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Conduit Brings Connectivity in Lincoln, Nebraska

Lincoln, Nebraska, population 269,000, is making the most of a tough situation to improve connectivity and increase telecommunications competition; the city is doing it with conduit.

The state has severe restrictions that ban communities and public power companies from offering telecommunications services. Local businesses, government facilities, and citizens must rely on the private sector to keep them connected. Faced with that limitation, Lincoln city leaders are enticing private providers with an extensive, publicly owned conduit network.

Using Tubes to Draw in Partners

In 2012, the city invested $700,000 to install a conduit system that has since grown to over 300 miles across the city. Over the past three years, Lincoln has leased conduit space to multiple providers, including Level 3 and NebraskaLink, which offer a range of services to businesses and anchor institutions. NebraskaLink provides backhaul for Lincoln's free Wi-Fi, launched in 2014.

Mayor Chris Beutler recently announced that Lincoln will be partnering with provider number six, ALLO Communications. This local company plans to be the first provider to use the conduit to build its gigabit fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network to every home and business in Lincoln. The network is scheduled for completion in 2019. ALLO is based in Lincoln and offers telephone, Internet, and video to residents and businesses.

Smart Conduit Choices for Long Term Vision

Nebraska Farmer Wants Fiber, Won't Be Ripped Off By Windstream

Windstream has the distinction of being one of the worst providers we have ever covered from consumers' perspective, but in rural areas many people have little or no choice. The latest Windstream debacle involves a Nebraska farmer, an outrageous price quote, and a local company that is taking on the project for about one-ninth of Windstream's estimate.

Ars Technica recently introduced us to Nelson Schneider, CTO of the Norman R. Schneider Family Trust Farm in Ceresco, Nebraska. Like many other farms today, the Schneider business needs fast, reliable connections for a variety of reasons including checking ever changing grain prices. Schneider had Windstream's DSL for $80 per month, but his promised speeds of 1.5 Mbps were clocked at 512 Kbps download and 256 Kbps upload, making business online impossible.

When he attempted to take advantage of the business class speeds Windstream advertised online, the company dismissed him. Schneider had to file a complaint for false advertising with the FCC just to get Windstream to negotiate. He wanted fiber, was willing to pay for construction costs, and considered it an investment in the vitality of the farm. 

Windstream told him it would cost Schneider $383,500 (gulp) to install 4.5 miles of fiber from his property to its facilities in town. Even though Windstream's fiber network map shows they run fiber about one-half mile away, they insisted he would need to connect to the facility farther away. When he asked about connecting to this closer line, Windstream refused to connect him. The company would not provide a reason when Ars asked for a reason.

Even though Schneider was prepared to pay thousands of dollars to bring fiber to his farm, such a preposterous quote and Windstream's refusal to commit to anything higher than 10 Mbps symmetrical were too much. He contacted Northeast Nebraska Telephone Company when he learned that they had been connecting local farms with fiber. Soon an NNTC executive visited the farm and the two talked about the possibilities. The final estimate was $42,000 or about one-ninth what Windstream demanded and now NNTC is working with Schneider to make the project easier:

Gothenburg Considering FTTH in Nebraska, Survey Responses Needed

As the "Pony Express Capital of Nebraska," Gothenburg understands the value of speed. City leaders are now investigating the possibility of bringing a FTTH network to the community. Initiative leaders are asking the town's 3,500 residents to complete a broadband survey before April 15th.

According to a recent article in the Gothenburg Times, local schools will soon be surpassing the community's current telecommunications capabilities. The school district is considering a one-to-one Chromebook initiative:

Angie Richeson, an integrated technology integration specialist and Dudley Elementary librarian, said current telecommunications infrastructure has a glass ceiling.

“We can’t get bigger or faster without changing the infrastructure,” she said. “And speed is an issue in our community.”

Community leaders also want economic development benefits that flow from a fiber network. Four Fortune 500 companies operate in Gothenberg. CenturyLink, currently providing last-mile connectivity, has no plans to upgrade.

Nathan Wyatt, Chair of the Fiber Infrastructure Committee of the Gothenburg Improvement Company (GIC) recently told the Times:

"Right now the infrastructure that exists in Gothenburg is like the dirt roads. We don't have the fastest most direct infrastructure available that would give us the fastest speeds available. And as websites get more complex. We're going to need more data and more broadband to give our residents a better experience and we also need it to recruit businesses," said Wyatt.

GIC is a coalition of local businesses working to recruit new commerce to Gothenburg. Wyatt told the Times in another article that a local provider would be ideal:

Even After Omaha, Communities Cannot Count on CenturyLink For Connectivity

CenturyLink is a massive telephone company struggling to remain relevant as we transition to mobile phones and require connections much faster than DSL delivers. Though the Omaha gigabit announcement may seem to be a monumental shift for this company, it actually is not. It is a blip on the radar - an important blip but a blip nonetheless. The Omaha pilot does not represent a sudden change of CenturyLink strategy or capacity. Part of West Omaha has a unique history that prompted this investment. The vast majority of communities in CenturyLink territory still have no hope for upgrades beyond the basic DSL they offer today. Sadly, this already-outdated technology will only fall further behind in coming years. First, if you missed it, CenturyLink has announced a 1 Gbps pilot project in Omaha, Nebraska. This is considerably more newsworthy that AT&T's toothless fiber-to-the-press-release response to Austin's Google Fiber. CenturyLink is a massive corporation in a tough spot. It operates in 38 states and in each one, subscribers are fleeing slow DSL for faster networks and moving from landlines to wireless devices. CenturyLink does not have enough revenue for the upgrades most communities need. CenturyLink deserves some praise for this gigabit trial because it recognizes the need to upgrade old networks to offer faster, more reliable connections. And it is symmetrical, offering the same upload speeds as downstream whereas the Verizon FiOS network tends to prioritize downstream at the expense of up. For years, CenturyLink has told communities that basic DSL is just fine. We'll probably still hear that talking point in many communities from CenturyLink's government affairs staff. But this project is an admission that America needs better networks.

Nebraska Town Creates Fiber Partnership For Schools, City

Fremont Public Schools and the City of Fremont are joining forces to bring better connectivity to students and government. According to a Fremont Tribune article, work has already started on a fiber optic project that will increase bandwidth for both entities.

Fremont is a few miles northwest of Omaha and checks in with over 25,000 residents.

The schools will move from a 40 Mbps Internet connection to 10 Gbps. While each entity will own their own strands, they will share paths throughout the city. From the article:

“The benefits are going to be huge to the schools and the city,” [Heather] Tweedy, [media representative for Great Plains Communication] said.

The city and school district each will own their own strands, but will share paths throughout the city.

For example, the city would need to run a connection from the municipal building on Military Avenue to the power plant on the southeast side of Fremont, a path that also would go near Grant and Howard elementary schools.

The school district then would be responsible to get the fiber optics from the power plant to Fremont Middle School and Johnson Crossing Academic Center.

According to the article, Great Plains will do the install at a cost of $246,000 to the school and $149,000 to the city. We generally find that these types of arrangements result in tremendous cost savings for all entities involved.

Qwest Isolates Entire Minnesota Counties with Fiber Cuts

For some 12 hours last week, entire communities found themselves without access to telecommunications due to a fiber cut to a Qwest cable that services the entire region. This is not the first time such a cut has marooned everything from Homeland Security to long distance phone calls to businesses that can no longer accept credit card transactions -- but Qwest has refused to invest in a redundant cable, showing their disregard for those communities. I wonder how many businesses were hurt by their sudden and unplanned isolation from clients, partners, and others. How many missed contracts or deadlines? It shows the insanity of putting barriers before communities that are trying to build the very networks companies like Qwest promise but never deliver (barriers like the 65% referendum to offer telephone services for publicly owned networks). Both Lake and Cook Counties are waiting to hear the status of their applications for federal broadband stimulus funds, with which they will build broadband networks. Companies like Qwest and Mediacom have opposed new networks in an effort to protect their turf, even while refusing to invest in those areas because they do not generate sufficient profits. These County initiatives have not been denied stimulus funding but have also not moved into the "due diligence" phase, placing them in limbo and forcing them to prepare additional applications for the second round of funding before they even know why their application was denied (if it is denied) in the first round. Somewhere, Joseph Heller is smiling.* MPR provided good coverage of this fiber cut even though they did not air an explanation as to why Qwest finds it reasonable to keep these communities connected with a single cable.
Bank ATM's failed. No one could use their credit cards. But as bad as that was for business, the 12-hour-long outage knocked out what the federal government calls a "vital part of our nation's emergency response system." The outage killed 911 emergency service in Cook County, Chief Deputy Leif Lunde said. ... With no 911 service, county officials turned to volunteer firefighters to field emergency calls from normally un-staffed fire halls. Fire truck radios relayed the information back to Grand Marais.

The Need to Permit Broadband from Public Entities

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This report was written by Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, Esq. and Marjorie Heins, Esq. of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law to inform a Nebraska Task Force tasked with evaluating a ban on municipally owned broadband networks throughout the state of Nebraska. Unfortunately, the Task Force was stacked with proponents for privately owned networks and seemed unable to consider any other viewpoints (more details here). From the Executive Summary:
While the provision of broadband service by public entities is a contentious topic, there have been no comprehensive studies of municipal broadband service providers that would provide easy answers to policy makers. Instead researchers have considered single cities or one type of provider. There are several reasons for the dearth of comprehensive studies. One is that the technologies involved are so new. Another is that indispensable data sets are often proprietary, confidential or nonexistent. To aid the Task Force in its duties, we have gathered information from the publicly available sources. To supplement these data sets, the Brennan Center distributed a questionnaire (the “Brennan Center Questionnaire”) to the Nebraskan members of the Center for Rural Affairs and Common Cause to gather information about the challenges experienced by Nebraskan Internet users. ... In Part I of this white paper, we will explore the status of broadband deployment both nationally and in Nebraska. We have found that some Nebraskans lack access to broadband providers and others live in areas where there is unaffordable broadband service. A significant minority (43% living outside of towns in 20054 and 7.4% of Nebraskan towns in 2006 according to the Nebraska Telecommunications Association) lacked access to broadband service. These numbers most likely understate the magnitude of the problem because of the reporting methodologies used. Around half of Nebraska’s towns are only served by a monopoly wired broadband provider who can charge high prices for broadband service. The data also demonstrate that rural Nebraskans in particular are more frequently priced out of the broadband market than their urban counterparts. Those living in small Nebraskan towns and in the countryside, and even many living just outside larger Nebraskan cities are faced with unaffordable broadband service.