Broadband Communities Magazine

At Broadband Communities’ 2019 economic development conference, held in October in Alexandria, Virginia, participants shared stories about how communities are improving broadband access to facilitate economic development, digital literacy and consumer choices. Followi the link to some of the highlights of the conference sessions.

In 2015, aware that business tenants increasingly depended on high-quality broadband and that residents considered fast broadband a quality-of-life issue, Fairlawn (OH) resolved to make gigabit broadband available to all homes and businesses. The city built a municipal fiber network essentially as an amenity, with no requirement that service revenue cover the cost of the build. It was willing to subsidize the network out of the general fund if necessary.

Verizon is breathing new life into its rural New York state markets, launching plans to make Fios fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service available in parts of Coogan, Schenectady and Washington (NY) counties. Upon completion of the network in the next two years, Verizon will offer fiber-to-the-home services to about 15,000 rural NY premises. This deployment of FTTH broadband service was made possible through the company's partnership with NY state and the Federal Communications Commission through the New NY Broadband Program.

Microtrenching – using microtrenches just 1 to 3 inches wide and 5 to 12 inches deep – has become a mainstream method for installing fiber, and many network operators use it successfully under certain conditions. City planners and engineers use the technique to leverage overcrowded utility corridors in right of ways, providing more high-speed broadband services to meet the demands of the growing population. Suppliers speak about the products they offer for microtrenching and where they think those products might best be used.

The power of 5G wireless depends on the use of millimeter wave (mmWave) bands to deliver larger gigabit capacities. Some 5G deployments will be in the sub-6 GHz band, specifically the 3.65 GHz band in the US with a total of 150 MHz of available spectrum, but the broadband industry is shifting its attention to frequencies of 24 GHz and more. These higher-frequency mmWave bands have GHz of spectrum available to generate gigabit connectivity and accommodate 5G services.

One of the first decisions a community needs to make in bringing broadband to residents is what sort of network to operate. Should the network be closed, with one Internet service provider providing service to residents; open and lit, providing the basic infrastructure for potentially competing ISPs; or open with dark fiber leased to competing ISPs? All three models have their proponents and detractors. In my experience and opinion, no one model is ideal for every community. Each option impacts how a community will build and operate a network, and each has advantages and disadvantages.

The disadvantages inherent to rural towns – geography, low population density and lack of fiber density – compound one another to make sourcing middle-mile transport unusually difficult for rural municipalities. In addition, incumbents that might provide backhaul generally aren’t thrilled with the prospect of losing market share. They may view municipal network initiatives as competitive threats and resist working with municipalities on sourcing middle-mile transport and/or lobby to fight them in their quest to modernize.

Despite the tremendous innovation in fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) networks over the last decade, growing bandwidth demands from households and enterprise business applications are likely to exceed today’s Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPON) network capacity levels in the near future.