This is the transcript for Episode 277 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. Luis Reyes from Kit Carson Electric Cooperative joins the show to explain how electric cooperatives are solving the digital divide in rural America. Listen to this episode here.

Luis Reyes: People trust co-ops. They trust Electric co-ops. They've been - been around since the mid 30s. I think there was a lot of faith that we could pull this off and make it as reliable as we made the electric system.

Lisa Gonzalez: You're listening to episode 277 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. I'm Lisa Gonzalez. Rural New Mexico has some of the most scenic landscape in the U.S. It also presents some of the most difficult challenges in getting its widely dispersed population connected with high quality connectivity. The Kit Carson Electric Cooperative it's changing the situation in the north central area of the state. For several years now they've been connecting people in the region with fiber to the home improving connectivity for residents, businesses, and local entities. This week we hear more about the project from Luis Reyes CEO of Kit Carson who gives us a history of the project and how high quality Internet access is benefiting the region. Now, here's Christopher and Luis.

Christopher Mitchell: Welcome to another edition of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Chris Mitchell from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Today I'm speaking with Luis Reyes the CEO of Kit Carson Electric Cooperative. Welcome to the show, Luis.

Luis Reyes: Thanks Chris. I'm happy to talk to you.

Christopher Mitchell: Well I'm excited to talk to you as well. We've we've been covering a lot of the electric cooperatives getting into fiber networks. You've been doing this longer than many. We've interviewed a few others but I think this is incredibly important for rural America. Maybe start by telling us a little bit about Kit Carson. Where are you located and what's the geography around your area?

In October, the Roanoke Valley Broadband Authority (RVBA), celebrated the completion of a 25-mile expansion of its open access fiber network. The completion of phase II of the network comes soon after the RVBA established office space in September and after the RVBA announced that it will be connecting new apartments in downtown Roanoke.

Growth Is Good

The $3.4 million expansion extends the network to a local library and toward the Tanglewood Mall. To celebrate, RVBA held a lighting event at the library. Last year, the Roanoke Board of Supervisors included the funding for the expansion in the budget, despite an intense astroturf campaign by local incumbents to turn constituents against the network. Supervisor Joe McNamara supported the expansion early on and spoke at the lighting ceremony.

With the new addition, the RVBA network totals approximately 80 fiber miles in the cities of Roanoke and Salem. This new expansion marks the beginning of more connectivity in areas of Roanoke County that are outside town limits.

Setting An Example

The project has piqued interest among neighboring counties. According to the Roanoke Times, Botetourt County is working with the RVBA on ways to improve connectivity and the Franklin County Board of Supervisors has announced a public hearing on forming its own broadband authority. 

As RVBA CEO Frank Smith said in his speech at the lighting ceremony, communities like Roanoke County need high-quality Internet access to compete with other places that also focus on quality of life as an economic development tool. He referred to the fact that Roanoke is not only competing with large cities, but must consider their standing against small and mid-sized communities such as Bozeman, Montana. He noted that a high percentage of high-tech companies are locating in places other than the largest cities because their talent want access to a quality of life that isn’t available in the large metros. The RVBA network is one tool in the community’s toolkit.

Just days ago, voters in more than a dozen Colorado communities chose to opt out of SB 152 the way Rio Blanco County did in 2014. The rural western county has since started connecting residents and businesses to high-quality Internet access via its publicly owned open access fiber optic infrastructure. Due to high demand, they recently announced that they’re making changes in their business plan and taking a more direct role in operations.

Until now, Rio Blanco County has worked with Colorado Fiber Community (CFC) under a three-layered plan in which CFC contracts with the county to perform maintenance and operations on the network that the county owns. Local ISPs LAI and Cimarron use the infrastructure to deliver services to the public and work directly with subscribers. The county has decided to end its agreement with CFC and take over operations and maintenance.

Too Much Good Internet

The popularity of the project created its own problems when the demand for service far outpaced estimates. CFC budgeted $1.5 million to fund connections in a timely manner but quickly depleted those funds. The county had expected a take rate of 40 percent, but this September CFC anticipated a take rate of 75 - 80 percent.

Without additional funding to expedite installations, CFC would have been limited to connecting 10 - 15 premises per month. Such a rate would only meet about ten percent of the expected demand, when considering more than 100 premises had been connected in August.

Rather than dramatically slow the rate of installations, Rio Blanco County Commissioners decided in September that the county would pay for the first $1,160 required to connect each premise. Property owners are responsible for any additional costs. The Commissioners voted to use reserves to fund the remaining drops.

County Commissioner Si Woodruff told the Herald Times earlier this year:

Earlier this year, we shared the story of Clarksville, Arkansas, and described how they used supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) to make efficiencies in their municipal electric utility. The resulting fiber optic infrastructure reduced energy costs and allowed them to better manage other utilities but also gave Clarksville the opportunity to explore high-quality connectivity for the community. Their investment is paying off and bringing new jobs to Clarksville.

Stepping Up Economic Development

In a recent press release, the Clarksville Regional Economic Development Organization (CREDO) announced that Monro Shoe has entered into a partnership with Clarksville Light & Water (CL&W), the city, and CREDO to expand its production and add 25 new positions. The community’s gigabit fiber optic network played an instrumental role in the expansion. In addition to better connectivity, CL&W will provide an energy audit to help the company cut production costs.

Serving The Clarksville Community

Clarksville’s population is just under 10,000 with Tyson Foods, Haines, and motor control manufacturing processor Balder as some of the largest employers. University of the Ozarks also employs many of the people in Clarksville. CL&W plans to connect the University to the network in the near future.

Community leaders wanted to be sure to use the network to serve all sectors of Clarksville when they pounded out their plans for the network in 2015. They chose to allocate a designated number of strands each for educational facilities, healthcare institutions, public safety needs, and government facilities. The municipal utilities used another segment, and a sizable segment was left open for future economic development use, such as the connectivity arrangement for Munro Shoes. As Clarksville’s network serves more entities we expect to see more positions added to the community; after all, they're just getting started.

After a long and arduous process, the folks in Mount Washington, Massachusetts, were finally able to light up their publicly owned fiber optic network last week. According to resident and Select Board Chair Eleanor Tillinghast, “We are thrilled. We’re going to be the envy of everyone.”

It's Finally Here

As we reported last month, the community was eagerly anticipating the opportunity to finish up the last steps to begin connecting subscribers from the town's 146 premises. Approximately 100 are connected and will take services from local Internet service provider Crocker Communications. In addition to providing Internet access, the ISP will handle billing for the city, provide 24/7 tech support for subscribers, and monitor the network. The infrastructure will be maintained by the company that built it for the city, NextGen Group. Mount Washington owns the infrastructure.

Gigabit connectivity is available, but most subscribers have opted for 500 Megabits per second (Mbps). All speeds are symmetrical, which makes Mount Washington’s network valuable as an economic development tool. Community leaders are already seeing in increase in real estate transactions that they relate to the new network. “People may have ruled Mount Washington out before,” Select Board Member Brian Tobin told the Berkshire Edge. “But we just catapulted ahead of other towns in terms of amenities.” As a potential quiet retreat for New Yorkers located in the Taconic Mountains, Tobin and Tillinghast expect to lure more urbanites who want to work remotely for part of the week. Tobin also has a Manhattan apartment and says that his Internet access speeds in the city are only about 117 Mbps download with slower upload speeds.

A Long Process That's Paid Off

On September 22nd, Fillmore County and local telecommunications cooperative representatives participated in a groundbreaking event to mark the start of building a Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network in the rural town of Lanesboro, Minnesota.

Fiber To The Unserved

Lanesboro is located in Fillmore County about 50 minutes southeast of Rochester. The small rural town covers 1.3 square miles with a population of 755. Forty-one percent of households in Fillmore County are “unserved” as defined by both the Minnesota Office of Broadband Development and the FCC, which defines “broadband” as 25 megabits per second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload. Fillmore County residents and businesses are one small group of a large segment of rural America without access to high-quality connectivity. The FCC reported in 2016 that 39 percent of rural residents don’t have access to broadband, but actual numbers are much higher because incumbent reported mapping tends to overstate the reality. 

Fortunately, rural cooperatives are picking up the slack where national incumbent ISPs are failing to deploy high-quality Internet infrastructure. Local telecommunications cooperative, AcenTek, will build the FTTH infrastructure. The network will connect 431 unserved households, 42 unserved businesses, and one community anchor institution (CAI) in the rural Lanesboro area, including Whalan, Carrolton Township, and Holt Township. The FTTH project is expected to reach speeds of 1 gigabit upload and download.

Funding FTTH

From the rolling Appalachian Mountains to bustling city streets, Kentucky has it all, including gigabit (1,000 Mbps) service from Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) networks. That’s right, Kentucky - the state that is often used as shorthand in America politics to talk about coal country and poverty - actually has some of the fastest, most reliable Internet service in the entire country. We put together this map using the latest data sets available from the FCC to highlight how much of rural Kentucky has the gold standard in high-speed Internet service.

Image

Cooperatives Cover Kentucky

This is just a brief snapshot using the June 2016 Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) Form 477 data set. This map shows all the FTTH infrastructure available in Kentucky according to the data submitted by ISPs. This data is reported on the census block level and may overstate coverage. Even so, the data reveals how cooperatives provide high-speed Internet service to much of rural Kentucky.

We’ve written about the Connect America Fund (CAF) on multiple occasions and recently alerted interested MuniNetworks.org readers to the FCC’s ongoing efforts to re-examine the CAF Phase II Auction procedures. On October 26th, the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition (SHLB) is presenting a free webinar on CAF as part of their Grow2Gig+ Webinar Series.

SHLB will be offering a Universal Service Symposium in Washington, DC, on November 2nd and the information presenting in the webinar will help attendees prepare. Even if you’re not planning to attend the workshop, the webinar will offer information that will be useful if you have any interest in applying for CAF funds or if you are monitoring the FCC’s policies moving forward.

The webinar speakers are Carol Mattey and Rebekah Goodheart; John Windhausen will moderate. SHLB describes the event as:

The Connect America Fund (CAF) is a federal program that provides funding to defray the cost of operating and extending both fixed and mobile broadband networks to serve consumers and small businesses in rural, high-cost areas in the United States. CAF was created by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to fulfill the statutory mandate that all Americans have access to communications service that is reasonably comparable to what’s available in urban areas.

Join two former senior FCC officials as they discuss the History of the Connect America Fund, the Phase II  Auction (Performance Standards, Application Process, and Auction Mechanics), as well as Reporting Requirements. 

You can register online at the SHLB website and also review past webinars and check out other events on the calendar.