Some of the nation’s leading thinkers and doers in the community broadband sector will connect and collaborate in the nation’s capital for the inaugural Community First: The Future of Public Broadband Conference and Hill Day next week.

Slated for May 14 and 15, the two-day conference is being hosted by the American Association for Public Broadband (AAPB) and New America Open Technology Institute (OTI), in partnership with ILSR's Community Broadband Networks Initiative, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, and the Community Broadband Action Network.

The in-person gathering will bring together public broadband champions, community leaders, policymakers, and industry experts to focus on strategy and advocacy in the face of potentially dramatic changes to the $42.5 billion BEAD program – the single-largest federal investment to ensure every household in the nation has access to high speed Internet connectivity.

Registration and tickets are still available here.

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With the rise of community-owned broadband networks and cooperatives now flourishing across the nation, organizers are hoping to create “an essential space to share best practices, discuss financing, shape public policy, and support the development and expansion of public broadband networks.”

The City of Centennial, Colorado is making steady inroads bringing affordable fiber Internet service to the city of 106,000, leveraging its city-owned fiber backbone and a partnership with the Charlottesville, VA.-based fiber provider Ting.

Just south of Denver – in a city known for its high-tech industry, craft breweries, and family-friendly neighborhoods – voter-approved efforts to get out from under the thumb of regional monopolies has driven a surge of competition, most recently exemplified by Ting’s continued delivery of affordable gigabit fiber.

Ting Public Affairs manager Deb Walker told ISLR that while the company couldn’t break out specific details on the number of passed fiber locations in the Centennial market, they’re making inroads on fiber deployments across Colorado.

“Now that Ting has city-wide networks built or under construction in three markets in the Denver region (Centennial, Greenwood Village and Thornton), and they share certain operational resources, we report progress on those markets together in our quarterly Ting Build Scorecard,” Walker said.

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“At the end of the first quarter of 2024, we had almost 31,000 serviceable addresses in the region, mostly in Centennial as we’re just starting the other two markets,” she added.

In 2021 Ting also unveiled the construction of a new 16,000 square foot office complex and data center, Walker said. Ting is also collaborating with Colorado Springs Utilities, which is building a fiber network throughout the city and connecting local homes and businesses.

Golden, Colorado has struck a new right-of-way agreement with Google Fiber that should expedite the competitive delivery of affordable fiber to the city of 20,000.

The deal gives Google Fiber non-exclusive access to public right-of-way to build a commercial broadband network, though it delivers no guarantee of uniform access across the entire city.

In a memo to the Golden City Council, Chief Innovation and Technology Officer Jiles McCoy said the city’s new agreement “would act as a template for any future companies wishing to build broadband services in the Golden right of way.”

The move comes after years of discussion in the city as to how to improve local broadband competition, reduce prices, and expand affordable access.

In 2016, Golden residents voted to opt out of a now defunct state law, ghost written by regional broadband monopolies, restricting the construction and operation of community owned and operated broadband networks. Last year Colorado leaders finally eliminated the law completely, opening the door to greater expansion of community-owned networks.

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In 2019 the city completed a feasibility study showing that the construction of a full city-owned fiber network would cost $37 million. Instead of tackling the entire project at once, advisers recommended the city proceed in phases, beginning with the construction of a $3.8 million, 10.5 mile fiber ring connecting key community anchor institutions.

As the new year begins, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) announced today its latest tally of municipal broadband networks which shows a dramatic surge in the number of communities building publicly-owned, locally controlled high-speed Internet infrastructure over the last three years.

Since January 1, 2021, at least 47 new municipal networks have come online with dozens of other projects still in the planning or pre-construction phase, which includes the possibility of building 40 new municipal networks in California alone.

Colorado Springs, Colorado and its city-owned utility have begun construction on the second phase of a promising open access fiber optic network that should bring affordable fiber broadband to the city of half a million residents.

Construction of the network by Springs Utilities began in the first region in September 2022, shortly after the city-owned utility struck a 25-year lease agreement with Ting to be the network anchor tenant. Once completed, the network aims to deliver multi-gigabit service to roughly 200,000 homes, businesses, and city anchor institutions.

Local residents can pre-order service via the Ting website, but the company has yet to announce pricing or service tiers for its Colorado Springs deployment.

Brian Wortinger, Manager of fiber optics and telecommunications for Springs Utilities, told ILSR that the first phase of deployment passed 21,000 homes in the first fiber hut reason.

“Take rate is not a consideration for us, as we will lease 100 percent of the addresses to our anchor tenant, Ting Internet,” Wortinger said when asked about subscriber interest. “Their degree of success in obtaining customers has no impact on the revenues that we will generate through our dark fiber lease with them or any other tenant.”

The first phase of the network construction began in September of 2022, resulting in 225 new fiber route miles between I-25 and North Powers Boulevard. The second phase of the deployment began in June, and is focusing on the Rockrimmon neighborhood in Northwest Colorado Springs across I-25.

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Overall, project managers say they are only slightly behind their original projected schedule.

For the past four consecutive years, community owned and/or operated broadband infrastructure has proven to be a key ingredient in the makings of some of the fastest Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the nation.

As was the case last year, PCMag’s recently released Top 10 list of “The Fastest ISPs of 2022” feature operators that are either municipal broadband networks or use city-owned fiber or conduit to deliver service across whole or parts of their footprint (with the exception of this year’s ninth-place finisher). Another way of saying that is: not one of 10 fastest networks in the nation are owned or operated by the major national ISPs, many of whom have embarked on an aggressive lobbying campaign to misinform public officials in particular and the public in general on the viability and successes of municipal broadband and local partnerships.

After ranking the major ISPs in their own slower category, PCMag turns to “talk about real speed.” 

For that, you don’t go to the big guys … Higher speeds are found in smaller, localized ISPs.

Need for Speed? Look to Local ISPs and Munis

After PCMag compiled a year’s worth of speed tests to analyze which ISPs offer the fastest download and upload speeds, Sonic – a California-based independent ISP – came out on top this year, having “posted the highest number we have ever seen in our test results. Because the uploads this company offers are, on average, eclipsing download speeds—by a lot.”

Catapulting to the top of this year’s list (from 10th place last year), Sonic is a privately-owned company that uses publicly owned conduit in Brentwood, California.

Back in January, Colorado Springs Utilities (CSU) announced it was going to begin building a city-wide, open access fiber network owned, and that Ting would be its first anchor tenant. Construction of the network is expected to begin in the third quarter of this year, with a target completion date of 2028 (originally planned for fifteen years). The network will provide multi-gigabit service to roughly 200,000 homes as well as city businesses and anchor institutions. It’s still early in the process, but projections at the moment have the utility spending $45 million to $100 million a year for the next six years to complete the project. The first phase will see 225 new fiber route miles laid.

CSU Has Long Used Fiber

For thirty years CSU has built fiber across Colorado’s second-largest city. CSU’s dramatic  expansion of this existing network directly benefits the utility by reducing overall costs, improving infrastructure monitoring, and boosting overall utility network resiliency. And it all will come with no rate increases to CSU electric customers.

But the company’s decision to lease access to this fiber expansion also directly aids the local community by lowering consumer utility costs, and delivering universal, affordable, high-speed Internet access. It’s a significant boon to Colorado’s second largest city that’s now an attractive, high-tech growth market. 

Join Us Thursday, February 3rd at 5pm ET, For A Reality Check: Scaling Networks in 2022 - Episode 31 of the Connect This! Show.

In this episode of the Connect This! Show, co-hosts Christopher and Travis Carter (USI Fiber) are joined by Monica Webb (Ting) and Robert Boyle (Planet Networks) to talk about the realities of expanding network infrastructure in 2022.

The panel will dig into supply chain issues, challenges faced in scaling up, and what type of partnerships help grow networks quickly.

Subscribe to the show using this feed on YouTube Live or here on Facebook Live, or visit ConnectThisShow.com.

Email us broadband@muninetworks.org with feedback and ideas for the show. Watch here on YouTube Live, here on Facebook live, or below.

In an April press release, SiFi Networks announced that they will be developing a privately funded open access Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network in Fullerton, California. The project will serve the city of approximately 140,000 people, with ISPs using the SiFi fiber network  to compete for subscribers. 

Getting Commitments 

SiFi approached Fullerton in 2013 after the city’s bid to bring Google Fiber to town didn’t succeed. City leaders were interested in the prospect of bringing a FTTH network to the community as an economic development tool and, after bringing the proposal to the city council, decided they wanted to work with SiFi. The project aligned with several aspects of the community’s Fullerton Plan, a revitalization and economic development master plan.

As part of the discussions, SiFi informed Fullerton that they would wait to begin construction until after 25-year Right-of-Way (ROW) permits were granted and the company had obtained lease agreements from ISPs who wanted to offer Internet access via the network. As part of the arrangement, SiFi planned to pass every premise, regardless of what type, by the end of 2021. In January 2014, the Fullerton City Council authorized the City Manager to enter into a Negotiation Agreement (NA) with SiFi Networks. Since that time, both parties have been working to fulfill the necessary steps to move ahead with construction. 

Now that funding is in place, ISPs have committed, and permits are prepared, both parties are ready to begin the project.

SiFi will use a microtrenching method to install most of the conduit and will begin with what they call the “pilot phase” located in the southwest corner of the city. SiFi will take the opportunity to refine installation and delivery techniques, allowing the company to more efficiently deploy in the remaining zones around the city. Microtrenching is one of the tools SiFi uses as part of their FOCUS system of deployment.

Project Development and Funding