Consolidated: Public-Private Broadband Partnerships are Key to Rural Broadband Strategy

NH legislators in 2019 passed a law allowing municipalities to fund broadband networks through bond offerings – and that action already is spurring broadband deployment in sparsely populated areas of the state. One of the biggest beneficiaries of this is Consolidated Communications. Consolidated is already offering service on a new network in Chesterfield (NH) that was paid for, in part, by Consolidated and, in part, by the city. And as Consolidated Vice President of Consumer Products Rob Koester said, the company expects to build more broadband networks through public-private broadband partnerships in the state in 2020. Public-private broadband partnerships are “a very big deal” for Consolidated, Koester said .“We do rural broadband. That’s what we, in large part, do.” The NH law, which Koester calls “transformational,” requires networks funded through municipal bonds to support speeds of at least 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream – although the ones Consolidated is building will support higher-speed service. Another requirement: The network must serve an area where service at speeds of at least 25/3 Mbps was not already available.

“What we brought to the table was the end user infrastructure fee that will be applied to any fiber connection until the bond is paid off,” Koester explains. This approach enabled Chesterfield to issue the bonds without a tax increase and without using any money from the general fund. This approach also has virtually eliminated potential opposition from residents who might not be interested in broadband and therefore wouldn’t want to help pay for the deployment. The city will own the network until the bond is paid off, at which point ownership will transfer to Consolidated. Until then, “we have an IRU [indefeasible right of use] to operate [the network], just as we would any other network we constructed,” Koester explained. The bonds will cover most of the costs of the aggregation infrastructure and Consolidated is covering costs from the pole to the home, along with customer premises equipment and labor.