A group of small towns in northeastern Minnesota is considering a multi-municipal fiber project similar to Utah’s ground-breaking Utopia model, reports Telephony. Dynamic City (case studies), the same consulting firm that helped create Utah’s Utopia project, the 11-city public wholesale fiber network, is now conducting a feasibility study for a group of 15 towns in Minnesota.
“We’re estimating that it will cost between $1,500 and $2,000 to run fiber optics to each individual home or business,” said Dick Nordvold, of Iron Range Resources.
A seven-county territory in the state’s northeast corner shares several characteristics with Utopia, including its Open Service Provider Network model, desired bandwidth and prices. In its preliminary report, the consultancy estimated the project’s cost at about $67 million, or $47 million if participants use their existing municipal fiber.
The cost might be covered by municipal bonds, but the “Iron Range” towns are mulling an attempt to split the cost between private capital and the state, whose governor has made rural broadband a priority.
Like Utopia, the Iron Range network would bring wholesale fiber to most homes and businesses in its member cities and let service providers compete over the network. Dynamic City has suggested the network would pay for itself if it achieved a 50% take rate.
But whereas Utopia promised service providers a potential market eventually approaching 500,000 customers, the Iron Range project would only reach tens of thousands. Its three largest cities, Hibbing, Virginia and Ely, have a combined population of about 30,000.
“[The Utopia model] is not a choice available to most communities,” said Jim Baller, partner in the Baller Herbst Law Group. “It’s difficult to get a city council to agree on anything, let alone a multi-city consortium. That [Utopia's leaders] were able to forge consensus is a tribute to those great people.”
According to an IEEE Spectrum Article, Utopia is delivering the goods:
A 20-employee accounting firm in the town of Murray now pays Utopia $150 per month for a 30-Mb/s Internet connection, down from the $650 per month it had previously paid for a 1.5-Mb/s line. And the impending 100-Mb/s speed is just the start.
Utopia officials say they designed a lot of slack into the network, so that it can move up easily to 1-gigabit-per-second service over the next decade; indeed, business customers will soon be able to request this level.
Utopia’s “active Internet” architecture contrasts with the FiOS system, which channels bandwidth through something called a splitter/combiner to individual households. Because these splitter/combiners contain no intelligent electronics, the entire FiOS network design is called a passive optical network, or PON, even though, as in all networks, the end points—at the central office and at the household—are intelligent and active.
In addition to its dedicated bandwidth connections, Utopia has one other advantage. It relies on the Ethernet standard to carry Internet Protocol data packets all the way from the central office to the individual subscriber, without changing the format. This tactic greatly simplifies the network.
Active Ethernet is also the protocol used by iProvo, and one instance of its advantage is the ease with which service providers on the Utopia network are able to use the iProvo television headend, something that would be difficult and expensive to do if either were PON-based.
UTOPIA (Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency) is different from iProvo in that UTOPIA member cities do not own or control their own networks. The iProvo and UTOPIA projects have many similarities including technologies and common goals.
The iProvo’s fiber project had a head start on UTOPIA and has nearly finished wiring all of Provo, but lagging subscriptions to Internet, telephone and video-on-demand services are forcing Provo to dig into city coffers for a $1 million loan to iProvo this year and a potential $2 million loan in 2007. The 14 cities that own UTOPIA plan to pay off the $85 million bond they floated in July 2004 using profits generated by wholesaling the network — not through new tax levees.
The Utah Taxpayers Association, which opposed both projects from the start, thinks it’s time to pull the plug, reports SLC Weekly. [Some might suggest it's sour grapes from Salt Lake City, which didn't join the group].
Qwest and Comcast went to the state legislature to ban all municipal involvement in broadband networks. But Provo and 18 other cities fought the law. And won.
Why shouldn’t a public/private consortia buy 700 Mhz channels for state-wide broadband…for the people.
Fiber or microwave could connect the dots. It’s a modest proposal. Really. Samsung is WiMAXing Michigan, there’s Free WiMAX for Milwaukee Schools and Rhode Island is planning a Statewide WiMAX Network.
AT&T’s old microwave routes (above) can provide a guide for contemporary state-wide WiMAX deployments (Oregon Microwave Routes). Why support out of state telco stockholders with your dollars? Why support Cingular’s Kevin Martin?
The revolution started some 5 years ago. At the grass roots. It’s taking back the airwaves. It’s establishing net neutrality. It’s delivering broadband internet access for everyone with economic empowerment for all.
It’s UTOPIA. Now.
