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Dunnellon, Florida's Fiber Dreams Now a Reality

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We reported on Dunellon, Florida, last year - time for a refresher and an update.

You may recall that Dunnellon is a small community with only about 1,900 people in 2004, located in the north central part of the state. The City of Dunnellon watched as surrounding communities gained jobs and people, while its phosphate mining industry limped along.

Dunnellon decided to invest in its own fiber network to spur economic development and provide the services Comcast and AT&T considered unprofitable in the rural area. The town secured financing through a traditional bank loan in 2010. Dunnellon's biggest challenge was building a network from scratch, but the town now has over 100 miles of installed fiber in Marion County. The service, Greenlight Dunnellon Communications, offers triple play at great rates.

From an article on the Communications Technology website:

The potential to improve the local economy through Dunnellon’s high-speed fiber network also is evident. Several neighboring counties, the local Marion County school district and numerous businesses are in the process of finalizing contracts to secure high-speed connectivity through the city’s network and to leverage such benefits as disaster recovery and failover. The city also believes area healthcare providers will benefit from the ability to connect directly to nearby facilities.

According to [Eddie] Esch, [the City of Dunnellon’s director/Public Services and Utilities] “As we progress in this project, we have uncovered so many exciting and promising new opportunities that it’s like watching the bubbles in a glass of 7-Up percolate to the top!”

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Despite Delays, Dunnellon Builds Muni Fiber in Florida

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Dunnellon, a small town in Marion County south of Gainesville, decided to invest in a community fiber network to spur growth and diversify its income stream. Though citizens did not want to cut government services, they have not been pleased at property tax increases. 364 days ago, we published a story discussing their financing. The town itself is quite small, with 1,733 residents but the network will be serving areas in the County as well. Though AT&T and Comcast offer services in the area, they have big gaps in coverage and apparently the cable television packages are antiquated (only 50 channels???). An article last year noted Dunnellon's Internet connections will range from 10Mbps to 125Mbps. They hope to sign up 1,647 subscribers within 6 months of launch -- the network is named Greenlight (not sure if they were aware that the city of Wilson, NC, already operates a triple-play FTTH network called Greenlight). They hoped to launch 6 months ago. Bill Thompson's "Dunnellon dreams of a connectied future," offers a comprehensive look at the promise and the challenges Dunnellon faces. Dunnellon's city manager comes from Valparaiso, which had a city-owned cable network that upgraded to FTTH. Unfortunately, Dunnellon is in the hard position of building a network from scratch. logo-valp-net.jpg Building a new network requires a massive up-front capital investment - in this case the city will have spent $4.4 million to connect the first connection. Good thing they aren't all that expensive! The article identifies two main sources of the delays: difficulty in getting on the poles owned by Progress Energy and long delays in receiving the fiber-optic cable they ordered (stimulus projects have hogged the supply). Rather than taking 12 weeks, they had to wait 30. Delays cause problems:
The installation delay has put the city in a pinch with its lender, Regions Bank.
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Florida Muni Dunnellon Building FTTH Network

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Yet another town has decided to take responsibility for their broadband future: a small Florida community has secured financing and is moving forward with their publicly owned FTTH network.
The City Council voted unanimously Monday night to approve the $7.3 million in funding with Regions Bank in Orlando. City Manager Lisa Algiere told the council members the city would be doing most of its business with the local Regions Bank. The funding will come in the form of three bonds: a series 2010A Bond, which is good for 20 years and has an interest rate of 3.61 percent; the second bond is a Series 2010B Bond and is for five years with an annual interest rate of 3.20 percent; while the third bond is a Series 2010C Bond and is good for one year. The funding secured by the city is a drawdown loan, meaning it will only take what it needs and only repay that portion.
The network has been branded Greenlight (though the website is not yet fully functional). Greenlight is also the name used by the Community Fiber Network in Wilson, North Carolina. Light Reading interviewed a network employee, shedding more details than have been released elsewhere. He says they are passing 7,000 premises, but Wikipedia only notes a population of 2,000 in 2004, so there is more than meets the eye at first glance. They financed the network without using general obligation bonds, working with a nearby bank (Regions is a big bank, headquartered out of state). Local competitors are AT&T and Comcast, though both offer extremely slow services; the fastest downstream speed available from Comcast is 6Mbps. The new network, as do nearly all recent community fiber networks, will offer much faster connections, the slowest being 10Mbps.
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