Image
Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
Loveland, Colorado, Conducts Interest Survey
By
on
It’s been almost two years since 82 percent of Loveland voters chose to opt out of Colorado’s restrictive SB 152. Last fall, the community started working with a consultant on a feasibility study and now, residents and businesses are being asked to complete a second survey to gauge interest in the potential for connectivity offered by the city.
One Step At A Time
Loveland, a community of about 69,000 people in the southeast corner of the state, completed a survey last year, which revealed that 56 percent of residents and 37 percent of businesses feel incumbents are not meeting their connectivity needs. Affordability is a big factor for both sectors with lack of capacity and reliability following close behind. Residents reported they were also unhappy with customer service. Within both sets of respondents, a high percentage showed interest in obtaining service directly from the city or from a private provider working with the city.
This summer, the city released an RFP, hoping to elicit interest from the private sector for potential partners to help them develop a municipal fiber network. Read the full text of the RFP here.
Many premises in Loveland subscribe to cable from Comcast, which faces little or no competition from services other than DSL at much slower speeds. Resident Roger Ison wrote to the Reporter Herald recently encouraging residents and business owners to participate in the survey:
Comcast reaches enough Lovelanders to set the market price for high-speed service here. Competition and citywide access are inadequate because no other competitor has deployed a modern, high-performance network that reaches most potential subscribers.
Ison pointed out one of the positive side effects of municipal Internet infrastructure - its influence on incumbent pricing. When competition comes into a community in the form of a publicly owned network, incumbents that may have been setting rates unchecked suddenly reexamine their prices. The same holds true for customer service. It isn’t only munis that offer locals a respite from inflated prices, any competition has a positive impact on rates. Ison referred to a 2016 report from the Analysis Group that showed the pattern of better services and better rates in areas where competition exists.
Loveland Is A Low Priority
Ison points out that Loveland is spread out and low-density, which makes it a low priority for Comcast or any other large, national ISP. He knows that upgrades now - or in the future when residents and businesses will need them even more - are a long shot from a company serving a limited market. He goes on to say that the city is considering future-proof technology with a fiber optic network. "Its enormous capacity would eliminate speed and reliability problems for the foreseeable future," he writes.
Loveland is still undecided about whether or not investing in a fiber optic network is right for them and the results of this interest survey could strongly influence the outcome. The results will weigh heavily on the price of services and whether or not they feel the project has a chance at success.
Ison writes:
The case for a municipal fiber-optic utility is more complex than just access, competition and speed. But the best price Loveland could offer will depend on the number of subscribers and what they're willing to pay, so take that survey! The city's website has good information about the survey and the broadband investigation.
Check out Loveland's residential survey and business survey. They have also posted documents relating to their broadband project on the city's website.
Related Stories
Anti Muni Broadband Budget Amendment Gets Nixed in New York
Advocates for better Internet access are breathing a sigh of relief in New York as the State Assembly nixed a budget bill amendment that would have undermined the state’s municipal broadband grant program.
Joplin, Missouri Strikes Partnership With ALLO Fiber To Beef Up Local Broadband Competition
Joplin, Missouri has announced a new broadband public-private partnership (PPP) with ALLO Fiber that should help boost competition and lower rates across the city of 52,000. The partnership poses a particular challenge to regional cable giant CableOne, which currently enjoys a monopoly over broadband access across a whopping 83 percent of the city.
New Resource Alert: Rising Tide of Municipal Broadband Networks Fact Sheet
As the municipal broadband movement continues to gain momentum, here is a new fact sheet that highlights the dramatic surge in the building of publicly-owned, locally controlled high-speed Internet infrastructure. We also unveil a new map of municipal broadband networks across U.S.
Chicopee Massachusetts Takes ‘Fiberhood’ Approach To City Fiber Rollout
The city-owned utility in Chicopee, Massachusetts has adopted the “fiberhood” approach to broadband deployment as it expands affordable access to city residents under the Crossroads Fiber brand. Chicopee Electric Light launched Crossroads Fiber in the summer of 2019 and since then the utility has been expanding access steadily to the rest of the city.
Massachusetts and New York Look To Make Affordable Housing Broadband Ready
Massachusetts and New York officials hope to entice affordable housing property owners with new grant programs that would pay the retrofitting costs to expand high-speed Internet connectivity into decades-old affordable housing developments. Given that many of these multi-dwelling units (MDUs) were built before the advent of the Internet, a significant number of low-income tenants are living in buildings that are not wired to support reliable broadband connections or where residents can’t afford monopoly provider prices.
NextLight in Longmont, Colorado Expands Beyond City Borders
Longmont, Colorado’s community-owned NextLight broadband network has now crossed north of Colorado Highway 66, outside of city limits. Longmont officials say this latest expansion is being financed entirely by subscriber revenues and money set aside for capital projects, with no bonding or other supplementary funds involved.