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Loveland, Colorado’s Municipal Fiber Network Crosses Finish Line

As Loveland, Colorado’s municipal broadband network continues to rack up industry accolades on its path to providing world-class high-speed Internet service, the city is now celebrating another important milestone.

Last week, Pulse Fiber officials announced that construction of its community-owned broadband network is now complete with every household and business in this city of 77,000 now having access to affordable gig-speed service.

The $110 million construction project, which began in earnest only four years ago, is the largest capital project in the city’s history, reaching the finish line on time and on budget, city officials said.

In a press announcement Steve Adams, Loveland’s City Manager, captured the meaning of the moment:

“As we celebrate the successful conclusion of this historic project, Pulse stands as a shining example of what is possible when the community unites to pioneer innovative, collaborative solutions. We did this for ourselves, and we made it happen together.”

“This infrastructure has been designed and built with future generations in mind, ensuring Loveland remains at the forefront of modern, robust, and future-proof Internet delivery,” Pulse Broadband Manager Brieana Reed-Harmel added.

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Pulse Fiber construction

Pulse officials candidly acknowledged that the pathway to the leading edge of Internet connectivity wasn’t easy, as the city had to navigate network construction through a global pandemic, supply chain disruptions, and inflation. But despite those challenges, Pulse Fiber has deployed 631 miles of conduit and over 1,300 miles of fiber throughout the city.

Colorado and Texas Municipal Broadband Networks Nab National Awards

From Colorado to Texas, municipal broadband providers continue to rack up industry accolades, not just for delivering fiber service–the gold standard of Internet connectivity–but for these networks’ ability to provide ubiquitous access across an entire community at affordable rates.

The National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) recently announced that its Community Broadband Projects of the Year Awards for 2023 will go to the Connexion network in Fort Collins, Colorado and TeamPharr.net in Pharr, Texas.

Awarding Community-Wide Access and Affordability

The Fort Collins award is in recognition for the city having established “a municipal broadband utility created by and for the community to improve the life of all 80,000 residential and commercial properties of Fort Collins through better, more affordable Internet,” NATOA said in announcing the award.

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Ft Collins NOC

But it wasn’t just because Fort Collins’ network provides city-wide access to fiber. The award also recognizes that “Connexion offers the fastest Internet speeds available at affordable prices (emphasis added) as well as competitive phone and TV services.”

Timnath, Colorado and Loveland Team Up to Further Expand Celebrated Municipal Fiber Network

Loveland’s municipal broadband utility Pulse is a heartbeat away from expanding into a small neighboring Colorado town eager to offer its residents the same attractive, high-quality Internet access that can be found in Larimer County’s biggest cities.

Officials in Loveland and Timnath, Colorado (pop. 7,800) recently announced the ratification of an Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) that greenlight’s a plan to bring ubiquitous, affordable high-speed Internet access to yet another community in the Centennial State, as an increasing number of Colorado cities and towns embrace municipal broadband after years of frustration with the inadequate, high-priced service from the region’s monopoly incumbents.

"The selection of Pulse as our broadband service provider reflects a thorough process of assessment and consideration,” Timnath Town Planner Brian Williamson said in a press statement after the agreement was approved. “We are excited to work together, leveraging their expertise to ensure our residents have access to reliable, high-speed Internet that will contribute to the growth and prosperity of Timnath."

Keeping Up With The Loveland’s

This week Williamson spoke to ILSR about the project and why a town-wide fiber network is such valuable and vital infrastructure.

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Pulse Fiber Pick Up Truck

“Timnath is an interesting place. We are predominantly a residential community and we are growing quickly,” he said, adding that in a post-pandemic world of distance learning, remote work, and telehealth, an important part of the mix when people decide where to live and work is whether that community has reliable and affordable high-speed Internet access.

Loveland’s Municipal Network is Scrappy and Driven to Serve its Community - Episode 566 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

This week on the podcast, Christopher speaks with Brieana Reed-Harmel, Municipal Fiber Manager for the City of Loveland, located in Colorado’s Northern Front Range about an hour north of Denver. The city is home to over 80,000 residents as well as a municipal fiber broadband network called Pulse.

Chris and Brieana discuss Loveland’s population expansion over the past few years and Pulse’s resulting plans to extend beyond city limits into the “urban fringe,” which is more difficult to receive grant funding to serve. Brieana shares the ways in which the municipal network has leveraged its relationships, having partnered with its local school district to connect unserved areas during the pandemic, and currently in conversation with the county, which will help Loveland with the matching funds it needs for upcoming grant expansions. Brieana speaks to the challenges of building out the network through inflation and the pandemic. She stresses the importance of having a solid business model and great project management, as well as the scrappiness and ongoing investment needed to ensure a municipal network is sustainable and can bring residents quality connectivity at the best value. 

This show is 25 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed

Transcript below.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

Capital Construction of a Municipal Broadband Utility 101

*This piece was authored by Brieana Reed-Harmel, manager of the municipal-owned Pulse fiber network in Loveland, Colorado. It was originally published by Broadband Breakfast with permission to republish here. We have extensively covered the Pulse network in Loveland examples of which can be found here and here.

***  

I am the manager for Pulse, the municipally owned broadband utility in Loveland and parts of Larimer County, Colorado. We made strong choices early on that put us on a path to success.

Having broken ground fewer than six months before the start of the pandemic, I am continually impressed with how smoothly our work has progressed. Put simply, I want you to be as successful as we have been.

Define the Plan, Assess Your Skills and Determine What You Need

Documenting the plan makes it easy to share the vision. The plan needs to include the high-level vision and strategy, but also delve into the granular, tactical details as it establishes your success criteria. What does success look like in terms of customer take rate, time to rollout and network documentation?

Include details related to long-term maintenance, and what operations will eventually look like as it will affect the network design, construction methods and the type of materials you decide to use. Understanding these details can greatly change cost models, as some choices have lower upfront costs but higher longer term maintenance costs, and vice versa, which can make or break a business model.

Boulder, Colorado Gets Ready to Roll on Citywide Fiber Network

With the construction of its 65-mile dark fiber backbone nearly complete, city officials in Boulder, Colorado are now ready to move into the next phase of their plan: test the waters for a partnership with private or nonprofit Internet service providers (ISPs) to build out a citywide fiber network to deliver last mile service to the city’s 104,000 residents and businesses.

Last week, the city issued a Request for Information (RFI) “to gauge the interest of for-profit and nonprofit entities in forming a public–private partnership (PPP) with the city to make Gigabit per second-class bandwidth available to all Boulder homes and businesses.”

“As we prepare for further City Council discussion on a future community broadband operating model, it is imperative that we understand the market potential for a PPP (public-private partnership) to meet the city’s goals related to connectivity. We look forward to responses that consider a variety of business models to share technological and operational responsibilities and financial risk with the city in innovative ways,” Innovation and Technology Deputy Director Mike Giansanti said in a press statement when the RFI was issued.

The city is looking for a partner or partners that will come to table with new ideas, create competition, and either fully fund or share costs.

Having prioritized a city-wide fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) build, city officials have identified two main goals: serve the growing demand for “affordable, reliable, and sophisticated broadband technology; and support a thriving business environment.”

Responses to the RFI are due by May 19 at 4 pm MDT.

City officials say they will consider a range of construction and operation designs as well as a variety of ownership models as the City Council will likely vote on the path forward and the execution of a contract sometime this year.

New Bill Could Make Colorado Friendly State for Municipal Broadband

Earlier this month, a new Colorado bill was introduced that, if passed, would rid the state of a law designed to protect monopoly Internet service providers (ISPs) from competition.

SB-183, titled “Local Government Provision Of Communications Services,” seeks to gut a law Big Telecom pushed state lawmakers to pass in 2005. That law, known as SB-152, prevented any of Colorado’s 272 municipalities from building and operating their own telecommunication infrastructure unless local voters first passed a referendum to “opt out.”

End of ‘the Qwest Law’?

Known also as “the Qwest law,” Qwest (now Lumen but more recently CenturyLink), with the help of Comcast, leaned on legislative allies to pass SB-152 to protect their monopoly profits. On our Community Broadband Bits podcast, Ken Fellman and Jeff Wilson, prominent telecom attorneys, recount how lobbyists for the monopoly ISPs were instrumental in pushing two false, but effective, narratives we’ve seen many times before: that SB-152 only sought to “level the playing field” so that private companies could compete with municipally run networks, and that SB-152 “protected” Coloradoans from irresponsible local governments, as if there were no such things as local elections.

But, if passed, the new proposed legislation (SB-183) – co-sponsored by a bipartisan-ish group of state legislators (10 Democrats and 2 Republicans) – would neuter SB-152 and allow local communities to decide for themselves if they wanted to pursue municipal broadband without needing special permission from the state.

121 Colorado Communities Have Opted Out of Anti-Muni Broadband Preemption Law

More than 121 Colorado cities and towns have now opted out of SB152, a 17-year old state law backed by telecom monopolies greatly restricting the construction and funding of community broadband alternatives.

And the trend shows no sign of slowing down. 

Colorado’s SB152, passed in 2005 after lobbying pressure by Comcast and Centurylink, prohibits the use of municipal or county money for broadband infrastructure without first holding a public vote.

Larimer County, Colorado Applies for NTIA Grant to Expand Broadband to Underserved Areas

In Larimer County, at the northern end of the Front Range in Colorado, county officials are looking to secure between $5 million and $30 million in federal grant money to expand broadband access into underserved areas. Last month, the County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved up to a 10 percent match, or up to $3 million, if the county is awarded the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) grant.

The Fort Collins-based engineering and construction firm Ditesco has been hired by the county to help apply for the grant. Ditesco has a track record in the county for successfully supporting broadband projects, helping both Fort Collins, the seat of Larimer County, and Loveland with the engineering and managing of their networks. 

During a presentation at the county board meeting in early August, Nathan Hoople, senior project manager for Ditesco told the board of commissioners there are 10 high priority areas where these funds could be used. This phase could potentially serve 7,300 premises, with about 3,000 to 4,000 households expected to sign up for county broadband. 

The county’s plan is to fund the expansion of the existing municipal fiber networks in Loveland (Pulse Broadband) and Fort Collins (Fort Collins Conexon) into some of these high priority areas.

“Our strategy is to build from where we have existing service providers and start expanding out,” Mark Pfaffinger, Larimer County Chief Information Officer said at the meeting. “Our goal is not just to stop here, but to fill in all the other areas that are currently identified as areas of need.” 

We’ve been reporting on the push for broadband expansion in Larimer County since 2017 when the county was awarded with a $82,000 grant from the State of Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) Broadband Program to conduct a feasibility study.

Loveland’s Pulse to Extend Fiber to Unconnected Students with Help of Grant

The Thompson School District (TSD), which serves Loveland, Colorado and the surrounding area, just received a $731,000 grant to bring Internet access to families in need in two surrounding communities.

Families living in areas near Big Thompson Canyon and the Lago Vista Mobile Home Park where wireline broadband has been “significantly limited or not available” will see the expansion of Pulse — the city’s municipal fiber network — into those communities, bringing the promise of fast and affordable service in the near future.

The funds to expand the network come from the Connecting Colorado Students Grant Program, passed in 2020 to address the broadband gap for k-12 students and their teachers. School districts, charter schools, and federally recognized Tribes that operate public schools in the state are all eligible for the $20 million pot of money. Priority is given to applications that promise to bring broadband access to high numbers of students enrolled in free and reduced lunch programs who do not have access to wireline broadband, based on American Community Survey data.

The first round of awards in 2020 distributed almost $1.3 million to 25 applicants, with a focus on hotspots and subsidized broadband service. Some of the awards, however, went to new infrastructure, including wireless and wireline projects that will ultimately benefit thousands of students and their families. 

Bringing Students Online

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