Developing the Program

Deciding on a Broadband Network Type

There are many ways to bring broadband access to a community. After assessing the landscape of federal, state, and local legislative limits, cities should begin to weigh the pros, cons, costs, and viability of possible models of broadband adoption.

  • Municipal Broadband - Municipal broadband deployments are funded and operated by local governments. This option may be more viable in a community with an existing municipal electric utility because broadband access may be deployed through that utility. Chattanooga, Tennessee—one of the first cities in the country to offer its citizens gigabit speeds—is among the most notable examples of successful municipal broadband implementation. Chattanooga’s community-owned Electric Power Board launched its gigabit service in 2009 following a $300 million network modernization investment.
  • Private Internet Service Providers - Internet service providers such as AT&T and Comcast are offering high-speed connections in a growing number of cities across the United States. It is important to map the existing and planned services offered locally to fully understand the current landscape before exploring municipal options or approaching other private providers. Large anchor institutions such as museums or libraries may already be connected to private high-speed connections and may be able to help map existing connections. Just as with municipal fiber deployments, there are pros and cons to privately built broadband networks. Some private service providers, such as Google Fiber, deploy via a competition model. Entering such a competition may help a city to identify broadband priority areas and galvanize stakeholders, even if the community is not ultimately selected for service.
  • Cooperative Models - As more communities seek ways to upgrade their fiber infrastructure and to offer high-speed Internet to their citizens, creative public-private partnership (P3) models of broadband implementation are emerging. In many communities for example, Internet service providers are leasing existing utility-built dark fiber networks. In this case, the utility that built the infrastructure gets the added benefit of being able to use the live fiber for metering, managing peak hours, and other functions while customers benefit from the new ISP option. The city of Santa Monica, California, began leasing dark fiber to businesses in 2006. As of 2014, the revenue brought in was more than enough to cover its $1 million per year operating cost. Each cooperative partnership will develop differently and present unique opportunities and constraints. In every case, however, it is critical for the agreement between the municipality and the private Internet service provider to be thoughtfully codesigned, accounting for day-to-day issues such as network maintenance and repair responsibilities as well as larger community issues such as public access points and connection prioritization for anchor organizations.

Exploring Scale Rollout Models

Communities have approached the rollout of fiber access in many different ways, driven by provider goals, community needs, and network limitations. As with selecting a model for broadband adoption, each scale and rollout methodology presents both benefits and challenges.

  • Fiber for All: Chattanooga, Tennessee - Chattanooga is currently the only city in the United States where 1 Gbps speeds are available to every home and business in the legally available service area covered by the municipal utility EPB. Over 150,000 homes and businesses are connected to Chattanooga’s pervasive broadband network. High-speed service was immediately made available to every part of EPB’s service area from launch.
  • The “Fiberhood”: Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas - Google Fiber approached rollout in its first Google Fiber City via the Fiberhood Model: once enough customers in a given neighborhood expressed interest in the service, Google Fiber built the infrastructure and connected that community. Over time, more neighborhoods beyond the initial fiberhoods were connected, as were major anchor organizations. This model is interesting in that it creates gigabit “hot zones” within a city and creates opportunities for clustering network activation activities in a limited geographic area.
  • Leading with Anchor Organizations: Cleveland, Ohio - Cleveland’s OneCommunity, a nonprofit organization, has led the rollout of an ultra-high-speed, open, and neutral fiber network to hospitals, academic institutions, and government organizations across Northeast Ohio. This anchor organization-driven network now spans twenty-four counties and 2,500 miles.
  • Leading with a Specific Vertical: Detroit, Michigan - Detroit’s Rocket Fiber service focused initial rollout in the city’s Central Business District, first connecting core businesses and startups to galvanize that city’s entrepreneurial and startup communities.
  • Incremental Service Expansion: Santa Monica, California – Santa Monica took a gradual approach to broadband service rollout. Due to demand and anticipated rising costs, local leaders put a comprehensive plan in place, and the cost of installing fiber was split among the city, the school district, and a local college. The city started by leasing the network for government use and then leased the network to businesses. Profits were used to provide Wi-Fi in public areas and ultimately to low-income communities.

Building a Playbook for Activation

Conventions, roundtables, and design sessions are vital steps in helping a community to rally stakeholders and to gather broad input about broadband implementation and access. To ensure continued engagement of stakeholders and to turn broad input into clear outcomes and goals, however, it is critical that a community identify the key players who can help shape the results of these conventions and roundtables into an actionable city playbook for broadband implementation and access.

  • The first Google Fiber city, Kansas City, pioneered the concept of a city playbook for broadband implementation, using the process of creating the playbook to galvanize community participation and identify key community focus areas, initiatives, and goals. The playbook process helped to align diverse stakeholder priorities and, importantly, to shift the conversation from network implementation to network activation—how the fiber network could be brought to life for the benefit of Kansas Citians.

Creating the gigabit playbook also helped Kansas City to identify the lead organization—KC Digital Drive—that would drive Kansas City’s broadband implementation and activation. KC Digital Drive understands the playbook to be a “living document” and a “work in progress” that is “likely to outlast terms of office and even lifetimes to harness the energy and capture the visions that dwell throughout the [Kansas City] community and help them become realities.” This important framing points to the reality that the community conversation about broadband access and inclusion should not stop when the first customer receives a fiber connection; rather, the conversation about helping broadband implementation live up to its promise becomes ever more important as more customers come online and the risks increase for digital divide growth and glaring connectivity gaps.

  • Similarly, Austin, Texas, understood the importance of beginning the activation, access, and inclusion conversation early and of continuing this conversation well beyond initial broadband implementation. Like Kansas City, Austin got ahead of the curve by building its gigabit playbook in the form of a citywide strategic plan for digital inclusion. This plan articulated Austin’s values and goals for building a digitally literate “gigabit city” and has helped to guide how the community’s broadband network has been built and implemented. This early value articulation has been key to shaping the network and to laying the groundwork for a successful system for community broadband innovation. Ongoing reporting on and tracking of the plan’s metrics ensures continued stakeholder buy-in and fidelity to community vision in implementation.

Identify a Lead Organization

Building a network and activating a network for benefit the community it serves are two necessarily intertwined but very different endeavors. After the network launches, it is critical to make sure that an individual or organization continues to think about how to leverage the community’s new infrastructure, how to avoid potential pitfalls of expanding digital divides, and how to engage the new “gigabit city” in the nation’s growing system for broadband innovation. In short, a new gigabit city needs a lead organization not just to drive the implementation of a broadband network but also to make sure that the realities of this new network live up to its promise and that the city continues to work toward the values and goals outlined in its gigabit playbook.

  • In some communities, such as Kansas City, the lead organization (Kansas City Digital Drive) has remained consistent throughout the building and activation phases of the network. However, in other cities such as Chattanooga, the lead agency has shifted as the needs of the community have changed.
  • Initially built and driven by EPB, the municipal utility, the Chattanooga Forward Technology, Gig, and Entrepreneurship Task Force recommended the creation of a separate organization to lead Chattanooga’s efforts to build a broadband network. Today, the Enterprise Center is charged with leading the city’s efforts to build gigabit applications, build an innovation economy, and bridge the digital divide.

  • It is important to ensure that the lead organization selected is stable and maintains a positive working relationship with key stakeholders. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the EarthLink network was expected to solidify Philadelphia as one of the first major cities to own its own broadband network. A nonprofit organization was established to manage oversight of the provider and ensure that lower-income residents have access to the network. Due to financial troubles and operating restrictions placed on the provider, the network only existed for three years before operations ceased in 2008.

  • Whether it is the same organization that led the drive to get broadband, as in Kansas City, or an entirely new organization, as in Chattanooga, it is vital that there be a driving force helping the city to activate and leverage its new infrastructure.

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