New Hampshire FastRoads is leading the charge to connect the region. The project is funded by American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) grants, private donations, and contributions from local communities. We spoke with Carole Monroe, Executive Director, to get an update on this open access network in rural western New Hampshire.

The first municipality to be connected to New Hampshire FastRoads, Richmond, was connected on November 1st. One-third of the network is now lit and the remainder will be completed and lit by November 30, 2013. Monroe tells us most of the 235 community anchor institutions (CAIs) have fiber terminated at their facilities and connections can be easily configured to 1 Gbps. 

There are also 75 residential customers, many of whom are choosing 20 Mbps symmetrical service. A smaller number take 50 Mbps or 100 Mbps symmetrical service. Monroe notes that people in the community with home based businesses or telecommute are signing up quickly.  

Monroe also told us about the Hampshire Country School, a private boarding school in Ringe and CAI. Before FastRoads, the school had only a T1 line. They will be connected with 50 Mbps by the end of the month.

We also touched base with Kenneth Kochien, Director of Information Services at Colby-Sawyer College in New London. The college is one of the many CAIs along the network. Kochien told us via email:

NH FastRoads provides our institution with alternative bandwidth solutions which have made a very significant difference in both affordability as well as enabling us to pursue  various cloud-based strategic services. In other words, more than one budget line is impacted by having affordable and sufficient bandwidth.  

Most importantly, it has enabled us to provide quality Internet experience for our students. As is well known, students seemingly have an insatiable appetite for multiple devices along with the need for continuous connectivity to social media. All of that is dependent on bandwidth.

We caught up with Carole Monroe from New Hampshire FastRoads to get an update on what is happening in the legislature this sesssion. We reported last spring on HB 286, intended to allow local communities more decision making power. The bill did not advance last session, but new language may breath new hope into the proposal.

If the bill passes, it will remove restrictions that prevent local governments from bonding to finance broadband infrastructure. This and similar bills have been introduced in the past, but large incumbent providers always seem to stop them.

Monroe tells us that this session the bill clarifies the definition of "open access network." The bill also changes language regarding "unserved and underserved" areas. Now the bill requires municipalities to include areas without "adequate" broadband if they choose to finance through bonds. "Adequate" in the bill language relies on the FCC definition of broadband as it changes over time, currently 4 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload. The change does not restrict building in all areas as long as some areas without "adequate" coverage are included.

The new language also clarifies that municipal networks built only for government purposes do not have to be part of the open access model. Past versions of the bill questioned application of the open access model to municipal I-Nets.

While some of the language of the bill has changed, the fundamental goals remain the same. Local communities need to make the decision to bond. In order to do so, state barriers must be removed. Current state law only allows bonding for broadband infrastructure under strict criteria which only apply in a fraction of the state. 

Monroe reiterates that the bill intention is also to create a more competitive environment. She noted that the area is already benefitting from a competitive spirit. Broadband pricing proposals to community anchor institutions show significantly lower rates per Mbps. Service level agreements are more favorable to community anchor institutions since the creation of FastRoads.

New Hampshire FastRoads will soon be working with Vermont's Sovernet to bring access to southern New Hampshire. According to the Brattleboro Reformer, Sovernet is ready to begin offering data and voice service as soon as the fiber infrastructure is complete.

"It's really exciting because while we do some business in New Hampshire we have not been able to do anything to the extent that we will be able to do on this fiber network," said Sovernet Vice President of Sale and Marketing Peter Stolley. "Needs over the Internet are constantly evolving and this gives us a virtually unlimited amount of speed to get to people."

Sovernet managed a similar project to New Hampshire Fastroads in Vermont, but in Vermont Sovernet installed and manages the fiber network.

FastRoads' open access model will provide infrastructure on which independent ISPs will offer service to community anchor institutions, businesses, and residents in underserved areas. The $7.6 million project is about 98% finished after a year-long installation period. New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority, Monadnock Economic Development Authority and 42 towns in New Hampshire comprise the FastRoads collaborative effort.

Carole Monroe, New Hampshire FastRoads Executive Director told the Reformer:

"This project was done to reach the most rural and least served communities in this part of the state," Monroe said. "Up to now there has been no way to bring fiber to these homes and this is a great opportunity to get them that big broadband. We think that as more people come on board it will entice growth and allow us to expand our footprint to reach more businesses and homes."

We spoke with Monroe in Episode #36 of the Broadband Bits podcast. She shared a history of the challenges facing the collaborative and how the network was already bringing benefits to the community, even before launch.

New Hamsphire FastRoads is making significant strides in connecting residents, businesses, and community anchor institutions in the southwestern section of the state. FastRoads is funded by a combination of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) grants, private donations, and funds from local communities.

While the network is certainly making progress and scheduled for completion this summer, it has been constrained by state laws that limit the use of bonding. As a result, many local communities that would like to benefit from connections with Fast Roads will not able to take advantage of its presence in this largely rural area of the state.

We recently spoke with Carole Monroe, Executive Director of New Hampshire Fast Roads, in a Broadband Bits podcast interview. She told us about a bill in the New Hampshire General Court this year that would remove restrictions that limit how local governments can finance network investments.

In past years, New Hampshire legislators took up several bills that would remove the restriction preventing local communities from using bonds to finance broadband infrastructure. Every year, lobbyists from large ISPs manage to push those bills into oblivion. This year, HB 286 seeks to strike the restrictive language.

The bill is getting attention from local media, the New Hampshire SentinelSource. An editorial, published soon after the bill was introduced summarizes the problem:

In areas where companies determine that investing in expansion isn’t worthwhile, municipalities often find their hands tied because state law does not allow communities to take out municipal bonds for broadband access if there’s a private company operating in the community. That means if a town has even a small pocket of coverage by a telecommunication company, it can’t get funding to pay for expansion to the rest of its residents and businesses.

In 2011, we brought you information about New Hampshire FastRoads, an open access project. At the time, the discussion centered around legislative events. We decided to look into the FastRoads project for an update.

The FastRoads project received partial funding from the Network New Hampshire Now (NNHN) project and its American Recovery and Reinvestment grants. Private donations and matching funds added to the $65.9 million budget to expand broadband across the state. The entire NNHN network planning includes middle- and last-mile fiber installations, along with a middle-mile microwave public safety network. The NNHN network will span ten counties, some of which are still relying on dial-up.

The FastRoads network will bring together 22 communities and 220 Community Anchor Institutions on the western side of the state. The project also includes last-mile networks in Rindge and Enfield and is expected to connect approximately 1,300 businesses and residents in those two towns, many who rely on dial-up.

In March, 2011, FastRoads began the first phase of the project when it awarded the design and project management contract to Design Nine. According to the Design Nine website, the fiber build- out will cover 25% of the entire state.

Shortly after hiring Design Nine, FastRoads released a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for the building phase of the network. The contract went to Clemsford, Massachusetts' Waveguide last October.

Completion of the project is scheduled for June 30, 2013.

According to the complaint (pdf), Verizon not only made out like a financial bandit up front, but took advantage of regulatory delays to strip mine the assets of anything of value, including core IP network components, business services, and localized billing and support assets required to support the three states. Verizon then billed out their support assistance for millions per month during the very rocky transition, during which time 911 and other services saw repeated outages, resulting in millions more in refund penalties.

The Design Nine blog alerted me to a bill in New Hampshire that would modify state law to allow communities to build publicly owned networks. It appears they may currently invest in a network in unserved areas -- though few places are entirely unserved. Most places have pitifully slow and overpriced DSL available to at least some residents. This bill would expand their authority to build networks.

Unfortunately, I have no sense of how likely this is to pass. The story in the Concord Monitor suggests it is seeing intense opposition from the usual sources - the private companies that want to decide alone who gets access to the Internet at what speed and at what price.

Unfortunately, the proponents of the change appear poised to limit themselves to a purely open access model - a limitation that could greatly hurt them as they build a network. Communities must be free to choose a business model that works, not have it imposed by a "compromise" at the legislature.

Requiring open access actually compromises the vitality of the network. Open access is an incredibly powerful idea - introducing real competition where people have long had no choices. But no community has yet made it work financially from the start. The early years are brutal for a network where the owner cannot provide services -- there are difficulties in aligning the incentives for those involved and generally insufficient revenue to make debt payments in the early years.

Communities must fight for the right to offer services, even if they would prefer not to. Offering services generates more revenue when it is most needed - the early years. Allowing Comcast and FairPoint to define the business models of communities is poor policy. The New Hampshire legislation - HB 1242 - is available here.

We wish communities like nDanville and the Wired Road luck as they expand to citywide networks on an entirely open access basis. However, existing experience suggests that communities should focus first on getting the numbers to work and then opening the network to greater competition down the road.