Pioneered with city-owned Huntsville Utilities in Alabama and Google Fiber, the utility lease model makes unlit fibers available to others.
September 2, 2022 – Springfield, Missouri, is set to complete the second utility lease model fiber infrastructure build in the United States later this year.
The city announced its plan to enable affordable high-speed internet services citywide via a utility lease model in 2019. The model allows an electric utility company to expand its fiber optic network to improve its own electric and information services without the risk of investing as an internet service provider.
A utility company builds a fiber network on which it builds its services. It will then lease the excess fiber capacity – or dark fiber – to an ISP which, in turn, assumes the responsibility for marketing, operating, and servicing customers.
This model was pioneered by the Broadband Group in 2016 with city-owned Huntsville Utilities in Alabama. Huntsville Utilities primarily leased its unlit fiber to Google Fiber which made high-speed, affordable broadband connection available to every address of the city, reported the Fiber Broadband Association.
Fiber infrastructure is essential for new growth, said Jeff Reiman, principal at the Broadband Group, in an interview. Cities should consider how they can build a platform of high-performance connectivity to ensure that new technologies in the future will not meet bandwidth barriers, said Reiman. “Without fiber infrastructure, you may not have the platform to support new technologies.”
The utility lease model presents a unique opportunity to break down barriers to entry in the fiber space by reducing building and operating costs for both parties, he said.
Springfield’s City Utilities invested $120 million over a four-year period to follow this model. It will lease its unlit fiber network on a nonexclusive basis to internet service provider Lumen Technologies, previously CenturyLink.
Lumen expects to provide Springfield’s 180,000 residents with symmetrical gigabit internet speeds without customer rate increases or cherry picking the wealthier, denser areas of the city. “In fact,” read the project report, “the initial network builds were in low-income neighborhoods.”
Originally planned for completion in Spring 2023, the citywide fiber network is now expected to be complete in October of this year. One hundred percent of the fiber network will be available to Springfield residents at the beginning of next year after quality testing, said Jeff Bertholdi, director of a division of City Utilities, in an interview with Broadband Breakfast.
“We are already seeing real benefits of the system; our tenants are super happy,” said Bertholdi. Springfield is now working to attach to surrounding fiber networks, he added.
The Broadband Group reported that every residential property within the utilities’ service territory is passed by and able to connect to high-speed internet. City Utilities now has a city-wide fiber network that can support grid modernization technologies and other internal operational priorities, TBG reported.
Springfield has a long history of expanding its fiber infrastructure services. In 1991, Springfield established a city-led telecommunications strategy, empowering the municipality’s utility department to offer telecommunications services to county buildings and schools, said Bertholdi. In 2015, the city had close to 600 miles of fiber infrastructure.
The Broadband Group hopes to expand the utility lease model to other cities. “We are focused on making the current deployments successful,” said Reiman. “The more success we have [with the utility lease model], the more it is going to lead to other utilities adopting this model.”
“It is important to understand, however, that this is not an off-the-shelf approach,” added Reiman. Every market is unique and the utility lease model may not be the right solution for every situation, he said.
It’s important to incentivize the private sector to join up with companies that own the infrastructure and the right-of-way to combat barriers of entry, added Bertholdi, saying that the model will make broadband more accessible and affordable for companies looking to break into the broadband space.
This announcement follows the introduction of the GRID Broadband Act to the Senate earlier this month. The legislation would make grants available to those who can build middle mile fiber infrastructure using existing assets, such as utility structures, to build out broadband infrastructure more quickly.
Scott Pell, vice president of consulting company for electric utilities, said last week that electric utility companies are uniquely suited to use existing structures to carry out new fiber infrastructure. Huntsville, Alabama and Springfield, Missouri remain the sole cities in the United States to use the utility lease model.
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Fiber to the home costs $0.52 per Megabit per second, on average.
September 1, 2022 – Fiber is the best broadband technology for low-income, working-age individuals, according to a new report from the research and consulting firm RVA LLC and the Fiber Broadband Association.
Highlights of the report’s findings were presented at a Wednesday Fiber for Breakfast session. A key finding is that users reported far great satisfaction with fiber than with competing technologies cable, DSL, and wireless.
Why do the authors believe fiber such a difference-maker? On average, fiber to the home costs only $0.52 per Megabit per second (Mbps), in a blended rate including the upload and download cost.
The runner-up is cable – costing $0.88 per Mbps – while last-place DSL costs $5.71 per Mbps.
It’s not just about price, however. On average, the report says, fiber’s upload speed is almost five times higher the next-best competitor, cable. Fiber also leads significantly in average download speed.
The “Economic Impacts of Fiber” section of the report examined the choices of individuals ages 25–65 making under $60,000 per year.
Users are more than 33 percent more likely to spend time working from home if they have the option than are users of other types of internet, the report said. Fiber to the home users are more than 33 percent more likely to work an information technology job than their counterparts and are marginally more likely to run home-based businesses: 23.3 percent of FTTH users to 20.7 percent of other users.
“Fiber is enabling people to move into [information-technology] jobs,” said Michael Render, CEO of RVA, at the event.
Respondents who moved to a rural area disproportionately chose to live in locations with FTTH coverage. Fiber users were far more likely to report having “good access” to health care and educational resources, as well.
The report also details fiber’s impact on communities in which it is deployed. Westfield, Mass., for instance, annually gained more than $88 million in job-related benefits after the city installed a fiber network. An installation in Grant County, Washington, attracted data center service providers, netting hundreds of millions in tax revenue since 2018.
The cooperative’s executive director said it has at least 70% of Arkansas covered by its network.
August 31, 2022 – Telecommunications cooperative Diamond State Networks announced an update to its fiber build in Arkansas, telling a Fiber Broadband Association event Tuesday that it has completed to date 60,000 miles of 10 Gigabit per second (Gbps) fiber covering 70 percent of the state landmass with middle mile infrastructure.
Composed of 13 cooperatives with investments of at least $1.66 billion, the wholesale fiber alliance was announced in May of this year with a coverage goal of 64 percent of the state. The formed entity called Diamond State Network at the time said it hoped that model was one that future coops would follow.
Doug Maglothin, the coop’s executive director, told the FBA on Tuesday that the coop’s participation in the Federal Communications Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program will also allow residents to have other subsidy options than just the incumbents’ services to get connected.
Maglothin said that middle mile infrastructure built as a cooperative will ensure that any funding that is used for broadband in Arkansas stays within the state. The coop said it is aiming to apply for middle mile funding from federal infrastructure programs administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
Maglothin added that the company now consults with up to seven other states to help them promote their plans and leverage resources from other providers, encouraging the providers to collectively create a sustainable broadband strategy.
Regional Fiber Connect conferences are bringing the industry’s technology and community leadership together.
August 30, 2022 –After a nearly 40 percent increase in attendance between the Fiber Connect broadband shows in 2021 and 2022, the Fiber Broadband Association has decided to take its trade shows on the road.
The trade group’s new Regional Fiber Connect conference series is bringing the industry’s technology and community leadership together with events in targeted locations around the country, CEO Gary Bolton and Vice Chair Joseph “JJ” Jones said in a Thursday interview with Broadband Breakfast.
The most recent event on August 23 in Frisco, Colorado, had about 200 guests, Bolton said. Topics were focused around educating the entire “ecosystem” of fiber broadband, and included funds acquisition and marketing strategies.
Noteworthy presentations included Sarah Smith, National Telecommunications and Information Administration federal program officer for Colorado and Wyoming, and Colorado Broadband Office Executive Director Brandy Reitter.
Attendance at the Memphis-based Fiber Connect trade show jumped from 2,041 attendees in June 2021 to 2,854 registrants for the June 2022 conference.
The regional traveling event series was conceived of as a means to reach industry players and community leaders unable to attend the Association’s annual conference. Typically, 75 percent of regional conference attendees are first-timers, Jones said.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed by President Joe Biden in November 2021, provided $65 billion for the construction of broadband infrastructure. This investment, along with state funding, has stimulated unprecedented broadband expansion. Bolton has previously called our time “pivotal” and recent broadband investments “monumental.”
Bolton and Jones highlighted the role of local, community-level leadership in deploying funding to close the “digital divide.”
The next Regional Fiber Connect 2022 event is scheduled to be held in Columbus, Ohio, this November.
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