community networks

San Francisco willing to pay for citywide FTTP, but not saying how much

1 February 2018 by Steve Blum
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The City and County of San Francisco wants a short list of companies willing to build an open access, wholesale fiber-to-the-premise system that reaches all homes and businesses. It posted a request for qualifications (RFQ) yesterday, asking potential partners to make their pitches, with the idea of winnowing the responses down to a handful that will go on to a second and final round of proposals later this year.

Unlike Los Angeles, San Francisco is making an upfront offer to subsidise at least some of the costs.… More

Gonzales universal broadband service RFQ deadline extended

23 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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Internet service providers have four extra working weeks to respond to a request for quotes to provide universal broadband access to residents of the City of Gonzales, in California’s Salinas Valley. Following requests from potential respondents for extra time to submit quotes, and an inadvertent glitch that delayed answers to some of the questions they submitted, the City extended the deadline for responses to 22 December 2017.

That means the offers won’t be due on Cyber Monday, 27 November 2017, but that was a coincidental, albeit cool, deadline to begin with.… More

Gonzales requests quotes for universal broadband service

Bringing broadband service into every home has long been a goal of the City of Gonzales, a town of 8,500 residents located in California’s Salinas Valley. Yesterday, the City took a big step in that direction by releasing a Request for Quotes that asks broadband providers to put an offer on the table…

The City wishes to enter into an extended term contract with one Respondent to provide consistent, reliable access to basic internet service to each housing unit and household (collectively, “Residence”) at a fixed monthly cost to the City.

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New Benicia broadband RFP comes with money on the table

24 August 2017 by Steve Blum
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The City of Benicia is taking another try at priming the pump for upgraded industrial and commercial class broadband infrastructure and service. A request for proposals was posted this week, backed by up to $750,000 of city money. The objectives include…

  • Specific service proposals for the Benicia Industrial Park and the adjacent Arsenal area, which, among other things, is being developed as a home for high tech start-ups.
  • Generally, improving availability of high quality managed services and unbundled network elements, such as dark fiber, throughout the City.
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Rural Michigan voters approve higher taxes for faster broadband

20 August 2017 by Steve Blum
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Voters in a Michigan town overwhelmingly approved adding about $22 a month to their tax bills, in order to pay for the construction costs of a municipal fiber to the home system. Lyndon Township is in a rural area of southern Michigan, where broadband service is described by a local news site as “almost entirely lacking” (h/t to MuniNetworks.org for the pointer). According to a story in the Chelsea Update by Lisa Allmendinger, the vote was 66% to 34% in favor of the property tax hike…

Based on currently available taxable valuation data for Lyndon Township, the average cost per property owner for this construction will be about $21.92 per month.

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Be glad the FCC lost its muni broadband bulldozer

23 July 2017 by Steve Blum
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Municipal broadband dodged a bullet when a U.S. appeals court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission can’t tell states that they have to allow cities to build networks and offer service. It seemed like a good idea to many muni advocates at the time (although not me, I’ll immodestly point out) because of all the warm and fuzzy love that the Obama administration was bestowing on the concept.

Had that preemption withstood court challenges, muni broadband would be at the mercy of the current FCC majority, which includes Michael O’Rielly, who recently offered his thoughts to a group of state legislators.… More

Better data would support better muni broadband decisions

4 June 2017 by Steve Blum
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Not suprisingly, the municipal fiber to the home analysis done by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Innovation, Technology and Competition, comes to the conclusion that the more successful systems (or, from the study’s glass half empty perspective, the ones that are failing less badly than the others) keep revenue high and costs low. Operating efficiency – the ratio of operating costs to revenue – and revenue per household had a greater impact on near term positive cash flow and long term capital payback than the per household construction costs…

The fact that these regressions yielded statistically significant results based on only 19 or 20 observations is remarkable.

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Muni FTTH study estimates the cost of local subsidies

2 June 2017 by Steve Blum
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Municipal fiber to the home systems are not money makers, according to a study done by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Innovation, Technology and Competition. It started by identifying 88 muni systems in the U.S., and then dove into a top-line financial analysis of the 20 that publish separate separate operating statements – the rest consolidate their FTTH reporting with the results from their muni electric utilities.

According to the authors, less than half are showing positive cash flow and most of the rest aren’t making enough to pay back basic construction costs…

The data contained in this study are sobering.

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Google lights up muni broadband model in Huntsville

Three takeaways from Google Fiber’s announcement that it’s now an active tenant on the Huntsville, Alabama municipal fiber network:

  • The customer owns the marketing buzz. Huntsville put up the capital, Google buys access to end users and gets the headlines.
  • Google continues to pull back from the capital intensive business of owning and operating infrastructure.
  • Competition matters.

Google Fiber’s blog post belongs to the happy, happy, joy, joy school of public relations, but also makes it clear that it’s no longer interested in sinking its own capital into broadband infrastructure…

As an enterprising city, Huntsville explored new ways to connect residents and small businesses and is building a municipal fiber network through Huntsville Utilities.

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Gonzales, California putting broadband into every home, business

Basic broadband in every home and fast fiber for every business: that’s the goal endorsed on Monday by Gonzales city council members. The plan, as presented by staff, is to issue two requests for proposals.

The residential RFP is ambitious. There are 1,800 homes in Gonzales, which is located in California’s Salinas Valley. The city wants to provide a basic, lifeline-level of service to each one. As the report presented to the council explains…

Staff has been exploring the possibility of entering into a bulk services agreement with a qualified Internet service provider (ISP) to deliver a basic level of Internet access to every home in Gonzales.

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