LancasterOnline - April 2, 2017

LanCity Connect: Lancaster's municipal broadband is the first of its kind in Pennsylvania

Written by Tim Stuhldreher

In mid-January, The Candy Factory in Lancaster joined the early adopter program for LanCity Connect, the fiber-optic broadband network being built for the city by MAW Communications.

Previously, the co-working venue on North Queen Street got its internet service from Comcast, but “we were having nothing but problems,” co-founder Anne Kirby said.

“The minute we switched over to fiber, literally every internet issue we had went away,” Kirby said.

Lancaster officials have worked for more than a decade to bring high-speed municipal broadband to the Red Rose city.

It required creation of a unique public-private partnership with MAW, the first of its kind in Pennsylvania. Starting this spring, LanCity Connect is being made available to the public. ...

With speeds of up to a gigabit per second — that’s 1,000 megabits-per-second, or Mbps — LanCity Connect is a game-changer, local officials say, both for city services and for local residents and businesses.

An advocate for community broadband concurs.

“This is a good deal” for Lancaster, said Christopher Mitchell, the director of the nonprofit Community Broadband Networks Initiative, based in Washington, D.C. “It’s far better than the status quo.”

...

In Pennsylvania, a 2004 law requires cities to give their dominant local telecommunications carrier first dibs on building broadband. Only if it refuses can the city go ahead.

Fortunately for Lancaster, the carrier in question is Verizon. Unlike most of its peers, it’s been honest about its lack of interest in small markets, Mitchell said, and it granted the needed waiver.

The PPP

Not only are fiber-optic networks expensive, they’re technologically challenging and have to comply with complex regulations.

To overcome those obstacles, Lancaster and MAW developed a public-private partnership, or PPP.

PPPs can be minefields: Unscrupulous companies have used them to loot public coffers and create captive markets.

But Mitchell, who has been...

It’s no small feat to plan, deploy, and operate a municipal citywide Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network, but communities are doing it. We’ve put together a Citywide Municipal FTTH Networks list and a map, with quick facts at your fingertips. If your community is considering such an investment, this list can offer a starting point on discovering similarly situated locations to study.

The list is divided by state and each state heading offers a description of any barriers that exist and a link to the statute in question. Under each community, we also included relevant links such as to the provider’s website, coverage on MuniNetworks.org, and reports or resources about the network.

We used four basic criteria to put a community on our list and map:

• The network must cover at least 80% of a city.
• A local government (city, town, or county) owns the infrastructure.
• It is a Fiber-to-the-Home network.
• It is in the United States. 

Share the list far and wide and if you know of a community network that meets our criteria that we missed, please let us know. Contact H. Trostle at htrostle@ilsr.org to suggest additions.

Indiana County, Pennsylvania's County Commission recently voted to use its fiber optic network for telephone service reports the Indiana Gazette. The change will allow the county to save $67,000 over the first five years. Indiana County is located on the west side of the state and is home to approximately 89,000 people.

The upgrade will allow the county to eliminate two-thirds of its phone lines by taking advantage of the network that was installed as part of Indiana County's public safety radio system. Phones in the courthouse, jail, district justices’ offices, a convalescent facility, the Indiana County Airport, the county parks and the departments of Children and Youth Services and Human Services will all be on the new system.

From the Gazette article:

“This is just the beginning of the savings we’ll see from the fiber optic network,” Baker said. Coming soon will be lower costs for county government’s Internet service.

Last night, GOP Representative Marsha Blackburn, introduced an amendment intended to destroy local authority for telecommunications investment by severely limiting FCC funding. The amendment, introduced during debate on H.R. 5016, targets 20 states, many with state-erected barriers already in place and/or municipal networks already serving local communities.

The vote was postponed but is expected today (Wednesday) at approximately 2:30 p.m. ET. Now is the time to call the D.C. office of your Representative and tell him or her to vote NO on this amendment. If your Rep has a telecom staffer, ask to speak to him or her first.

The text of the amendment is as follows:

AMENDMENT TO H.R. 5016, AS REPORTED OFFERED BY MRS. BLACKBURN OF TENNESSEE

SEC. ll. None of the funds made available in this Act to the Federal Communications Commission may be used, with respect to the States of Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, to prevent such States from implementing their own State laws with respect to the provision of broadband Internet access service (as defined in section 8.11 of title 47, Code of Federal Regulations) by the State or a municipality or other political subdivision of the State. 

Multichannel News reports that New York DFLer Jose Serrano reacted the way we hope all Members will when it is time for the vote:

Wheeler has argued that those laws were the result of incumbent broadband providers using their lobbying muscle--he used to be one of those himself as president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association--to try to block competition.

Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.), who rose in opposition to the amendment, agreed with Wheeler, saying that the issue is about allowing cities to operate without cable company lobbyists stopping them.   He said the amendment was an attack on individual rights of citizens speaking through their local leaders. "This is to stop states...from...