It’s no small feat to plan, deploy, and operate a municipal citywide Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network, but communities are doing it. We’ve put together a Citywide Municipal FTTH Networks list and a map, with quick facts at your fingertips. If your community is considering such an investment, this list can offer a starting point on discovering similarly situated locations to study.

The list is divided by state and each state heading offers a description of any barriers that exist and a link to the statute in question. Under each community, we also included relevant links such as to the provider’s website, coverage on MuniNetworks.org, and reports or resources about the network.

We used four basic criteria to put a community on our list and map:

• The network must cover at least 80% of a city.
• A local government (city, town, or county) owns the infrastructure.
• It is a Fiber-to-the-Home network.
• It is in the United States. 

Share the list far and wide and if you know of a community network that meets our criteria that we missed, please let us know. Contact H. Trostle at htrostle@ilsr.org to suggest additions.

For more than a century, electric cooperatives have ensured rural communities’ electricity needs are met. Now, many electric co-ops have made strides to ensure their communities have access to today’s newest necessity, Internet service.

In northeastern Missouri, Ralls County Electric Cooperative is bringing high-speed Internet service to the small city of New London. Nearby, the city of Perry hopes the electric cooperative will extend the project to its residents and they've let the co-op know that they will welcome the service with open arms.

Ralls County Electric Cooperative

Ralls County Electric Cooperative is working on a pilot project in New London that will bring incredibly fast and reliable Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) to the community's 1,000 residents. The project will offer triple-play services of Internet access, phone service, and high-definition TV.

The New London project won't be the first FTTH project for Ralls County Electric Cooperative. Between 2010 and 2015, the cooperative built a $19 million fiber network in the area. Funding came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in the form of half as a loan and half as a grant. The electric cooperative formed a subsidiary, known as Ralls Technologies, for its telecommunications projects.

Perry Petitions

The Herald-Whig of Quincy, Illinois (about 45 minutes from the Missouri towns), recently reported that officials in Perry are encouraging Ralls County Electric Cooperative to come to their town. They have started a petition to show support for bringing the project to their community. 

Ralls County Electric Cooperative has not committed to extending the project to Perry, but the city’s Mayor Dustin Wasson has signed a letter of support on behalf of the City Council to the electric cooperative. Explaining the need, Mayor Wasson told the Herald-Whig:

Missouri law has severely restricted municipal networks, but local entrepreneurs decided to create their own fast, affordable, reliable community connectivity. The City of Cape Girardeau has made new plans in its Marquette Tech District: free public Wi-Fi and a tech-hub for startups. Although the city is already home to more than 100 large employers, city officials want to also encourage small businesses and entrepreneurship. Underneath all the possibilities is publicly owned dark fiber.

The Marquette Tech District will utilize the City of Cape Girardeau’s dark fiber to connect the new tech-hub and provide free public Wi-Fi. The project hopes to bring new vitality to the Marquette Tower building, a center of the city's old economy, transforming it into a space for new technology-based companies. Local entrepreneurs have created a nonprofit to develop the project and the local Internet Service Provider (ISP) Big River Communications is on board. The city, meanwhile, owns the essential infrastructure - the fiber.

A Nonprofit Drives Development

The Southeast Missourian has followed the development of the project since its inception. From the planning process to obtaining grants, the newspaper has unraveled the complex collaborations across several institutions and levels of government.

The City of Cape Girardeau, population 40,000, has always been a regional commercial hub on the Mississippi River in southern Missouri. In the late 1920s, travelers could stay downtown at the upscale Marquette Tower hotel. More than 100 employers in the city each provide jobs to more than 100 people, including Southeast Missouri State University and several healthcare systems. Community leaders hope the new tech district will attract and retain young professionals; the university next door is an excellent resource for educating and keeping a talented tech workforce.

This 4th of July weekend invites us to celebrate the accomplishments of our country. But, 23 million people in rural areas remain without high-speed Internet access.

Rural areas cannot stay unconnected. Agriculture has become a high-tech endeavor, and high-speed Internet access is necessary. Cooperatives, those democratic institutions formed by rural farmers years ago, are becoming an answer.

The Founding Fathers considered rural communities the life-blood of the country. In 1785, Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Jay, stated that:

“[C]ultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. they are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, & they are tied to their country & wedded to it’s liberty & interests by the most lasting bands.”

High-Speed Internet Access Supports Agriculture

The Missouri Farmer Today recently wrote ofthe sorry state of rural Internet access for one family-owned business in Missouri, the Perry Agricultural Laboratory. They process soil samples and perform other agricultural testing for both local and international customers but the best connections available are via satellite. The lab constantly goes over its data cap and sometimes cannot send their reports to customers across the globe if the weather interferes with their signal. A high-speed cable runs along the edge of the property, but the company would have to pay $40,000 to connect to it.

Since we alerted our audience to the shenanigans surrounding Missouri’s HB 2078, a couple of other news medias have picked up the story and reported on the dramatic end of session climax. As we rest in the glow of the denouement, we want to provide a follow up for those who may have missed the final outcome and offer some words from Jim Baller, who was deep in the trenches.

Here's What Happened...

If you have not yet heard, the language from HB 2078 was ultimately not adopted by the Missouri State Legislature. Whew. Readers probably recall that, when HB 2078 stalled on its own, the author of HB 2078, Rep. Lyndall Fraker slipped some of the more damaging language into SB 765, a traffic ticket bill that had nothing to do with municipal networks.

Fortunately, advocates of municipal networks had been able to educate Members who were part of the appropriate conference committee. Those elected officials decided to remove the language from SB 765 before final passage. Anti-muni Members also attempted to amend the language into a third bill, HB 1912, which concerned county buildings. The sponsor of the amendment then turned around and chose to strip out the language that began in HB 2078 from his amendment, once he learned that its inclusion would have sparked a filibuster and killed the entire amendment.

A Tough Fight That Isn't Over

Jim Baller, the nation’s leading telecommunications attorney who was directly involved with defeating the bill told Communications Daily:

Rural electric cooperatives have decades of experience in providing essential services. Now several are looking to improve Internet access in unserved and underserved regions. In central Missouri, Barry Electric Cooperative and Co-Mo Cooperative have already started by providing Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Internet service. Another Missouri electric co-op, Callaway Electric Cooperative, is also getting into the business.

The co-op’s subsidiary, Callaway Electric Service, aims to offer FTTH in Callaway County and has teamed up with the local telephone co-op’s subsidiary, Kingdom Technology Solutions. Together, they will operate the partnership as Callabyte Technology.

Increasing Speeds and Access

Callabyte Technology will offer symmetrical Internet access speeds (i.e. the same upload and download speed). They will also offer telephone and video service as a triple-play package. Their “basic” speed is 100 Megabits per second (Mbps), four times faster than the FCC’s current download speed for the definition of broadband (25 Mbps download and 3 Mpbs upload). Prices are competitive:

• $65 for 100 Mbps
• $75 for 500 Mbps
• $95 for a Gigabit (1000 Megabits) per second

In the fall of 2015, they began a pilot project in a small section of Callaway Electric Cooperative’s service area, which took place in the Stonehaven Subdivision near Fulton, Missouri. Telecompetitor reported that the project had a 50 percent take rate. 

Sharing Expertise and Profit

The direct assault stalled but now anti-muni legislators in Missouri are going for the flank.

If The Bill Ain't No Good...

In February we learned about Missouri bill HB 2078, the latest legislative attack on municipal networks. Since our story, it has passed through the House committees on Utility Infrastructure and the Select Committee on Utilities. The bill seems to have lost momentum since mid-March but its sponsor, Rep. Lyndall Fraker, is taking another approach to make sure his bill gets passed, come hell or high water. Session ends May 13th, so he is now banking on procedural tricks, rather than the substance of his legislation.

On May 2nd, when a bill relating to traffic citations, SB 765, came before the body, Fracker proposed to amend it with language from HB 2078. Some of the amended language is even more destructive than the original proposal in HB 2078. 

SB 765 had already passed the Senate with a 32 - 0 vote.

Advocates in Missouri report that, even though a number of Democrats wanted to strike the language as not germane to the substance of the bill, the Republican leadership presiding over the session would not recognize them so they could not move to strike the amendments. Fraker’s amendments were passed by only four votes, even though the House is controlled by an overwhelming majority of Republican Representatives. 

Now, SB 765 goes back to the Senate for further approval after the Fraker amendments. Considering the outcome in the House, it's possible that an expression from voters can influence the ultimate outcome of this bill. This is the time when a phone call to your elected official can change the course of connectivity.

Express Yourself

If you don’t know who represents you in the Senate or House, you can use the Missouri Legislator Lookup to obtain names, phone numbers, and email addresses. You can also contact the sponsors of SB 765 and explain how you feel about amendments that do not relate to the substance of their bill and urge them to clean up their legislation by striking the amendments themselves.

A Missouri electric cooperative has set out to bring fast, affordable, reliable connectivity to its members. Barry Electric Cooperative began deploying its Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network on February 1st throughout Barry County. 

Barry Electric Cooperative is on track to enact its 5-year fiber network plan, mixing aerial and underground deployment, in eight phases. To manage the operation, the cooperative has created a subsidiary called goBEC. 

Fiber in the Sky and Under the Feet

goBEC’s manager JR Smith explained to the Cassville Democrat:

"Our plan is to give every BEC member the availability to high-speed broadband service by installing a fiber optic cable directly into each home and business. That will be close to 1,100 miles of fiber."

Although a daunting task, goBEC already has a head start. It’s already overcome two recurring hurdles in the deployment of new fiber networks: Rights-of-Way regulation and utility pole access. Barry Electric Cooperative owns all the utility poles and has access to the necessary Rights-of-Way for the project. While underground deployment can protect fiber optic cable from squirrels and storms, connecting the cables to utility poles can speed-up network deployment. The cooperative will bury some fiber underground when necessary, but its service territory is large. goBEC wants to move quickly to get members connected ASAP so will bury and hang fiber.

Co-op members have been asking for better Internet access since 2010, and the cooperative hopes to have the first phase completed by late Fall 2016. They will offer triple-play (phone, TV, and high quality Internet access). All speeds are symmetrical, so speeds are the same on the download and the upload.

The co-op plans to make the most of the new speed enabled by FTTH. From the Democrat:

Smith said pricing is not yet available, but the lowest Internet service package will be 250 megabytes per second, and there will be broadband Internet service offered.

"That is 250Mbps up and 250Mbps down, he said. "Our highest Internet package will be 1 [gigabyte per second].

Dear Readers: Since I first wrote this story with my attempt to analyze this bill, I have revisited my earlier interpretation. If you read this bill analysis before, you will notice some changes.

It is starting to become an annual pilgrimage to Jefferson City. Each year, House and Senate leaders on the telecom industry dole, introduce the same anti-competition bill.

This year the bill we are watching is HB 2078 in the House, yet another AT&T bill. We briefly introduced you to it in January when we requested you call Republican Representative Lyndall Fraker and the other Members of the House Utility Infrastructure Committee. Fraker is Chair of the Committee, often an indication that the committee will hear the bill.

AT&T donated $20,000 to the House Republican Campaign Committee, reports Ars Technica. Even though the check was deposited on February 15, 2016, Ars learned it was actually donated in September 2015, before session began. Regardless of when the money was donated, it is notable that AT&T contributed a total of $62,500 to political committees in Missouri, a place where the incumbent does not shy away from flexing its lobbying influence.

Last year, HB 437 was introduced and, after opposition from a number of private entities and public sector representatives, stalled in the House. Many of HB 437's anti-competitive characteristics are resurrected this year in HB 2078.

There are many things we don't like about this bill because it forces local governments to hold expensive referendums, dictates how they spend local revenue, and decrees cryptic rules that discourage partnerships with private providers.

"Competitive Services"

If you pay attention to state laws affecting municipal networks in Missouri, you are experiencing an unsettling feeling of deja vu right now. On January 7, Representative Lyndall Fraker introduced HB 2078, a bill much like last year's Senate anti-muni bill. Fraker is Chair of the House Utility Infrastructure Committee, where  the bill is now awaiting a hearing, so it has a good chance of being heard sooner rather than later. 

Your Phone Call Required! 

Time to call Members of the Committee, especially if any of them represent you, and let them know that you expect them to vote against this bill. It is anti-competitive, opposed to local authority, and prevents new investment. Bad bill! 

Preventing Partnerships to Maintain The Status Quo

This bill would not only make it extremely difficult for local communities to invest in publicly owned Internet networks, but would complicate and delay public-private partnerships. A number of communities across the country already own infrastructure and are exploring ways to partner with private providers who want to use it to serve schools, businesses, and residents. If a community wants to lower telecommunications costs or obtain better services, this legislation would have them first jump through a series of obscure, expensive, and cryptic hoops. This legislation creates barriers that serve no purpose except to erect hurdles that discourage local communities from finding better providers.