Depth Story-Austin

Austin Briggs

Depth Story

Will Fort Collins Follow Longmont’s Lead and Open up Broadband Infrastructure?

Imagine being able to download a high definition movie in a blazing fast 90 seconds, upload web videos in the blink of an eye and review MRI’s from your living room with a doctor from another state.

For 154 US cities this has become a reality- unshackling themselves from having to rely on incumbent broadband providers to bring fiber-optic broadband speeds to their communities, many towns and cities have struck out on their own and have begun providing broadband services directly to citizens.

Last November Longmont, Co. won a hard fought legal battle against Comcast to partner with private companies to offer broadband services to its residents—does Fort Collins have any plans to emulate their neighbors to the south?

“We are aware of what they have done in Longmont” said Steve Catanach, Light and Power Manager for Fort Collins. “We’ve kicked around the idea but haven’t really investigated in-depth the possibility of the city being involved in internet service.”

Part of the problem, according to Catanach, is a law the Colorado state legislature passed in 2006 which prohibits cities from partnering with private firms to offer broadband services. The only way around it is if a city puts the question to voters as a ballot referendum.  Once on the ballot the city cannot endorse or promote the measure.

Cindy Parsons, vice president of public relations of Comcast for Colorado and New Mexico, said that there’s already plenty of choices for consumers and that cities don’t need to be getting into the risky business of providing broadband to citizens. She added that it’s a conflict of interest for cities to jump into operating a broadband network.

“Cities offering internet services puts the city in a duel role of competitor and regulator. That structure does create a level playing field and can potentially create unwarranted risk to tax payers,” cautioned Parsons.

For Longmont’s Light and Communications director Tom Roiniotis, it was a matter of simply using existing city-owned infrastructure in ways that could help the city.

“It makes no sense that these outside organizations can tell us what we can or can’t do with a fiber-optic network we installed ourselves. We simply wanted the freedom and have options to use this asset as we saw fit,’ he said.

The “asset” is a 17 mile fiber optic ring around the city in 1996. The network is connected to Fort Collins, Loveland and Estes Park.  

The cities have been limited by state law in using the network to strictly provide high-speed connectivity among their schools, emergency service providers and government buildings.  

Getting the initiative passed last November was a victory for the underdog in a modern day David vs. Goliath.

Fighting back a heavily financed campaign paid for by Comcast and other telecommunications firms, 60 percent of voters who turned out in Longmont voted in favor of referendum 2A.

This will allow the city to partner with private firms to use the city owned fiber-optic infrastructure to offer broadband services to the community.

Grassroots community organizations were outspent $290,000 to $5,000 and endured a summer’s long smear campaign by Comcast to defeat the measure. This was the second time the measure was on the ballot. In 2009 the measure was defeated with Comcast spending $250,000 in that campaign.

“It was really frustrating. Comcast could say and do anything they wanted to and the entire time the city had to watch every word we said, “explained Roiniotis. “We learned the first time around what to expect so we were better prepared the second time.”

He attributed grassroots citizen groups in educating the community about the benefits of passing the initiative and having the option of opening up the network.

“The city could endorse the issue up until the point that it got on the ballot,” Roiniotis said. “We were able to lay the groundwork for these other groups to come in and keep the momentum rolling.”

While the city of Fort Collins has not contemplated the issue yet, Catanach did acknowledge that the existing infrastructure would make it feasible to expand into the community.

“The city-owned fiber-optic network could in theory be the backbone of some kind of municipal system,” Catanach said.

Maybe we’ll have those 90 second high definition downloads after all.