The latest addition to our Community Broadband Network Map is Indianola, Iowa. The Indianola Municipal Utilities own a network that a private partner, MCG, presently uses to offer services to commercial companies. Come summer, the network will begin serving residents also.
Indianola is the county seat of Warren County and has a population pushing 15,000. Back in 1998, the city had a referendum before building a fiber ring. The utility first used its telecommunications capacity for SCADA applications and public safety communications but began using spare capacity to benefit local businesses after 2005.
Indianola describes its network as open access but the network only has one provider. Nonetheless, it serves 70 commercial customers and is presently expanding. It is not available on citywide basis yet and further rollout will be on an incremental basis over many years.
In the open access arragement, service providers have to come to an agreement with the utility on pricing and adequate levels of customer support.
The utility entered the broadband space because incumbent providers Qwest (now CenturyLink) and Mediacom were not meeting local business needs, a familiar story we hear from communities around the country.
Contrary to the common claims of big cable and DSL companies, the city was still willing to work with its telecom competitors -- but it was Mediacom that said it was uninterested in using utility ducts created when parts of town were transitioned from aerial utility service to buried.
In reaction to the competition, Mediacom dropped its business pricing for customers that agreed to long-term contract offerings. IMU (and partner MCG) once had a considerable advantage in pricing but Mediacom's new packages have eroded some of that difference. Fortunately, IMU has a better reputation for service and does not require long term contracts.
One of the biggest benefits to the community is the high-capacity connections at schools, libraries, and public buildings. Schools connect to each other at a gigabit, allowing them to centralize network operations and cut costs. The municipal and county governments gain the same benefits.
Todd Kielkopf, IMU General Manager, told me "You can't put a price tag on what the savings have been."
When I called a local business, EDJE Technologies, that uses the publicly owned network, the owner candidly told me "Qwest is not good enough for us."
Communities like Indianola are smart to invest in broadband to benefit local businesses. It may anger the cable and DSL companies that are used to a non-competitive environment, but it is the only way many local businesses will gain access to the connections they need to be competitive in the digital economy.
A new $4 million project funded by the Appalachian Regional Commission and the U.S. Economic Development Administration will help bring affordable fiber broadband to long underserved parts of West Virginia. The project primarily targets the rural counties of Randolph and Tucker, long stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide.
Selma, Alabama – and parts of 16 other communities in eight different counties – will soon be connected to a new, $230 million open access fiber network that aims to bring affordable broadband to historically marginalized sections of the Yellowhammer State. The deployment comes courtesy of a public private partnership (PPP) the city has struck with Meridiam Infrastructure and Meridiam-owned YellowHammer networks – an agreement that will launch the expansion of fiber access across Alabama’s Black Belt region.
Four different Alabama electric cooperatives receive nearly $35 million in grant funding to expand fiber access to more than 11,092 rural Alabama homes and businesses. Meanwhile, the big incumbents operating in the state, Charter and Mediacom rake in lion's share of the rest of the state's federal Capital Projects Fund.
Ottawa County, Michigan officials say they’ve struck a new public private partnership (PPP) with 123Net on a $25 million fiber deployment that aims to bring more uniform – and affordable – broadband access to Michigan’s seventh largest county by population.
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.
Eagle, Idaho is preparing to connect the first of the city’s 32,000 residents to a new, municipally-owned open access fiber network. The project, which the city says will take between five to 10 years to complete, is being heavily funded by federal grants, and aims to meaningfully boost broadband competition – and affordable access – citywide.