City explores municipal broadband using IPL fiber

There is active and growing interest in exploring utilizing IPL-installed dark fiber to provide residential and commercial broadband services.

This would be an ambitious undertaking but has some City Council and Chamber of Commerce support. A leadership exchange team involving the mayor and others visited Ft. Collins, CO which has developed a municipally-owned and operated broadband internet service.

In 2017, voters in the community of 165,000 approved a ballot measuring giving the city council the opportunity to establish high-speed internet including potential private company partnership and up to $150 million in bonds to support the endeavor. The incumbent telecomm enterprises ardently opposed the measure.

Fort Collins Connexion is operational and offers high-speed internet, phone, video and bundled residential and commercial services. It was a multi-year undertaking with several feasibility studies, broad community engagement and development of a business plan including risk assessment and market demand. Here's background on the Fort Collins project and their educational brochure.

A similar idea has been quietly kicking around in Independence. In 2012-13, IPL "completed a Fiber Business Plan."

In 2011 Google Fiber hit the Kansas City area by storm but the high-speed Internet service never reached Independence. Google Fiber initially was deployed in Kansas City, Ks. taking advantage of the municipally-owned power poles maintained by the Board of Public Utilities.

This past summer, the city issue a Request for Interest (RFI) for potential use of underutilized surplus "dark fiber" in existing IPL telecom fiber optic cable to provide broad band. One response was received.

The above map (not to scale) was included in the RFI and shows the current city-owed fiber network which are mostly overhead lines. The solid dark lines show the IPL fiber; the purple is city streets.

The idea, even its very early stages, met some opposition from the PUAB who felt IPL should focus on existing issues. Here's the PUAB discussion on the topic.

The IPL seven-point work seeks funding in next year's IPL budget to support the broadband initiative.