Hidden among stories of small town decline are places like Tuttle, Oklahoma, a city of more than 7,000 which has continued to grow in defiance of the dominant narrative. Tuttle, located about 30 miles southwest of Oklahoma City, has experienced a “53 percent increase in residential growth since 1990," and within the next ten years, city officials expect Tuttle to nearly double in size.

However, connectivity wasn’t keeping pace with Tuttle’s growth. Most people were stuck with slow DSL or even slower fixed wireless Internet access. After existing providers demanded massive subsidies to connect the city, Tuttle decided in 2017 to build its own gigabit Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network. By choosing municipal ownership, Tuttle City Council has ensured that all residents and businesses will have access to fast, affordable, reliable connectivity now and well into the future.

Public Ownership Solution to Poor Connectivity

After the city’s cable provider shut down ten years ago, many Tuttle residents were left with no access to high-speed broadband. “The local WISP [wireless Internet service provider] was the only option for most offering, at best, 3 Mbps speeds during non-peak times,” Tuttle City Manager Tim Young shared in an email. Some people in the city’s downtown also had access to slightly faster DSL from AT&T, but neither provider was upgrading or investing in its network.

The lack of fast, reliable broadband impacted the city’s ability to retain new residents. Young explained that newcomers would sometimes leave Tuttle after only two or three years because of poor connectivity.

For years, the city attempted to partner with private Internet access providers, including the incumbent WISP, to expand broadband access but to no avail. “No one was willing to serve the entire community without substantial cash infusions from the taxpayers,” said Young.

Ultimately, the city decided to create its own FTTH network, Tuttle Fiber, which is owned by the Tuttle Development Authority, an entity established for the project. “If the City will be required to infuse significant cash resources to construct a true fiber-to-the-premises system, then the City should in fact own and operate the system,” Young described city council’s reasoning. Public ownership ensures that...

By this July, the South Hadley Electric Light Department (SHELD) expects to begin serving the the first subscribers to Fibersonic, the town’s municipal Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network. Construction, which began in January, is rolling along and SHELD anticipates the citywide project will be completed within four years.

Showing Their Interest

SHELD is signing up subscribers now on the Fibersonic website. Residents who express the desire for the service will also help SHELD see which of the town’s 32 fiberhoods are more likely to gather more subscribers at a rapid rate and can help determine which areas are connected first. The first two areas where construction crews are working are the Ridge Road and Old Lyman Road areas. Each fiberhood will serve approximately 250 to 300 subscribers.

Check out the Fibersonic map, which SHELD will keep updated for the community, to see where construction occurs.

Sean Fitzgerald, who came to SHELD from Westfield Gas + Electric (WG+E), says that the intense interest from the South Hadley public reflects the lack of competition in town. Comcast offers Internet access in South Hadley, along with cable TV and voice services.

“There’s a tremendous amount of interest. Customers are giving us a lot of positive feedback. There’re very hungry to have competition, to have options,” Fitzgerald said, “a chance to pick from different vendors versus having to choose one.”

SHELD offers one level of service: symmetrical gigabit connectivity for $74.95 per month. If subscribers enroll in autopay, the monthly rate drops to $70 per month. There’s no installation fee and the municipal utility offers a seasonal discount for subscribers who will be away from their homes for three to six months.

Like other municipal networks that have been launched in the past few years, Fibersonic won’t offer video. With more people cord cutting and an increasing number of streaming services available...

On Friday, April 26th from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM, NC Broadband Matters will host its 2nd Annual NC Hearts Gigabit Interactive at the North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center in Raleigh. The event will showcase why broadband access is critically important to urban and rural communities in North Carolina for workforce development and technology innovation.

Register online for the event.

In late 2012, over thirty communities came together in Wilson, North Carolina, over a series of lunches to discuss ways in which to bring more gigabit fiber Internet to the state. By 2016, these talks had turned into formal action and became known as the NC Hearts Gigabit campaign. The following year, the nonprofit NC Broadband Matters was formed to function as the campaign’s coordinating body. Since its inception, NC Broadband Matters has worked to bring together both private and public stakeholders to promote statewide affordable, fast, and reliable Internet. 

With a full agenda covering various aspects of broadband policy and finance, the 2nd Annual NC Hearts Gigabit Interactive is one more way that NC Broadband Matters is working to educate stakeholders on why fast Internet is the future. Harvard Law School Professor Susan Crawford, who recently discussed her new book Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution and Why America Might Miss It on our Community Broadband Bits podcast, will be the keynote speaker of the event.

You can review the full agenda to learn more about specific panel discussions. To help spread the word, feel free to download and share this promotional flyer.

To hear Susan Crawford’s discussion about how cheap and reliable fiber Internet access can revolutionize our country in person, register here. If you can’t make it to the Interactive,...

Lincoln, Nebraska, home of the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers, will soon boast another fan favorite — a citywide fiber network that will make gigabit speeds available to all residents and businesses.

The City of Lincoln and ALLO Communications, a Nebraska-based Internet service provider (ISP), are approaching the end of the deployment phase of their partnership aimed at building fiber out to every home and business in the city of about 285,000. To expand the fiber network, ALLO has leased access to Lincoln’s extensive conduit system, which hastened the buildout and lowered costs. With only minor construction remaining, all of Lincoln will soon have access to fast, affordable, reliable gigabit connectivity.

In November, ALLO’s President Brad Moline announced that the company would be “substantially done with boring and conduit placement” by the end of 2018. After that step, which is considered the most intrusive of the construction process, ALLO stated that they still needed to connect approximately 3,000 - 4,000 homes to fiber.

City Owned Conduit Leads the Way

Lincoln began its conduit project in earnest in 2012, taking advantage of downtown redevelopment to deploy conduit along public Rights-of-Way. As of 2016, the city had spent approximately $1.2 million building and maintaining the 300-mile-long conduit network.

To bring better connectivity to Lincoln residents and businesses, the city leases access to the conduit system to private ISPs to deploy fiber networks. In return for access to the conduit, private companies pay fees and abide by the city’s Broadband Franchise ordinance, which stipulates that providers follow...