Muni broadband with a twist

Chicago intends to do what no American city even remotely its size has ever pulled off – get a municipal broadband network built.

There isn’t a city in the country that doesn’t want better broadband infrastructure. Several cities, tiring of waiting for the market to create those networks, have attempted to build their own. The biggest ones have all failed, usually for one of two reasons: Some never got beyond the proposal stage, blocked by commercial interests complaining about the competition; of the few that actually got built, most were unable to monetize their networks. Chicago is trying a different route. “Chicago has no interest in being an Internet service provider, so the competitive issue is gone,” explained John Tolva, the city’s CTO. The city’s primary concern is economic development, and broadband is only one among several means to that end. So the city currently has out a request for interest (RFI), asking for ideas for how private interests can build and operate a gigabit fiber ring to connect a combination of a dozen existing and developing technology neighborhoods. The ring should support free Wi-Fi access in public places and should also be expandable to provide broadband access to underserved neighborhoods. The city will sift through the responses to the RFI, then craft a request for proposals (RFP). It would expect responses to the RFP by early next year and to begin implementing the plan shortly thereafter.