The town of Erie, Colorado, is conducting a residential survey as it considers a community owned network. Erie has about 18,000 residents and straddles Boulder and Weld Counties. 

The concerns facing Erie's community leaders were recently summed up in a John Aguilar article in the Boulder Daily Camera. According to the article, four companies were to be screened to complete a $50,000 feasibility study. The community owned broadband approach has both strong supporters and some doubters in town.

From the article:

Trustee Jonathan Hager, who has spent the last dozen years managing fiber-optic networks for a Westminster-based wholesale electric power supplier, championed the idea for Erie from both a local control perspective and an economic development one.

"If I'm a company and I'm going to relocate here with 100 employees and I need 100 megabits per second of speed and the town can provide that, I think that would be something I would look at," Hager said. "If we can make Erie stand out as a good place to live because we offer broadband, that puts us in a good position."

Internet access, he said, has become so ubiquitous and necessary that it could be seen as just another municipally provided utility, like water and electrical service.

"We can provide it ourselves and cut out the middle man," Hager said.

Those who are not sold on the idea of funding a study, express resignation at entering a challenging industry:

"I'm very sensitive to the speed of technology's progression," Mayor Joe Wilson said. "By the time we cut the ribbon on this technology, it's old news."

Wilson also voiced concerns about whether it is government's proper role to be providing broadband Internet service or whether that is better left up to the private sector. He said there hasn't been an outcry from residents to pursue such a service.

Readers know we have offered extensive coverage of the publicly owned network in Longmont, Colorado. The utility will soon offer telecommunications services to businesses and residents that are physically located within 500 feet or less of its existing network. At this stage, policies and procedures for the service are being finalized by Longmont Power and Communications (LPC).

We talked with Vince Jordan, LPC's Telecom Manager, who told us the expansion is part of their original business plan. Local establishments are ready to sign up with LPC. Twenty businesses put themselves in the queue within the past month. In addition to industrial and manufacturing companies, healthcare clinics, service industries, and entrepreneurs are waiting to get hooked up. Vince tells us several companies are looking to build data centers now that they will be able to get the bandwidth they need from LPC.

Vince credits LPC's ability to offer great local customer service as another driving factor for the early sign-ups. LPC is developing a fiber hood campaign to determine the locations for the first set of FTTH connections. The campaign, similar to that used by other communities and more recently by Google, will look at residential areas that are located near existing fiber and conduit. Surveys and early sign ups will identify seven fiber hoods.

Longmont's ordinance [PDF] requires customers to cover the cost of running fiber to their homes or businesses. Even though connecting can be pricey, Vince tells us potential customers call him regularly asking when they will be able to get fiber to their homes or establishments.

Many residential inquiries involve home based businesses, but not all. He relays the story of one retired gentleman who is so fed up with sorry service from the incumbents, he is willing to pay anything up to $10,000 to get LPC fiber to his home. We have encountered many instances of crappy customer service from the big boys, leaving us to suspect others share that sentiment. 

In our recent podcast interview with Vince Jordan of Longmont Power and Communications (LPC), we shared the story of Colorado's newest community network. Vince told the story of the community's struggle to overcome a massive misinformation campaign by Comcast and progress since. LPC is proving itself to be innovative, creative, and centered on community - all attributes that should drive their success.

We asked what future plans may be in the works for the expanding the network or the different potential services coming to residents and businesses, wondering if triple-play services may be offered. Vince noted that in LPC's current online survey, video and voice are two products that have sparked the public's interest. Because video can be one of the most expensive and least profitable ventures, LPC is once again approaching the community desires creatively.

Over the past few years, we provided continuing coverage as Longmont, Colorado, considered, and eventually approved, a referendum (two actually) to authorize the municipality to offer broadband services to local businesses and residents. The City installed the fiber as part of its electricity utility infrastructure long ago but Qwest then pushed a law through the state legislature limiting how it could be used. After two referendums and an expensive Comcast astroturf campaign, the residents supported Ballot Measure 2A in November, 2011. The City can now use the fiber network to spur economic development.

Longmont Power and Communications (LPC) recently held two meetings to field responses from the residents and local businesses. Results of the meetings, and an online survey, keep the community informed and will help decide several key elements to the roll-out plan. Scott Rochat of the TimesCall.com, reported on the July 16th meeting, focused on resident reaction. Longmont has some distinct advantages, that Jordan shared:

"We are unique in what we already have in place and what we can do with what we have in place," [Vince] Jordan, [LPC Telecom Manager] told a crowd of 43 at the Longmont Civic Center on Monday.

What's in place is an 18-mile fiber-optic loop that the city can now offer services on, thanks to a 2011 ballot issue. About 1,280 businesses sit within 500 feet of the fiber network; at least 1,100 homes already have the conduit and junction box that would let them join.

The meeting and the survey indicate a strong desire have the network up and functioning ASAP. From the article:

 An online survey at ci.longmont.co.us/lpc/tc/index.htm (which so far has gotten about 152 responses) found that given the choice, 63 percent wanted citywide service "immediately," while 21 percent said they'd settle for whenever the city could get it done.

The proportions were similar at Monday's meeting: 57 percent for immediately, 17 percent for whenever it could be done, and another 17 percent for a two-year timespan.

After the city finished building the first phase of the project, at least 150 companies, according to the city, purchased and are now connected to the city’s fiber optic backbone via private service providers, such as Brainstorm Internet and Farmers Telecommunications. One of the service providers (Farmers Telecommunications) has a long experience in the area -- having offered telephone services for 91 years. It is now able to provide much faster services with a much lower investment because of the public investment. “This will have a huge impact on the local economy, and it will keep citizens’ spending dollars in Cortez,” said City of Cortez Department of General Services Director Rick Smith. “And feed more money here, potentially, from around the world.”

The city’s new, open-services network allows companies to offer advanced services, such as broadband Internet and voice and communication systems, said Farmers Telecommunications General Manager Doug Pace. “What we’re seeing is that more and more businesses are requiring that upload speed to be increased,” Pace said as an example of the kind of cloud computing Farmer’s offers on the city’s Fiber to the Business network.

Learning the lessons of Longmont's recent cable referendum.