities from using bonds to finance broadband infrastructure. Every year, lobbyists from large ISPs manage to push those bills into oblivion. This year, HB 286 seeks to strike the restrictive language.

The bill is getting attention from local media, the New Hampshire SentinelSource. An editorial, published soon after the bill was introduced summarizes the problem:

In areas where companies determine that investing in expansion isn’t worthwhile, municipalities often find their hands tied because state law does not allow communities to take out municipal bonds for broadband access if there’s a private company operating in the community. That means if a town has even a small pocket of coverage by a telecommunication company, it can’t get funding to pay for expansion to the rest of its residents and businesses.

The good people at the Sentinel Source know that their communities want the opportunity to make their own decisions about connectivity:

Changing the law would give communities one more option to achieve that crucial link. Then it would be up to voters in each town to determine if they want to invest in the state’s technology infrastructure. Lawmakers should pass the bill and put those decisions in the hands of voters.

Whether or not to invest in broadband infrastructure is a decision best made by those who will live with the results. With little or no chance at obtaining this critical infrastructure from the private sector, local populations should have every tool available to achieve the connectivity they want and need.