HOLLAND – Within a few years, Dutch residents anywhere in the city could have Internet service from the Holland Board of Public Works, as well as water and electricity.

The Holland Board of Public Works presented a plan to the city council on Wednesday to build a fibre-to-the-home broadband network reaching every home and business in Holland, an investment voters would have to approve a mile to fund.

The Council expects to decide the voting language for the mileage proposal in late April for a primary election vote in August.

City leaders hope the Holland City Fiber initiative will make high-speed Internet available to everyone in the city and create a more competitive market for broadband services.

A free model

The fiber optic network – 172 miles of it – would be built and owned by Holland Board of Public Works, the city’s nonprofit public service, but it would be open to private internet service providers who could use it. to provide Internet, television and telephone services to households.

HBPW General Manager Dave Koster compared the free-access model to public roads. Under the current system, private internet service providers build private roads that only their company can travel on. Building these roads is a costly investment for every business. If voters approve the Holland City Fiber initiative, HBPW will build a public road that any business can drive on – in other words, which it will use to provide its internet and television services.

Plan presented as a way to give residents more choice

Most residents of the Netherlands have only one or two choices for a broadband service provider. “Broadband” generally refers to high-speed communications systems capable of transmitting 25 megabits or more of data per second.

HBPW presented the free access model as a way to reduce the cost of internet service in the Netherlands. With the fiber infrastructure in place, new Internet service providers would have a lower entry cost to enter the Dutch market and start offering their services.

The idea is that more providers means more competition between providers and incentives to lower prices, even for residents who stay with their current internet service provider and do not connect to the HBPW network.

And yes, Holland Board of Public Works would offer its own internet services as an option for households and businesses. HBPW is already providing internet service to some customers in a limited downtown pilot service area.

what it will cost

HBPW presented cost estimates to Holland City Council on Wednesday, although the numbers could change by April 20 when the council votes on the wording of the ballot questions.

There are two costs to consider: the cost of the fiber ‘passages’ or ‘routes’ beyond each address in Holland, and the cost of the ‘drop’, which could be thought of as the aisle that connects the road to every home and business.

HBPW’s plan proposes that the community share the cost of the citywide network, paying for it with mileage-funded bonds.

Homeowners will have the choice of connecting to the fiber network and will be responsible for paying for the connection, called a drop.

Main costs:

• The citywide fiber network could cost up to $24 million. Under the plan presented to council, HBPW would issue construction bonds and residents would redeem the 20-year bonds by one mile.
• The mileage could be as high as 1.5 mills, but city officials believe it will be lower. For one thing, they are proposing to contribute $4 million in American Rescue Plan Act money and potentially other grant funds to reduce the amount of the $24 million that will have to be issued in bonds. The public should have a firmer number by April 20, when the board is due to vote to put the bond issue on the August ballot.
• The cost of drops is $820 per address.
• HBPW offers to offer a payment plan for the drop cost. A sample plan presented to the board indicated $7 per month over 10 years.
• A sample internet service bill on Holland City Fiber showed a monthly cost of $42 for service: $7 for installment payment, $28 for network operations and maintenance, and $7 for internet services. The bill was based on what the costs might look like if 51% of residents connected to Holland City Fiber.

Fiber considered fast, reliable

“Fiber” refers to a network of cables containing tiny fibers of glass. The fibers transmit information along the cable using light.

Other internet providers in the Netherlands use cable TV lines or DSL telephone lines, both of which are copper.

Fiber is capable of faster speeds than cable and DSL and is considered “future-proof” because it is easy to upgrade by replacing equipment at each end of the system whereas fiber itself even does not need to change. It is also more durable than copper.

Holland’s fiber infrastructure will be capable of 10 gigabits per second bandwidth. Fiber can also offer symmetric service, where download speeds are as fast as upload speeds. Cable and DSL generally have slower download speeds than upload speeds.

Other cities have built open access networks, although the model is rare

Ammon, a small town in Idaho, is building an open access fiber optic network. The city is building fiber block by block as residents demand it in their neighborhoods and residents pay for the installation.

A sample monthly bill to Ammon for 1 gigabit per second of Internet service plus installation fees and utility charges is $49.50 per month.

The utility in Grant County, Washington, built an open-access fiber network funded by bonds and paid for by utility revenues. Fiber is available in 75% of the county, and the utility’s website lists 16 internet service providers offering internet on its network.

At the end of 2021, the utility said 67% of customers who had fiber available to them were taking the service.

Other US cities, such as Longmont, Colorado and Cedar Falls, Iowa, have fiber-to-the-home community networks that only offer their utility’s internet services.

Fiber as a public service

Dutch officials will try to defend fiber as the next utility over the next few months.

HBPW has been building fiber systems since the 1990s, when the utility installed fiber for its own systems and then began building fiber for other institutions that wanted it.

Today, HBPW has ventured further than before to become an Internet service provider with the pilot shared gigabit Internet service available to businesses and residents in a small service area in downtown Holland.

The city commissioned a survey to gauge public opinion on the importance of internet access and the public’s willingness to support community investment to bring access to all.

People in the Netherlands consider the internet an essential service, according to a survey conducted by the Frost Research Center at Hope College.

The survey found that 70% of residents considered broadband to be “a basic public service” along with water, sewer and electric services, 72% agreed that a network owned by the community would increase access to services and improve the quality of life in the Netherlands, and 65% agreed. a “community-level investment” would be needed to allow access to the whole city.

“It’s not cheap to have the internet, but through everything we’ve been through as a country and kids at home, parents working at home, it’s frustrating when your child is in class and the computer screen freezes or freezes, or you’re on a call with a client and you’re dealing with a large sum of money and the computer screen freezes,” said Wednesday Quincy Byrd, Board Member. “So there’s a lot of benefits for this community for us to move forward and move forward. I know we’re not voting today, but I’m all for it. OK.”

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“I think when people do the math, they’ll see they’re paying less for more,” said Daniel Morrison, a local small business owner who has been a fiber project advocate for years and runs the HollandFiber.org blog.

“I just wish we could turn it on tomorrow,” Morrison said.

Council member Dave Hoekstra expressed concern, even with a payment plan, that the $820 sticker shock might be too high for low-income families to log into the system.

“My thinking is, if we’re going to do this, and I don’t want to create any barriers, but if we’re going to do this, then let’s do it right, with as much thought and inclusion of the whole community as possible,” Hoekstra said “I would invite people or organizations who deal regularly with people who might not be able to afford it.”

Koster said the Affordable Connectivity Program (formerly the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program), a U.S. government internet subsidy for low-income households, would apply to eligible customers of HBPW or any other internet service provider using the Holland City Fiber network and reduce their costs.

The $30 per month benefit would reduce the cost of internet over the fiber system, based on the cost model presented to the board, to $12 per month.

— Contact journalist Carolyn Muyskens at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @cjmuyskens.