The high-speed, municipal fiber network in Westminster, Maryland, (pop. 18,000) is making possible another intriguing resource service for the community’s businesses and residents.

In May, Westminster officials and the city’s fiber network partner, Ting, held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the coming this fall of the first Ting Makerspace, a service featuring 3-D scanning technology, including “an electronic router that can carve digital designs into physical objects and laser engraving," reports the Carroll County Times. 

Ting Makerspace And 3D Printing

The Times story notes:

The 3-D scanner “takes any object smaller than a sofa and records the shapes and contours using light patterns, digitizing it,” according to the news story. Then, the digital rendition can be printed on a mini 3-D printer, “which can scale down the scanned object or print original computer designs. The 3-D printer ejects layers of heated, rapidly cooling plastic to create plastic models of these designs.” The newspaper reported that the subscription fee for using the 3-D scanner will be $5 a day, $30 a month or $300 a year. 

The Makerspace will encourage development from local entrepreneurs who would not otherwise have access to affordable 3-D scanning technology.

Westminster Municipal Fiber Network 

With only about 150 full-time residents, it’s hard to get the big ISPs to pay attention to you, especially when you are situated in forest-covered mountains. The people of Mount Washington, Massachusetts, realize that if they want high-quality connectivity, they have to do it themselves. At a special town meeting in May, voters unanimously approved funding for a municipal Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network.

Flying Solo In Western Mass

Earlier this year, the small community obtained legal authority to move forward on the project without establishing a Municipal Light Plant (MLP). State law requires municipalities to establish an MLP as the public entity to administer a city’s publicly owned network. Mount Washington considered it an unnecessary and burdensome requirement for such a small community; the legislature agreed. Since they decided not to join the Wired West Cooperative, which requires member towns to establish MLPs, they don't need one. 

Mount Washington officials released a Request for Proposals (RFP) in the spring and received seven responses. The town selected a firm to construct the network, for which they have already set aside $250,000 from the town’s stabilization fund. At the May town meeting, voters approved an additional $450,000 in borrowing and selectmen are working with a financial advisor to review options.

Selectman Brian Tobin told the Berkshire Edge that the community expects to be eligible for funding from the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI); town officials are talking with the agency. The state organization announced that it will be working closely with Massachusetts towns on a case-by-case basis to disburse approximately $50 million in sate funding to improve connectivity. 

“Mount Washington Is Ready To Go”

This is Part 2 in a four part series about the Click network in Tacoma, Washington, where city leaders spent most of 2015 considering a plan to lease out all operations of this municipal network to a private company. Part 2 explores the major reasons why Tacoma Public Utilities has considered the move to lease out all Click operations. Part 1, published on May 31, examines possible plans for Click in the immediate future.

Part 2: TPU’s Challenges with Click

When TPU officials proposed last March to lease the network to a private ISP for 40 years, they cited revenue losses for Click as high as $7.6 million annually, indicated by troubling financial reports in recent years. Some critics, however, such as those with the advocacy group “Stick with Click,” countered that this figure is inaccurate. They say that TPU manufactured the revenue losses through an accounting decision that resulted in a deceptively bleak picture of Click’s financial performance.

To shed light on the disagreement, we're examining relevant facts about Click.

Allocating the Costs of a Shared Infrastructure

When Tacoma first built the Click network in the late 1990s, the Hybrid Fiber Coax (HFC) infrastructure was to support services for two divisions of the TPU: TPU Power and Click. Besides the infrastructure’s function for supporting Click’s services, the city designed the HFC infrastructure to support a smart electrical metering program for TPU Power services.

This dual purpose meant that for accounting purposes, TPU had to allocate the costs of a shared network based how much each division would rely on the network. This cost allocation (a common accounting practice) would assign each division a portion of the original capital construction costs for building the network and a separate portion of the network’s ongoing operations and maintenance (O&M) costs. 

Ultimately, and with the help of an independent consultant, the city settled on cost allocation ratios in 2003, which determined how the TPU would assign capital and O&M costs to each division. TPU Power would pay 73 percent of the capital costs to build the HFC infrastructure; Click would pay the remaining 27 percent. Click would then pay a 76 percent of the network’s ongoing O&M costs, with TPU Power paying the remaining 24 percent of O&M.

This week in The Nation, Peter Moskowitz highlighted some of the nation's fastest municipal networks, bringing these Gig cities to a new level of national awareness. From Sandy, Oregon, to Wilson, North Carolina, and Chattanooga, Moskowitz touted these networks as a main reason the cities have been able to attract entrepreneurs and businesses.

The focus of the article was on Chattanooga's EPB Fiber network, how it propelled the city into the 21st century, and continues to spark innovation. Chattanooga's EPB now boasts a subscribership of 82,000 -- testimony to fast, affordable, reliable connectivity and good customer service.

“Really, these last two years you’ve seen it pick up steam,” said Christopher Mitchell, the director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). “It’s just going to keep on spreading.”

Six years ago, Chattanooga was the only city offering publicly owned 1-gigabit Internet. Today, over 50 communities do, according to ILSR, and there are over 450 communities in the United States offering some form of publically owned Internet. Many municipal networks are in small towns and rural areas where private high-speed Internet is hard to come by. But several dozen are in cities like Chattanooga, where there are other, private options for internet that tend to be much more expensive and slower than what governments have proven they can provide.

While the Internet network is one of many things Chattanooga is doing right, the option to obtain Gigabit per second (Gbps) service for only $70 per month is a big bonus. Other communities see Chattanooga's success and are starting to replicate their own affordable Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Gig plans.

Read full article

Sandpoint, Idaho, located in the state’s panhandle, is likely to host Ting’s Internet service over publicly owned Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) infrastructure. All that remains is for the service provider to determine that the demand exists in the anticipated service area of approximately 9,700 people. In addition to residents and businesses in Sandpoint, properties in nearby Dover, Ponderay, and Kootenai are anticipated potential subscribers.

Sandpoint, Idaho

Approximately 7,500 people live in the city, which is the Bonner County Seat. The community is popular as a ski resort town and is located on Lake Pend Oreille. In addition to tourism, the manufacturing, aerospace, software, and healthcare industries are important employers in Sandpoint. It covers approximately 4.8 square miles and, five years ago, was named “most Beautiful Small Town” by Rand McNally and USA Today.

Seeking Assistance Moving Forward

The city has recently issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) to find a firm to propose a plan to make the best use of their existing dark fiber network. According to the RFP, Sandpoint is looking for consultants to help them engage in conversations with stakeholders and providers, determine the city’s assets, use their assets for maximum economic development, and a variety of other tasks.

Sandpoint has had an existing conduit system in place for some time but, according to the RFP, has not been “proofed” and may not be suitable for larger cables. The city also has an underground fiber backbone and is in the process of installing more fiber-optic cable.

Bonner County also owns conduit within Sandpoint that can be accessed as part of the town’s project. The RFP describes more conduit in and around the city and Sandpoint’s preliminary plans to use it to improve local connectivity.

Important dates:

This is Part 1 in a four part series about the Click network in Tacoma, Washington, where city leaders spent most of 2015 considering a plan to lease out all operations of this municipal network to a private company. Part 1 explains Tacoma's plans for Click's immediate future.

Part 1: Tacoma Votes to Explore Keeping Click!

2015 was a tense year for Tacoma Click, the nearly 20-year-old municipal network in this city of about 200,000 just south of Seattle. In March of 2015, Tacoma Public Utilities (TPU) announced it was considering a proposal to sign a 40-year agreement to lease out the network to a private Internet Service Provider (ISP). But after months of deliberations, the Tacoma City Council decided in December with a resounding 8-0 vote at the last City Council meeting of the year to explore what the city calls their “all in” option: a plan which, if implemented, would include technological upgrades and major structural changes to the business model aimed at preserving Click as a municipally-owned network.

When Tacoma Click, one of the first municipal networks in the U.S., launched its Hybrid Fiber Cable (HFC) system in 1999, the network provided Internet speeds that were among the fastest in the country. For the past two decades, Tacoma Click has provided community anchor institutions, businesses, and residents in Tacoma with access to retail Cable TV service and wholesale Internet and phone service. 

Click has never managed to pay for itself. However, nothing in Click’s financial reports can account for the municipal network’s numerous indirect contributions (both economic and otherwise) and overall value to the Tacoma community as a whole. There are also promising signs that the network is positioned for future growth.

Taking Sides

Businesses in Idaho Falls have access to the city’s municipal fiber network, Circa, but now the city council is considering how to bring better connectivity to residents.

How Best To Use What We Have

In order to get a better idea of what options are available and the costs of each, in 2015 city leaders engaged two consulting firms to evaluate a citywide Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) option, an open access network option, how commercial providers may step up to better serve the city, or the city taking on the role as Internet Service Provider (ISP). They are now beginning to evaluate those results.

Private providers have leased Circa dark fibers for years to connect local businesses and businesses themselves have worked directly with Idaho Falls Power, the entity that manages the network. “We have enjoyed a successful public/private partnership in our fiber optic enterprise for well over a decade,” said Jackie Flowers, General Manager, in a recent Local 8 News article.

Nevertheless, city leaders are keeping their eye on tomorrow. From another Local 8 News article:

"We're tripling our broadband needs every few years," said Jackie Flowers, the general manager of Idaho Falls Power that manages the network. "That exponential growth, for us to be thinking about the long term, how are we going to meet those needs?"

Seven ISPs are now using the network to serve approximately 400 businesses in Idaho Falls. The publicly owned infrastructure provides voice, video, and data with Gigabit per second capacity. The city began developing the network in 2002 and began serving customers in 2007 via more than 170 miles of fiber-optic cable throughout the city. In addition to saving the community by reducing telecommunications costs, the network has generated revenue.

City leaders in Idaho Falls are conscious of the value of the asset they have now and smart to consider the future. As they did in 2002, they are looking ahead so they don’t have to play catch-up later on. Consultants put early estimates for a citywide expansion and upgrade at approximately $60 million but: