“This is more important than widening I-25,” Lyons said. “This is not going to make much difference to me because I’m getting ready to retire. But it will make a difference for my kids and my grandchildren. The kinds of places they will work and what they do will depend upon it."

“The best service you can buy from the private sector, like to a residence in Fort Collins, is not as good as the crappiest service we deliver on the CSU campus,” Burns said. “It just cripples what can be done.”

The story of how Wilson's municipal fiber network, Greenlight, won over one of its strongest critics illustrates how community networks support and benefit local businesses. Tina Mooring is the Manager of Computer Central in Wilson and was an opponent of the city building a fiber optic network to provide a choice beyond the incumbent cable and DSL companies, both of which were national carriers.

"We were fearful," says Mooring, when asked about her feelings when the City of Wilson first announced its plan to build out a community-wide fiber to the home network. Reselling DSL connections leased from the incumbent telephone company was Computer Central's bread and butter. "We repaired computers and we resold DSL...and we were supposed to take a ‘leap of faith' that the City did not want to put us out of business." Mooring was outspoken in her belief that Wilson was taking the wrong step.

But after a few years passed by, Mooring's feelings about the municipal broadband network changed. Because of Greenlight, Tina's company found new opportunities in offering new services with the greatly enhanced connectivity. In going to conferences and speaking with her clients, she was repeatedly asked if Computer Central could offer services she did not know existed: large data backup services, cloud services, and disaster recovery. Full document and file image backups meant accessing the kind of bandwidth, particularly upstream, that just was not available in the community from the slower cable and DSL connections. Greenlight gave her business plenty of new opportunities:

"I'd say our revenues have increased from 30 and 100 percent over last year's" because of Greenlight's next-generation connections. Computer Central's clients access the upstream and downstream gigabit symmetrical capacity that Greenlight offers throughout the community and her company supplies the value added services on top of that internet pipe: data backup services, various hosting and managed services, security and disaster recovery. Mooring has switched 23 customers in Wilson County to Greenlight because these private sector businesses wanted the hosting and data disaster recovery services they otherwise could not access.

Ookla finds the third fastest Internet access in the U.S. is located in Longmont, Colorado, reports the Times Call. NextLight, Longmont's gigabit municipal fiber network, is the source of the increase in speeds, driving Longmont's Internet access speeds far beyond any other service in the state.

Ookla clocks average download speed in Longmont as 105 Mbps, which includes all providers in the community. Incumbents Comcast and CenturyLink are dragging down NextLight's average download speed of 221 Mbps. Statewide, Colorado's average is 40 Mbps.

According to the article:

Ookla shows Internet speeds in Longmont shooting up in January and February, when LPC crews began hooking up customers to NextLight in earnest. 

NextLight continues to attract residential and business customers. In February, NextLight announced it would be hiring more install crews to meet the high demand for connections. Places without the speed, affordability, and reliability NextLight can offer will find themselves at a disadvantage as economic development increasingly relies on next-generation networks.

The Times Call spoke with Bret McInnis, vice president for information technology for Circle Graphics. The local business switched from CenturyLink to NextLight because it needed better connectivity. Before taking service from NextLight, their maximum capacity connection was 50 Mbps download or upload and it wasn't enough:

Because the images for the canvases use high-resolution photos, they are sent in large files that can range from 100 to 300 megabits in size. The company prints anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 canvases a day during the busy holiday season.

"We've got more bandwith," McInnis said, standing in front of the five tall black towers of computing equipment that make up the business's data center. "So the NextLight fiber feeds right into this and we used to see peaks with CenturyLink ... you would see periods when we were bursting at our capacity."

Switching to NextLight, McInnis said, means employees can download and upload the high-resolution images much more quickly.

The Amherst Business Improvement District (BID) recently hired a firm to prepare an engineering study aimed at bringing fiber connectivity to its downtown reports MassLive. 

In 2007, the community began offering free Wi-Fi downtown after receiving a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to build a wireless mesh network. The city worked with UMass Amherst, DARPA, and NSF to deploy the system. In 2013, the city invested in upgrades which increased speeds and extended the network's geographic coverage area.

Community leaders feel Amherst needs fiber to boost economic development now and in the future. Sean Hannon, Amherst Information Technology director, told MassLive:

"Fiber is needed because it's the only medium that can support those speeds at the distance we need.  It also should support new network equipment 20 to 30 years from now."

The study will examine optimal routes, methods, and cost estimates for deployment.

The Amherst BID is a nonprofit economic development organization whose members include local property owners, business owners, and residents. Their focus, as defined by the community's 2011 Improvement Plan, is to improve the downtown area through economic development, events, marketing, beautification, and special projects.

Last year we reported on a deal between Google Fiber and North Kansas City. The provider entered into a long-term lease to use LiNKCity dark fiber to incorporate into its area deployment. The City recently announced it will now enter into a public-private partnership with DataShack to bring fiber to local businesses and residents. Residents will receive free high-speed access. From the City's announcement:

The partnership between these two companies will enable residents to experience Gigabit speeds for FREE. On January 1st, 2015 all existing residential customers will be upgraded to free monthly 100 mb internet service. New customers after January 1st will have the opportunity to choose between three service options; free monthly gigabit internet service with a $300 installation fee, free monthly 100 mb internet service with a $100 installation fee, or free 50 mb internet service with a $50 installation fee.

A Kansas City Biz Journal article reports that North Kansas City will retain ownership of the infrastructure and DataShack will bring free gigabit Internet service to the public library, city churches, and all public schools. Profits and losses will be shared equally but the City's losses are capped at $150,000, including the capital investment. DataShack will operate and maintain the network.

"It's a win-win for the city," said Byron McDaniel, the city's communications utility director. "It's really giving back to the community what they've invested into the network."

According to the Kansas City Star, the network has a lot of business customers, which is the core of DataShack's strategy:

The people of Huntsville recently decided to delve into the possibility of deploying a fiber network. According to AL.com, the City Council approved funding for a feasibility study to look at ways to better use existing fiber assets.

Huntsville, with 180,000 people is located in Madison County in the extreme north central region of the state. The county seat, known for generations as a cotton producer, later became known as "The Rocket City." In the 1950s, the U.S. army developed missiles at its facilities there, setting the stage for our space program.

A recent unscientific poll by AL.com revealed that a countywide high-speed network is a high priority for locals. The online poll suggested potential projects for the community; 40% of respondents ranked a network at the top of the list.

Huntsville Utilities offers electric, water, and gas services to the community. The municipal utility owns a small amount of fiber for its own data purposes. At this point, local leaders want the study to focus on the possibility of expanding that network to serve the business community. 

Mayor Tommy Battle said it is crucial to take a serious look at citywide, high-speed, fiber-optic Internet service, whether it is provided by Huntsville Utilities or a private company. Dozens of U.S. cities are already wired for speed, including Chattanooga and Opelika.

Battle called high-speed fiber "the infrastructure of the future" and said it will eventually be as important as roads, water and sewer lines.

WSOC TV in Charlotte recently looked at Salisbury's four-year-old Fibrant network. Reporter Tenikka Smith investigated what a municipal network could do for Charlotte. Charlotte is also one of the communities working with Google in hopes of having it expand to them. That interest has led AT&T to consider updating its comparatively pathetic DSL services as well.

Smith spoke with a Salisbury small business owner who switched to Fibrant in 2010. Rick Anderson-McCombs of the Sidewalk Deli noted fast speeds and high quality voice service from Fibrant. According to Anderson-McCombs' mother, Angenetta Dover, the deli also saves $30 - $40 per month compared to past service with the local incumbent. Dover also uses the service at her home and notices a significant improvement:

"Even (the) lowest speed and slowest speed is super compared to what we used to have to do," she said.

Robert Van Goen from Rowan County's economic development coalition, Rowan Works, believes a municipal network could be a smart investment for Charlotte. The network tells potential job creators that a community is "prepared to do business for the next 10, 15, 20 years and compete in the global marketplace."

WSOC TV compared prices; they found Time Warner Cable and AT&T offered basic triple-play bundles - up to 6 Mbps download - for $79 per month. Upload speeds, the real test for businesses, are typically much slower. Fibrant's lowest tier triple-play bundle offered 20 Mbps symmetrical service for $97 per month.

Saving money for better service is always a winning strategy. Local businesses often consider other benefits from municipal networks; Anderson-McCombs told Smith his motivation reached beyond financials:

EPB in Chattanooga offers a service to business clients that offers a good reminder that local service providers have to be able to offer a variety of business services because different businesses have vastly different wants and needs. In 2012, the publicly owned utility began offering telephone service with cloud characteristics.

The service saves money by limiting the need of small businesses to commit to capital investment and personnel costs while offering the capabilities that larger firms with larger IT staffs have. A TimesFreePress article on the service from 2012 reported:

"We looked at an average business that had nine sets and eight lines, and it comes to about $320 per month, instead of thousands of dollars in up-front costs," [Katie] Espeseth [EPB's head of product development] said.

When businesses install them on their own, the systems and devices require employees to maintain, at a time when many companies are looking to streamline their IT departments.

"It really takes the burden of installing and maintaining your telephone equipment off your own employees and puts it with our company," said Espeseth. "In Chattanooga, if a small business can take the capital they were going to spend on a new phone system and invest it in their business, it makes sense to spread that cost out over time."

EPB did their homework and now provides a service that small businesses need at affordable rates. Understanding the needs of local businesses and offering a range of options is key to the success of local providers.