Fiber Forward Q1 - 2024

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Learn how Adtran is helping operators scale their networks, ensuring no community is left behind.

Gary Bolton, FBA President & CEO

Dear FBA Members,

We are in the best of times for the fiber industry as we work to build the nation’s critical broadband infrastructure, elevating the quality of life for generations to come. You can find a recap of our activities in 2023 and our plans to make 2024 even better in “Looking Back and Forth: FBA’s 2023 Accomplishments, 2024 Objectives” and the industry’s continued progress in “North American Fiber Growth Hits Highest Annual Record.”

It’s easy to take the speed and reliability of fiber for granted if you have it, but there are still many areas that are unserved or underserved. Fiber Forward Editor-in-Chief Doug Mohney was reminded of this at CES 2024, where he met a gentleman running over 10,000 acres of farmland but not a single strand of fiber available to support his large-scale business. His “Editor’s Moment – Fiber’s Time to Work” is a sober reminder that we’ve still got plenty of work to do in the years ahead.

Rural areas are not the only places facing fiber challenges as you’ll find in “A Tale of Two Cities - The Urban Fiber Struggle.” You may not think of Ft. Worth, Texas, or Newark, New Jersey, as digital deserts, but those cities are wrestling with their own obstacles to deliver quality broadband to their residents.

One of the issues facing both Ft. Worth and Newark are a lack of affordable middle mile capacity, an issue which affects both urban and rural areas. It’s especially important for precision agriculture, as you’ll see in the article, “Plenty of Work for New Middle Mile and Precision Agriculture Committees.”

Co-ops and municipality-owned utilities are doing so much for their communities. In “Fiber Supercharging Utilities for Today and Tomorrow,” you’ll learn about the secondfastest ISP in the country, Pulse, a subsidiary of the City of Loveland’s municipality-run utility and recognized by PCMag for their excellence.

You’ll also find a cross-over piece between utilities and middle mile in “Dominion Energy Powers Up Middle-Mile in Virginia.” Publicly-owned Dominion is providing critical middle-mile fiber to bridge the digital divide in Virginia, working with co-op utilities and others as partners to close the digital divide across the state.

Deploying fiber is a multi-generational solution for upgrading and sustaining economic growth and social prosperity in the years to come. “The Wonders and Wows of CES 2024” digs into the latest tech trends that will impact our daily lives in the years to come, highlighting the impact and need for deploying the best available solution for households and businesses that will last for decades to come. Congratulations to FBA member Lumen Technologies and its ecosystem of partners for building and rolling out the first certified Wi-Fi 7 at CES this year.

One area highlighted in the CES 2024 piece we’ll all want to keep an eye on is AARP’s AgeTech incubator, which features many companies using AI, VR, and health tech to provide comfort and quality of life to the elderly, especially when they desire to live as independently as possible for as long as they can. You can’t age at home or use any of the many other wonders demonstrated at CES this year without high-speed, low-latency broadband.

Unfortunately, there continue to be some who argue for short-sighted “good enough” broadband solutions that will have to be replaced every five years rather than recognizing that such solutions A) require continued spending for upgrades down the road, repeating the DSL cycle, which B) creates a new digital divide. Fiber will continue to provide reliable, futureproof broadband for decades to come, long after Elon Musk has migrated to Mars.

Sincerely,

Delivering broadband is easier than you think. Just FOLLOW THE POWER®.

Today, Internet access isn’t a privilege as much as it is a necessity. Using your existing infrastructure, electric co-ops can deliver broadband to underserved areas. With AFL’s proven expertise in fiber and electric utility markets, we can show you how. With our FOLLOW THE POWER approach, utilizing your right-of-way, you will be able to provide broadband and optimize grid performance.

About the Cover

“Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed. My fundamental purpose is to interpret the typical American. I am a storyteller,” said Norman Rockwell.

Given fiber’s impact this year and the years to come on reshaping America’s broadband reality in towns and communities large and small, we thought paying homage to The Saturday Evening Post illustrator and artist whose illustrations documented everyday Americana for over 50 years would be a fitting tribute to both his work and the larger changes fiber is delivering across the nation.

Borrowing from the cover of the November 21, 1936, edition of The Saturday Evening Post titled, “Overheard Lovers” to create our own version, “Overheard Lovers of Broadband,” illustrates the impact of fiber on both rural and urban communities. Both sides of the bench are leveraging the power of fiber broadband to connect, learn, and share.

As NTIA’s BEAD funding starts to flow and is joined by other federal, state, and private investment dollars, users in any community, from the smallest town to the largest city, can look forward to connecting to people, places, and possibilities like never before.

As is our practice, we’ve hidden Easter Eggs in this cover, including a throwback to our first illustrative cover from the Q1 2023 issue. Our thanks to talented Raleigh-based Illustrator Alice Holleman, for once again providing us with her excellent talent and art.

EDITOR’S MOMENT

Fiber’s Time to Work

By Doug Mohney, Editor-in-Chief

Unless you live somewhere close to Huntsville, odds are you probably don’t know Bill Bridgeforth, one of the owners of Bridgeforth Farms in Tanner, Alabama. The Bridgeforth family has been tending the land since 1877, five generations of Black farmers working over 10,000 acres that today span four counties. Bridgeport Farms grows six different crops, including cotton that goes to clothing manufacturers such as Victoria’s Secret.

John Deere works with Bridgeforth Farms to track its cotton growing and harvest using the U.S Cotton Trust Protocol, an organization that tracks the crop all the way from the field to mill, making sure that members can prove, measure, and verify that they are buying sustainably produced (cotton) fiber that is free of environmental and social risk. Six key metrics are tracked, including water use, energy efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions, soil conservation, soil carbon, and land use.

A combine picks the cotton and feeds the fluffy loose white balls into another John Deere machine that compresses them into a tightly pressed bail for shipping, incorporating an RFID chip into the outside wrapping material. The chip enables the cotton bail to be tracked from farm to cotton gin, carrying along information about the characteristics of the cotton and how it was grown using sustainable methods.

Big machinery, sustainable practices, family farms, advanced tech, it’s a feel-good story John Deere highlighted in its vast CES 2024 booth next to its autonomous machinery that is able to precision plow furrows with millimeter accuracy and geolocate each planted seed for tending and harvest.

Until I asked about fiber broadband.

“It’s very important,” Bridgeforth said. “We don’t have internet on our phone. We use [satellite] and it’s not dependable. The state broadband commissioner has promised we are at the top of the list. We hope to have

it sometime this year, but we’ve heard it before. We’ll just keep reaching out to him and hopefully one day they’ll bring us some fiber optic cable.”

The fiber industry has a lot of work over the next five years and challenges that need addressing. In the excitement of $42 billion of BEAD funding, it’s easy to take fiber deployment as a done deal, a given until you hear Mr. Bridgeforth’s story.

Communication and education will be vital in the months to come. CTA’s annual “Tech Trends” presentation at the beginning of CES 2024 proclaimed 92% of U.S. citizens are connected to the internet today, but their numbers didn’t talk about the quality of that broadband. There’s no way of telling which part or how much of that 92% is barely usable. Certainly Mr. Bridgeforth has broadband, but it’s not reliable or fast enough for his current needs, much less future requirements to support 21st Century precision agriculture.

Lack of adequate broadband isn’t limited to family farms in rural zip codes. The cities of Ft. Worth, Texas, and Newark, New Jersey, have had middle mile struggles that handicap their citizens gaining access to quality broadband and impinge upon healthy economic development. It should be no secret that more middle mile money is needed, based on the $7.5 billion in applications to NTIA’s Middle Mile Grant Program last year. Only $1 billion in award money was available, which should be suggestive of the work that remains, especially when you consider that the average grant match was a whopping 40%.

It’s going to be a busy year, but let’s not only focus on what we can do today, but what we need to do today to prepare for the most optimum tomorrow.

Sincerely,

LOOKING Back and Forth

FBA’S 2023 ACCOMPLISHMENTS 2024 OBJECTIVES

By Doug Mohney

By nearly all measures, the Fiber Broadband Association saw significant progress and growth throughout 2023. Fiber broadband deployment set a new record during the year, passing 9 million new homes with growth of 13% year-over-year. A total of 77.9 million U.S. homes are passed with fiber, with 51.5% of our nation’s unique homes and businesses passed with fiber.

“We’re building out critical infrastructure for generations to come,” said Gary Bolton, President and CEO of the Fiber Broadband Association.

“Continued growth and more recordsetting progress is anticipated for 2024 as the $42.45 billion NTIA BEAD broadband infrastructure funding has started to flow, with NTIA approving Louisiana’s initial proposal on December 15, 2023. All states and territories were required to submit their initial proposals to NTIA by December 27, 2023, so we should expect to see a steady stream of NTIA approvals and BEAD funding authorizations across the nation in the first half of 2024.”

which still have a way to go,” said Bolton. “FBA estimates that fiber-related inventory will normalize during the first half of 2024.”

As the industry continues to add new homes, the Association has continued to add new members to its membership and new participants to its annual Fiber Connect industry conference. “FBA’s membership has grown 108% over the past three years, and we added over 46 net new member companies since our Premier Members Meeting in December 2022,” stated Bolton.

“We are excited to report that in 2023, we also added 27 Federally Recognized Tribal Organizations as members thanks to FBA’s Tribal working group co-chairs, Robert Griffin and Sachin Gupta, and FBA’s membership team.”

FBA closed out the year with 470 members companies, with network operators making up 48%. “We’ve added 50 member companies this year,” said Bolton. “We try to be about 51% network operators, so we’re a little bit behind on that.”

The supply side of the fiber industry struggled in 2023 due to an excess of inventory built up from pandemicrelated supply-chain challenges, noted Bolton, with FBA’s service provider survey finding that fiber and fiberrelated equipment inventory peaked during the year with an average of nine months of stock on hand. “This inventory has been drawn down in the second half of 2023, with passive products having the lowest level of stock on hand, followed by electronics and fiber cable,

Person-to-person engagement through FBA events continues to be an ongoing, growing, and successful activity. “A major highlight of 2023 was FBA’s annual Fiber Connect conference held in Orlando, Florida, beating 2022’s record attendance by 33%,” said Bolton “Fiber Connect 2024 will be held in Nashville, Tennessee, from July 28 to July 31, and we anticipate another record turnout.” The 2024 exhibit hall has sold out nearly a year in advance, with the conference planning team working hard on next year’s agenda, he noted.

Other events, such as the Regional Fiber Connect workshops and the Premier Members Meeting, were also well received. “Minneapolis was our second-strongest regional event of the year, successfully exceeding all of our success metrics for the event,” said Bolton. “The 2023 Premier Members Meeting in Palm Springs, on December 5-6, was our best to date with our largest premier member turnout, the strongest field of candidates that participated in the board elections, the strongest agenda of top industry speakers, and a world-class venue.”

Among the priorities for FBA in 2023 were workforce development and increased legislative engagement. FBA is currently working with 40 states, 44 service providers, and 70 community colleges and training institutions to roll out the Optical Telecom Installer Certification (OpTIC Path™) fiber optic technician training program.

“Job Corps has selected FBA’s OpTIC Path program,” said Bolton “With more than 120 campuses across the United States, Job Corps is expected to become the secondlargest producer of OpTIC Path graduates, helping to develop the technical workforce needed to connect every community to fiber broadband networks. Further, the state of Vermont has also recently signed a training contract with FBA.”

FBA’s advocacy efforts continue to gain traction under the leadership of Marissa Mitrovich, FBA’s Vice President of Public Policy, along with FBA’s Chief Regulatory and Legal Counsel, Tom Cohen, and FBA’s Washington DC lobbyist, Crystal Tully, with Wiley Rein. FBA’s public policy committee has grown to 113 members, up 119% year-over-year.

During the fourth quarter, FBA held numerous events and meetings on Capitol Hill, including a DC fly-in meeting with 12 Congressional offices, the first “Fiber on the Hill” day, and ongoing engagement with Congress.

the policy team are currently in the process of planning our next Fiber Day on the Hill, which is scheduled for April 11, 2024.”

The Fiber Broadband Association continues to put a hard focus on research and produced several new studies and reports in 2023:

z “The State of The North American Fiber Industry” (FBA/ RVA) reveals that fiber has been deployed to 77.9 million homes as of December 2023, growing 13% year-over-year.

z “Fiber Deployment Annual Cost Study” (FBA/Cartesian) finds that costs for aerial deployments range from $4 to $9 per foot and buried costs range from $11.30 to $24.13 per foot. This report includes detailed fiber deployment cost elements.

z “Trusted Fiber” (FBA Trusted Fiber Working Group) which outlines key policy recommendations to ensure fiber deployed in the U.S. comes from trusted and ethical sources.

In addition, the new annual “Fiber Deployment Cost” study was released in January 2024.

Onward to 2024

“FBA is also very active and has filed comments on the FCC’s Section 706 Notice of Inquiry on broadband speed thresholds, the FCC Title II proceeding, and has been actively engaged in advocacy initiatives before Congress and the Administration to promote the continued funding of the FCC Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) and on permitting reform,” said Bolton. “Marissa and

“As FBA heads into 2024, the Association remains in an exceptionally strong position to execute our mission, benefiting generations to come,” said Bolton. “NTIA BEAD funding is starting to flow, and we expect deployments from this funding to begin in the second half of 2024. In the interim, broadband funding continues with a number of state and federal programs, such as the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), USDA’s Reconnect broadband funding, the U.S. Department of Treasury’s $10B Corona Virus Capital Projects Fund (CPF), to mention a few. As noted earlier, we also believe that service provider inventory will continue to draw down in the first half of 2024, returning the supply side of our industry to normalized and healthy revenue run rates.”

One vision is driving FBA priorities this year. “We want to focus on elevating quality of life for generations to come,” said Bolton. “We want to make sure fiber is going to translate into changing the world as we know it. That happens by having critical fiber infrastructure available for

everyone, paving the way for next-generation advances such as quantum networking, quantum computing, generative AI, Metaverse, and so forth.

“The payoff and return on investments are multifold. You start with improved health care, detecting cancer earlier, treating and curing chronic conditions. Being able to have economic growth, development, and opportunities across all communities, including equitable access to education. Smart grids, microgrids, renewable energy are all tied together with fiber and getting to a zero carbon footprint, and it’s going to pave the way for things like autonomous vehicles and trucking.”

Bolton outlined five FBA priorities for 2024:

FBA 5 Key Initiatives

5) Adoption and Affordability

As FBA members connect homes across the nation with fiber, the Association must ensure everyone is able to participate in our digital future.

To accomplish these objectives, FBA will continue to support its committees and build upon the success of its events.

1) Fiber is Critical Infrastructure

Deploying broadband is not about meeting minimum requirements or a “good enough” standard that needs recapitalization every three to five years but providing a long-lasting multi-generational infrastructure solution.

2) Accelerating Deployment

Speed of deployment is a critical characteristic and challenge. Anything that slows down builds will result in driving up cost and lowering efficiency. Streamlining permitting and utility locates is paramount to avoid delays. Finally, supply chains must be properly managed to prevent disruptions.

3) Protect Our Nation’s Critical Broadband Infrastructure

In 2023, FBA completed its Trusted Fiber 1.0 white paper. It is now working with policymakers to promote these important ideas that will play a key role in protecting our nation’s vital communications networks.

4) Workforce Development

Last year, FBA developed a Broadband Workforce Development Guidebook that was distributed to every state broadband office and workforce development office across the nation. To date, FBA has hosted over a dozen “Train the Trainer” sessions to help communities launch their own programs.

FBA is continuing to roll out its OpTIC Path fiber technician training program to community colleges and learning institutions in every state in the nation.

“We’ve grown to 16 committees now,” said Bolton. “Committees provide a great way for getting more people involved with the issues they are passionate about. They’re all volunteerorganized and led.”

Fiber Connect 2024, taking place on July 28-31, 2024, has already sold out all of its exhibit space. “We anticipate over 4,000 attendees,” said Bolton. “The Conference Committee is working hard to create and deliver the content people want and need in Nashville.”

Regional Fiber Connect workshops will continue in 2024 in five new cities, including Richmond, Va., in February; Little Rock, Ark., in April; Deer Valley, Utah, in June; Des Moines, Iowa, in September; and Albuquerque, N.M., in November. Unlike the large Fiber Connect annual conference, regional workshop attendees are generally not familiar with FBA, and it is their first FBA event.

Regional Fiber Connect events provide an opportunity for FBA and participating sponsors to engage with these attendees who are seeking to learn about fiber broadband and how to connect their communities.

Bolton warned that FBA couldn’t become complacent in its advocacy, despite the forward progress of BEAD. In December 2023, the FCC upheld its decision to deny Starlink its $885 million RDOF award on a 3 to 2 vote margin along party lines.

“One vote going in the wrong direction could result in digital redlining, preventing large regional areas of the Midwest and Pacific Northwest from being eligible for fiber funding that can elevate the quality of life for generations to come,” Bolton said. “We can never let our guard down. The threat to our mission is constant, so FBA must remain vigilant in our advocacy and educational efforts. Many of us have been working our entire careers for this historic opportunity to build out our nation’s critical broadband infrastructure.”

OpTIC Path™ Drafted by Job Corps

By Doug Mohney

Over the past two years, the Fiber Broadband Association’s (FBA) Optical Telecom Installer Certification program, OpTIC Path™ for short, has substantially grown from its humble beginnings. FBA is currently engaged with 40 states, 44 service providers, and 70 community colleges and training institutions to roll out the in-depth, hands-on fiber technician training course, with the goal to have it available in all 56 states and territories.

A large step to reaching that goal was taken in November 2023 when OpTIC Path was approved as the primary Fiber Optic Technician Credential for Job Corps. With more than 120 campuses around the U.S., Job Corps would become the second-largest producer of OpTIC Path graduates, helping to develop the 21st century technical workforce needed to connect every community to fiber broadband networks.

“Adding Job Corps to our OpTIC Path community marks a monumental milestone for our workforce development efforts,” said Deborah Kish, Vice President of Research and Workforce Development at the Fiber Broadband Association. “Job Corps is powerful in its ability to connect young adults with successful careers and connect industries to expertly trained technicians—that is exactly what the fiber industry needs today. We look forward to congratulating Job Corps OpTIC Path graduates soon and watching as they enable fiber broadband connectivity for communities across the nation.”

OpTIC Path will be first piloted at Job Corps’ Oneonta, N.Y., campus and then adopted by other campuses across the country. Job Corps is the nation’s largest free residential career training and education program for income-eligible adults ages 16 through 24. For over 50 years, Job Corps has helped individuals achieve meaningful careers in fastgrowing industries. The organization will offer the OpTIC Path course under its Underground Residential Distribution and Overhead Line Construction program tracks.

“Job Corps provides the free training that can jump-start careers and exciting futures,” said Thayne Bodenmiller, Center Director at Oneonta Job Corps. “Fiber technicians are in high demand across the country, so the addition of the OpTIC Path course provides a great opportunity for our students to train for a career that is highly competitive and valued. We look forward to launching OpTIC Path

and helping train the next generation of fiber broadband technicians.”

FBA created the OpTIC Path program in 2021 to develop a trusted training credential and strengthen the fiber broadband workforce. Between federal programs and private investment, the fiber broadband industry is experiencing its largest investment cycle ever, with numerous new networks expected to be built over the next five years as legacy copper and coax networks are replaced with modern, future-proof infrastructure with a multi-generational lifespan. These new networks will help close the digital divide and generate substantial economic and social benefits for the communities they serve.

Adding Job Corps to our OpTIC Path community

marks a monumental milestone for our workforce

development efforts.

– Deborah Kish, Vice President of Research and Workforce Development at the Fiber Broadband Association

However, a massive gap still exists in qualified fiber technicians needed to build and maintain those networks. The OpTIC Path program provides an in-depth, hands-on training course that can be delivered by schools, colleges, training centers, and employers to develop the talent needed to deploy fiber networks and connect communities to high-performance broadband safely and efficiently.

The OpTIC Path program is rapidly gaining traction among employers in the fiber broadband industry. These employers work hand-in-hand with schools and training institutions to ensure a steady supply of certified technicians ready to join the workforce. Furthermore, they are integrating OpTIC Path into their workforce development programs, leveraging it to reskill and upskill their existing employees as part of their overall workforce development strategy.

To learn more about the OpTIC Path program visit fiberbroadband.org/education-and-certification/fbaoptic-path/.

*

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*SUNY

College of the Albemarle

Northeast

By Doug Mohney

A Tale of Two Cities

THE URBAN FIBER STRUGGLE

Ft. Worth, TX, and Newark, N.J., appear to have little in common with each other beyond being lumped together with larger neighbors Dallas and New York City, with different climates, geographics, demographics, and histories. However, the two share a need for more fiber to close the digital divide and provide favorable conditions for economic growth.

Much has been said about the rural digital divide being a problem of physical distance and higher installation cost leading to limited access. Less has focused on urban challenges of legacy infrastructure and the disruptive necessity and expense digging up city streets and sidewalks to replace limited and decaying copper-based networks with modern, resilient, and more power-efficient technology.

Fiber provides urban governments and communities with substantial economic benefits. Municipal ownership of fiber enables city departments to communicate on their own secure networks, reducing the need for external services and their ever-increasing expenses. Available dark fiber can be leased to third parties, providing the city with monthly long-term revenue and used as an incentive to extend services to unserved areas. Finally, the availability of fiber and high-speed broadband

services for business is a necessity for attracting and retaining businesses.

Securing funding for urban broadband projects has proven to be a challenge for cities, despite an established need to reach “digital deserts,” areas that have not been modernized by incumbent vendors due to a calculated lack of return on capital investment. This has led municipalities to establish public-private partnerships for building broadband networks into unserved and underserved areas that have been historically bypassed in favor of wealthier zip codes.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

Any Lone Star State origin story usually starts with cowboys and cattle, but few segue into the importance of networks for 21st Century commerce.

“Ft. Worth was a border town right where the West began,” said City of Ft. Worth Chief Technology Officer Kevin Gunn. “We like to think of cowboys as the original entrepreneurs and they thrived because they were entrepreneurial. We had lots of head of cattle that were free for the taking down in the Rio Valley. They could bring them up here to Fort Worth and could sell them for

Ft. Worth is a thriving city but continues to fight for better internet for its residents and businesses.

$4 a head. If they could get all the way to Chicago, they could sell them for about $40 a head. They did that by creating a network way back in the 1890s, the Chisholm Trail, that ran all the way from South Texas up to Abeline and then on by rail to Chicago.”

Over time, the Chisholm Trail was replaced by a network of railroads, carrying not only cattle but other goods. Ft. Worth became a transportation nexus moving goods and people across the country as it grew. In the 1950’s, the Interstate Highway System supplemented the railroads, with three major thruways merging in the steadily growing city and giving an additional boost to the economy.

“We all know that the network of the future is the internet,” said Gunn. “We want to ensure Ft. Worth is well connected to that network, where commerce is performed and get all the other benefits that flow from that network. That’s why we’re interested in broadband and what the infrastructure for broadband is in our community. We saw some gaps or challenges there out of the pandemic, we saw segments of our community were not well connected or not connected at all to the internet infrastructure.”

The City of Ft. Worth defines four pillars for digital equity, including network access; device access; the knowledge, skills, and support for using the technology; and affordability. “Even if we have the first three in place, if it’s not affordable, we’re still going to have people left out,” said Gunn. “We also see economic development aspects to having good internet infrastructure in our community. There are lots of relatively inexpensive parcels of land here. We’ve got good electric power. We want to make sure we’ve got world-class broadband infrastructure so we can attract internet-focused and internet-based businesses here in Ft. Worth.”

Gunn cited North Dallas’ Metroplex area with its numerous data centers as a business development model that Ft. Worth would love to replicate, except for the fact that the nearest Tier 1 provider is 40 miles east of the city because there’s no available fiber to service the combination of low-cost real estate and available power. “We want to have peering and [Internet Exchange Point] cross-connect opportunities here in Ft. Worth so businesses don’t have to worry about constructing a path 40 miles to get Tier 1,” Gunn said.

Ft. Worth also plans to use new fiber in its own operations by leveraging its secure networking properties for city IT operations and incorporating smart city technologies across town to gather video and traffic information, weather conditions, and storm water and wastewater infrastructure performance.

When looking at the combination of needs for digital equity, economic development, and city government use,

During COVID, it became apparent that there were a number of households that did not have broadband, some didn’t have computers.

Ft. Worth decided to partner with a third-party broadband service provider to build its network with plenty of extra capacity. The central core of the network would enable the provider to use its private dollars to connect passed neighborhoods with PON to provide fiber to the home and for commercial customers.

“We just awarded a contract to Sprocket Networks, an internet service provider based in Dallas who wants to expand into Ft. Worth, to construct it,” stated Gunn. “They came out as the best value for the city in construction costs and in digital navigation and making sure we address the equity concerns we have in the community. It’s about 300 miles of cable, 192 strands. We have indefeasible right of use for 36 strands for our governmental use. That leaves the remainder [of the middle mile capacity available] for partnering with internet service providers in our community.”

Ft. Worth’s network will connect all the 224 facilities around the city, including fire stations, police substations, government storefronts, community centers, libraries, and fleet maintenance locations. Once connected, the city will switch off its current set of leased lines and the pay-as-you-go

Invest Newark CEO Marcus Randolph is open to partnering with third-parties to close the digital divide by deploying fiber into more of the city’s wards Source: Invest Newark.

model with its existing telecommunications providers, saving considerable operational expenses in the years to come.

“Our bandwidth needs grow at about 5% per year,” said Gunn. “Our bill for those services grows along with it. By provisioning our own WAN service and using our unlit fiber, our bandwidth growth is unlimited and locks in our operating costs at today’s levels.”

The $65 million project is being funded through $4.5 million in ARPA funding and $3 million from the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) transportation improvement plan in up front capital, and the remainder paid out as annual installments to Sprocket over a 34-year term. “Our annual payments are going to be the same as our current payments to other service providers, so we’re locking in our recurring operational costs for the network. It’s a great way to leverage our purchasing power, but not to have a lot of upfront capital.”

There are 376,000 households in the Ft. Worth corporate limits with around 76,000, over 20%, that don’t have access to reliable or high-quality internet service. Other proposals didn’t include the dark fiber which the city wanted to reduce longterm operational costs. Construction of the 300-mile network is expected to take place over three years, but that will only be the beginning for the Ft. Worth/Sprocket Networks partnership. Gunn anticipates funding opportunities for BEAD monies to be available around January 2025 or later, depending on how the NTIA approval process goes.

“We intend to partner with Sprocket to apply for that funding when it becomes available,” said Gunn. “That will definitely

help build our PON networks into neighborhoods, particularly MDUs, multi-dwelling units. We find there are quite a number of MDUs with 100/100 Mbps at an addressable location, but you may have 300 units at that location. If 300 of those units have to share 100/100, that’s not served.”

Ft. Worth hopes to tap into Texas’ newly created $1.5 billion Broadband Infrastructure Fund to expand coverage to its unserved and underserved communities, with Gunn saying he’s “cautiously optimistic” that there’s a lot of state and federal funding available to address connectivity shortfalls. “We still have urban areas that don’t have good internet infrastructure,” said Gunn. They have ADSL for connectivity and that’s not adequate to meet the needs of remote education, remote working, and remote services, especially when Mom and Dad and kids and grandparents are trying to do that all at the same time.”

Brick City, Scarce Glass

Settled in 1666, Newark, N.J., is one of the oldest cities in the United States and the largest city in New Jersey with over 311,000 residents. Nicknamed “Brick City,” Wikipedia paints a vibrant picture of Newark, citing its many white-collar jobs in insurance, finance, health care, and technology. Firms calling the city home include Audible, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, Prudential, Mars Wrigley, WebMD, and Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG).

However, the fiber broadband fueling the business sector’s successes is out of reach for many of the people who live there, with access and affordability major issues. About half of Newark’s 110,000 households are eligible for the

The city of Newark is using multiple methods to promote ACP to its residents, including mailings and pop-up tables at community events.

Source: Invest Newark/Tehsuan Glover.

$30/month ACP discount, while nearly one in five Newark households do not have an internet subscription, according to 2021 U.S. Census data, and 10% of Newark families lack a computer.

“During COVID, it became apparent that there were a number of households that did not have broadband, some didn’t have computers,” said Marcus Randolph, President and CEO, Invest Newark. “Asking people, particularly young people who were trying to learn remotely to do something off their parent’s phone or take a school-issued laptop to some place where they could access free Wi-Fi just wasn’t acceptable to our Mayor the Honorable Ras J. Baraka. He made a mandate to make sure that we make available to people an affordable and reliable internet option. Then, timely enough, here comes the ACP program that can go hand in hand with our efforts to expand fiber and make it available to residents here in the city.”

To promote ACP enrollment, Invest Newark received a grant of $400,000 from the Federal Communications Commission in 2023. With outreach in progress, nearly 30% of the city is enrolled, with over 10,000 households added last year. The city’s goal is to increase adoption up to 70% of eligible households by June 2024 and expects it will surpass that number. To address the device gap, Invest Newark has had discussions with “a few organizations” who have reached out to provide funding or help identify gently used equipment that can be recycled into a second life with those that need it.

While Newark works on affordability, it is also wrestling with improving and extending physical access. “We certainly do want fiber everywhere,” said Randolph. “We spent the last two years maintaining what we have [in our city network], we’re currently addressing some deferred maintenance. We’re trying to work out a plan to extend our fiber throughout the city so it’s more resilient and reliable.”

The City of Newark currently has a network of 26 miles of fiber it owns and wants to expand that into a metro-area ring by adding another 22 miles that would provide middlemile infrastructure for expanding access throughout the city’s five wards, including residential homes and MDUs. Randolph said Newark had applied for $22 million in NTIA middle-mile funding last year but, like most applicants, was turned down.

Newark is working on other funding solutions to build its metro ring, with a total expected cost of $30 million. “This is not an inexpensive endeavor,” stated Randolph, noting the expense and challenges of building in the city. “We do need to look at ways that we can cover that. It might require some conversations with philanthropic organizations that might want to take on a part of this. Obviously, the goal is

to have a ring around the city, but if we can stretch what we have today further into more wards, we’d consider it a win.”

While there are incumbents providing high-speed broadband within the city limits, they do not offer service to all residences. “We recognize the bigger players are not going anywhere,” said Randolph. “But we want to be able to provide options to folks who either A) Live in a place where the bigger players are not currently or B) We want a more affordable, reliable service for them. Ultimately, we want to make sure that the next time there’s some catastrophe that we find ourselves all having to distance from one another that no one is so distanced by the fact that they don’t even have broadband at home.”

Newark has leveraged ARPA funding to catch up on its deferred maintenance and as well as extend fiber coverage to all its recreational centers and some senior centers. It is planning to get fiber and Wi-Fi into all its public housing buildings, with its first trials taking place with the Newark Housing Authority. “We’ve done some installations and it’s going quite well,” said Randolph. “We’ve learned a couple of lessons from the first few buildings and hopefully we can just rinse and repeat and get fiber and good service to all the public housing buildings in the city.”

Future fiber expansion will require more investment with either public or private funding. Newark is open to working with the private sector to make fiber happen. “Part of our approach to doing this residential expansion is to create a free and open access network,” said Randolph. “We’ve had some firms express interest, but we’ll figure this out, we’ll get this fiber spread out throughout the city.’”

Ft. Worth CTO Kevin Gunn says the city’s fiber deal locks in operational costs while enabling unlimited bandwidth growth.

Source: City of Ft. Worth.

Fiber Supercharging Utilities FOR TODAY AND TOMORROW

Utilities are no strangers to fiber, with the earliest and oldest adopters of the technology initially deploying it to support their electric grid in the 1990s. Fiber’s resilience, physical security, unlimited capacity for growth, and immunity to radio frequency interference from electrical writing made it the go-to communications medium for SCADA operations in monitoring and controlling power grids, as well as water and sewer operations.

Today, co-ops and municipal utilities are taking their core fiber networks and using them as the keystone in delivering fiber to the residents and businesses in the communities they serve. Most often they are doing so by leveraging their own fiscal and workforce resources rather than seeking outside funding and hiring external contractors, making conservative deployment choices based on values formed over 80 to 120 years of experience in delivering power to their customers. This strategy gives them the ability to build a long-term sustainable business, albeit at a slower deployment pace than members may like.

Fiber provides essential, secure, reliable, two-way broadband communications to enable utilities to monitor real-time electric usage and work with residences and

businesses in efficiently using power for the benefit of all parties. The dynamic of power distribution has changed over the past decade and continues to evolve. Smart Grid discussions are becoming increasingly complex, with old-school, streamlined one-way generation and delivery of power being displaced by a multifaceted world full of electric vehicles and their chargers, residential and utilityscale battery storage, and a steady trickle of homeowners installing solar panels and selling back excess power to the grid.

All the while, utilities must balance consumer and business demands for carbon reduction and sustainability with the unspoken but always understood need for reliability and resilience in delivering power in the face of extreme climate events. The adage of “fast, cheap, and good – pick any two” belays the consumer demand for wanting all three when it comes to being able to turn on the lights, operate the cash registers on Main Street, and have the connectivity vital to today’s household and business life.

Fiber Forward spoke with utilities from around the country on the benefits fiber brings to their operations and on their experiences, struggles, and successes in adding fiber alongside the electric networks to deliver retail broadband services to the communities they serve.

Cullman Electric Cooperative’s Mitch Loftin (right) and Barry Garner, show students the technology and equipment involved in splicing fiber at a recent high school career fair. Source: Cullman Electric Cooperative.

144 Neighborhoods, One Neighborhood a Time

Few companies can say they were founded more than a hundred years ago, but Chicopee Electric Light (CEL) has no problem letting people know they were established in 1896 as the municipality’s utility. The community leaders of the time founded the entity because the private utility was providing unsatisfactory service according to Chicopee’s website, a theme all too familiar in the 21st century if one replaces “electric” with “broadband.”

Today serving 25,600 electric customers in the Chicopee, Mass., area, CEL lit up its first fiber in 2001. “It initially started primarily to interconnect all of the city infrastructure and all the city buildings,” said Jim Lisowski, General Manager at CEL. “Schools, City Hall, DPW, all the city buildings within the City of Chicopee, all installed at no cost to the city, interconnected all their buildings. We had some dark fiber that we leased to various companies who wanted to pass through the city, but we weren’t providing retail connectivity at that time.”

About a dozen years later, Chicopee entered into a joint venture with neighboring Holyoke Gas & Electric to provide business internet services to customers within the city limits, with Chicopee handling the last mile. Holyoke already had its internet infrastructure operational within its service area to the north, so partnering with Chicopee was a logistical move for both entities.

By 2017, discussions in Chicopee government turned to what other services the utility could offer the city, either in a residential or business capacity. “We are basically a wires company,” said Lisowski. “Why can’t we install fiber? How much different can it be than installing electric lines all over the city? We had pole infrastructure, we had the resources to do it.”

CEL’s feasibility study and follow-on planning came back positive and led to it running a pilot residential deployment in 2019 and building up the support systems necessary to deliver broadband at scale. “We worked out the bugs during that time, found out what worked,” said Lisowski. “We actually built our own internal [BSS/OSS] telecom engine that tracks customers, installs, surveys, scheduling, people signing up, people showing interest, and everything like that.”

Building the network to cover all 25,000 customers is taking place in a deliberate and extremely granular fashion, matching buildout speed and funding to interest. “We broke up the city into 144 fiber-serving neighborhoods or FSAs and build areas based on level of interest,” said Lisowski. “If the area hits a certain threshold, they go into the potential build queue. Each year, we budget for the upcoming year to determine what areas we’re going to be targeting for the build in

the next time period. We’ve been building around 25-ish neighborhoods per year, with anywhere from one hundred to a high of 250 plus customers in a neighborhood.”

Connected Homes for Reducing Carbon

From a utility standpoint, fiber connects all the utility’s SCADA infrastructure for monitoring substations and various devices out on the distribution side. It is also being utilized as a mechanism to backhaul data from its AMI electric meters, but the two-way capability of fiber is about to become much more important in the months and years to come.

“We’re moving forward with what we call connected home, essentially allowing the customer to make intelligent decisions as to what kind of infrastructure they want to install in their home, whether it be smart thermostats, smart controlled heat pumps, batteries, or EV chargers,” said Lisowski. “In Massachusetts, decarbonization is the big catch phrase. We have mandates from the state to do so. This infrastructure will allow us to put out programs that will help us towards the goal of 100% non-carbon emitting power by 2050.”

CEL’s connected homes program will provide various incentives to opt-in to load-shaving programs for battery

Pulse fiber NID being installed near electric meter. Source: City of Loveland Pulse.

storage, EV chargers, and heat pump usage, with a bill reduction or a check sent to the customer monthly if they don’t use power during peak times. Reducing the load during peak times eases the load on the utility to buy or generate power using more expensive options, so it is a win for both the utility and consumers.

“Typically, our peaks run between 4 PM and 9 PM when everybody’s home, winter and summer,” said Lisowski. “During peak times, we would be sending customers signals through email, text message, or their smart thermostat asking them to say ‘Yes, I’d like to participate in this event, go ahead and turn down my devices.’ A reduction would be made on that heat pump or thermostat, or the EV charger would shift into trickle charging.”

To be eligible for a monthly bill reduction or rebate check, customers would have to opt-in to all power-savings event alerts in a particular month, receiving anywhere from a $6 to $10 credit per device depending on the type.

Virginia is for Lovers (of Fiber)

Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative (MEC) is relatively young compared to CEL, having been founded in 1938. With 33,000 electric customers and power infrastructure distributed across nine Virginia and four North Carolina

counties, it initially deployed fiber years ago to connect 21 of its substations and its three district offices. This led the co-op into deploying AMI meters and looking into providing fiber for its members as others were.

“We went to the board and made the recommendation that we seek out some funding and extend fiber all the way down to the folks at the end of the line,” said John Lee, President and CEO of Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative and its subsidiary EMPOWER Broadband. “I’ll never forget our board chairman, David Jones, saying, ‘I don’t feel like we’re doing the right thing. We’re spending our member’s money to run fiber through all of our substations and right by their homes and businesses and not giving them the opportunity to take advantage of that resource for desperately needed broadband service.’”

Soon after that meeting, MEC established EMPOWER and secured a $2.6 million grant from the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission to start building fiber to its members, launching them into their larger broadband path funded through a series of additional grants. EMPOWER is finding great success in deploying fiber beyond its utility use, due to a combination of customer demand and proactive financial support from the state. It has connected 5,000 customers and expects to hook up many more in the near future.

Loveland City Council and members of city board and commissions attend a network tour. Source: City of Loveland Pulse.

The WONDERS and WOWS of CES 2024

by Doug Mohney

Every year the tech universe moves in unforeseen ways, with the manifestation of its will interpreted and expressed through CES, the largest annual gathering of technology companies in North America and perhaps the world. Up to 130,000 attendees arrived in Vegas in January to view, touch, test, and, in some cases, taste, the efforts of over 4,000 exhibitors, including over 1,200 startups.

Like most large congregations of punditry and pontification, this year’s event delivered a mixture of wows and “What were you thinking, bro?” It is best to view the announcements and predictions from CES 2024 with a mixture of quiet joy and healthy skepticism, with truth emerging over time. This year, advances in health, AI, precision agriculture, vehicles large and small, aging tech, AR/VR, and other sectors underlined the need for robust, high-speed, low-latency fiber broadband for today and many tomorrows to come as shiny new gizmos and innovative new services move from product announcements and exhibit halls to the real world.

Lumen Brings the Power of Wi-Fi 7 to Fiber

One doesn’t often see large carriers talking about fiber at CES, despite all introducing multi-gigabit offerings over the past twelve months. Wi-Fi 7 is likely to shift the conversation in the months and years to come, delivering a better, more robust in-home broadband experience in terms of coverage, lower-latency, and multi-gigabit speeds, making it the perfect complement for fiber service providers offering gigabit and faster services today. The Wi-Fi Alliance officially announced its Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 7™ program in early January, providing test lab certification for device interoperability with the finalized standard.

First out of the gate to be certified was Lumen Technologies for its custom-developed Wi-Fi 7 router and optional Wi-Fi extender to pair with its bespoke ONT. At the close of its third quarter in 2023, Lumen’s Quantum Fiber service passed 3.5 million locations and had 896,000 fiber subscribers. New subscribers will be

CES 2024 is the world’s largest technology trade show in North America, drawing over 130,000 people this year. Source: Doug Mohney.

the first to receive the new Wi-Fi 7 gear with the company working out the details on potential migration options for existing customers.

“We’re excited about our Wi-Fi 7 devices because we’re trying to create an experience for our customers that’s best in class,” said Andrew Dugan, Chief Technology Officer, Lumen Technologies. “It’s something we’ve been working toward for multiple years. When we released our XGSPON implementation ONT capable of 8 Gbps symmetrical customer data speed, it was something we felt was a first in the industry, an in-home device that can leverage the full 10 Gig capability of XGS-PON. We’ve now added the Wi-Fi 7 router to complement it. And it is ready to deliver that excellent experience for our customers.”

Through its initial internal testing program, Lumen saw dramatic performance improvements with Wi-Fi 7 over its predecessors, including double the coverage area over Wi-Fi 6. The Lumen box includes a GPS chip to support Automated Frequency Coordinate (AFC) service so that it can broadcast up to 4 watts of power in the 6 GHz band if there are no other licensed users of that spectrum in the area, providing larger area coverage for both home and business users.

The extended coverage provides immediate benefits for both customers and Lumen since no or fewer Wi-Fi extenders are needed, so customers can benefit from the Wi-Fi 7 router immediately without having to upgrade the entire home to Wi-Fi 7 devices. Fewer extenders reduce hardware expenses and inventory while Luman gains a simplified in-home wireless environment to monitor, manage, and troubleshoot, part of an holistic approach to customer service that’s winning them rave NPS scores.

“We also have a strategy for creating a digital twin of all of our devices in the cloud,” said Dugan. “In real time, we extract all the operating parameters from our devices and pull those back to a cloud image, we’re monitoring 60,000 parameters per device in real time. We have an image of exactly how that device is operating in the home in real time in the cloud. It enables us to run algorithms and logic against that data, using AI tools to be able to understand how that customer’s experience is in the home. That will allow us to deliver a better experience. It also reduces our costs over time, as we can better support customers when they call in or even prevent them from calling in by making sure that the device is operating in optimal mode.”

Lumen started out building Quantum Fiber with the vision of providing the world’s best fiber experience, opening with a fully digital customer ordering process, simple subscription billing, and a customer support process with a single point of contact instead of being handed off between multiple groups within the organization when issues arose.

“We did a lot of research around customers’ broadband experience and the pitfalls and the challenges and doing business with providers of all sorts,” said Maxine Moreau, President of Lumen’s Mass Market division. “We wanted a customer experience that was very different from telco. The number one challenge consumers have when they purchase broadband is connectivity within the home and the number one reason customers call us today after they get their service is because they’re not getting the throughput. Very few devices are hardwired to benefit from 1 Gig, 3 Gig, and 8 Gig. The Wi-Fi capabilities leap between 6 and 7 provides a significantly better in-home or in-business experience.”

Moreau noted the Quantum Fiber brand already receives positive customer NPS scores of over +60 across all touch points, with digital twin technology enabling Lumen to proactively diagnose issues in the home and resolve it before the customer knows there is a problem, resulting in significant operational savings.

“Many times prior to digital twin, we would get a phone call, we troubleshoot with the customer, we tried two or three different things, they tried two or three different things, we’d hit a dead end, and we’d need to send someone into the home,” Moreau said. “With this technology, we believe we can cut those customer visits down significantly because of the data that is being extracted from the network and the AI overlaying to be able to self-heal the network.”

Howie Mandel holograms live into AARP AgeTech exhibit panel discussion, the next step in interactive real-time conferencing technology. Source: Doug Mohney.

Another principle included in Lumen’s Wi-Fi 7 router and extender devices is sustainability, a point Luman executives highlighted several times during the discussion with Fiber Forward. Using less materials saves the company money in several ways, including shipping and storage since the products take up less volume and weigh less.

“There’s lots and lots of passion with our green packaging,” said Crystal Dowds, Vice President, Architecture, Engineering, and Technology, Lumen Technologies.

“We went to Vietnam a couple of years ago and walked through everywhere all our products are made and saw our manufacturers using recycled plastic. That started us on this great sustainable journey. All our Wi-Fi 7 devices are manufactured from day one with recycled plastic and then you’ve got the new packaging. We’re looking at reducing our costs by about a third because of the reduction in cardboard, recycled plastic in the device and then all the packaging will be sustainable products.”

Could other fiber providers tap into Lumen’s multi-year work in hardware and operational support systems? Company officials seemed to be open to the idea of making it available on the appropriate terms.

AI, VR, and Holograms

Artificial Intelligence (AI) was the overhyped buzzword/ concept at this year’s show, but it and Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) have emerged as key building blocks entrepreneurs are using to build new services across all sectors. One may wonder about the ultimate value of an AIenabled pillow or mattress or a smart pet collar collecting data and feeding it to a generative AI, but there’s no doubt that the technology is embraced and leveraged by health tech entrepreneurs looking to deliver better patient care while reducing loads on doctors, emergency rooms, and insurance companies.

AR/VR has moved out of the gaming zone and into many other applications. Startup Rendever is bringing senior living facilities together with AR as a social interaction tool for residents to visit with their friends and family, as well as a method to assess and improve balance and mobility. In four weeks of use, older adults improved their working speed by 9%, with 48% of participants reporting less concern about falling after VR exercise.

Global conglomerate Siemens used CES as an opportunity to embrace the Industrial Metaverse, a concept including AI and immersive engineering. “We envision the Industrial Metaverse as a virtual world that is nearly indistinguishable from reality, enabling people — along with AI — to collaborate in real time to address real-world challenges,” stated Siemens CEO Roland Busch in a press release. “This will empower customers to accelerate innovation, enhance sustainability, and adopt new technologies faster and at scale, leading to a profound transformation of entire industries and our everyday lives. Designers and engineers will be able to create and work with design concepts in a VR immersive workspace and use mixed reality to review those designs against the real world, with Red Bull Racing among its first customers applying the tools to its problems.

Holograms have always been a key science fiction trope, but they made a real-world appearance throughout CES thanks to Proto and its Epic hologram box, capable of creating a real-size, real-life 3-D moving image of a person in real time using a cool 20 Mbps of bandwidth. Proto “beamed in” America’s Got Talent judge (and company investor) Howie Mandel using Epic to the exhibit for a live interactive discussion at the AARP stage. William Shatner was also beamed in, but he was pre-recorded. Over 100 companies in fields including health care, live entertainment, and retail are working with the technology, which includes a touch screen for interactive applications.

Growing Precision Agriculture

Two years ago, John Deere introduced its first automated tractor at CES. Now every piece of farm equipment that the company makes will have the option to operate without a human behind the wheel. John Deere’s booth included the real-time operation of an autonomous tractor tilling a field in Austin, Texas, and monitored remotely through multiple windows on a large display.

“We have examples throughout the booth of us using technology to help farmers at their highest point of need,” said Lane Arthur, Vice President of Embedded Software and Solutions (ISG), John Deere. “The tractor is actually turning the dirt. In general, farmers don’t like to do this work. It’s kind of boring. And labor has been a huge issue for them. An autonomous solution allows them to deploy their labor to other places that are more high value.”

This video and information dashboard is representative of where precision agriculture is going. Autonomous vehicles, such as John Deere’s line of equipment, require plenty of bandwidth for control, monitoring, and software updates. Source: Doug Mohney.

Connect

Always On Connectivity

We

FBA Q4 Photo Gallery

FBA Board Member Evann Freeman leads a fireside chat with Tom Karst, Federal Program Officer, Minnesota, Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth, NTIA, U.S. Department of Commerce, at the Minneapolis Regional Fiber Connect event.

FBA members got to participate in the BMW Performance Driving Experience at the Premier Members Meeting in Palm Springs, Calif.

FBA President & CEO Gary Bolton delivers an address at the December 2023 Premier Members Meeting.

Bree Maki, Broadband Director, Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED), explores local fiber broadband initiatives at the Minneapolis Regional Fiber Connect event.

The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe’s Sally Fineday and Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa’s Brian Hood explore tribal broadband opportunities and challenges at the Minneapolis Regional Fiber Connect event.

Ready.net’s Jase Wilson, Nokia’s Lori Adams, and Ready.net’s Scott Woods welcome one another at the Premier Members Meeting reception.

FBA.

FBA members got to take a Jeep tour of the San Andreas Fault at the Premier Members Meeting in Palm Springs, Calif.

Tribal Ready PBC’s Adam Geisler delivers a keynote at the Premier Members Meeting on tribal broadband opportunities and challenges.

FBA Board Member Sachin Gupta explores the scenery during a San Andreas Fault Jeep tour at the Premier Members Meeting.

FBA’s Deborah Kish moderates a panel on workforce development at the Minneapolis Regional Fiber Connect event. Speakers included Clearfield’s Kelly Weismann, Harmony Telephone Company’s Jill Huffman, and Interstate Telecommunications Coop. Inc.’s Tracy Bandemer.

Jeffries’ George Notter and FBA Public Officials Roundtable CoChair Bob Knight discuss market trends and analysis at the Premier Members Meeting.

Premier Members Meeting attendees got to ride an aerial tram and experience the scenic Chino Canyon.

FBA’s Marissa Mitrovich and Kelley Drye & Warren LLP’s Tom Cohen provide a public policy update at the Premier Members Meeting.

Who’s Who on the FBA 2024 Board of Directors

By Doug Mohney

On December 5, 2023, the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) gathered at its annual Premier Members Meeting in Palm Springs, Calif., to elect a new Board of Directors. With the industry coming into its largest investment cycle yet, the new Board is comprised of a diverse assortment of industry leaders who have demonstrated a long-term commitment to FBA and its mission to accelerate fiber broadband deployments and close the digital equity gap across North America.

Brown has contributed to FBA’s Conference Committee and Women in Fiber Committee for the past two years. Freeman has worked with FBA’s Public Policy Committee and continues to serve on FBA’s Conference Committee as chair, helping to plan and coordinate the annual Fiber Connect conference and Regional Fiber Connect Workshops. Gupta served as co-chair on the Tribal Broadband Roundtable. He has also contributed to FBA’s

The full 2024 Board of Directors includes the following fiber broadband industry leaders:

Chair: Jimmy Todd, CEO and General Manager, Nex-Tech

Vice Chair: Kimberly McKinley, Deputy Director and Chief Marketing Officer, UTOPIA Fiber

Secretary: Sachin Gupta, Director of Business Development, Centranet

Treasurer: Gregg Logan, Vice President of Engineering, C Spire Mark Boxer, Technical Manager – Solutions and Applications Engineering, OFS

“The fiber broadband industry is set to experience the biggest and best year in fiber broadband history, and our 2024 Board of Directors is an excellent group of experienced leaders to guide us through it,” said Gary Bolton, President and CEO at the Fiber Broadband Association. “Collectively, they represent a broad range of companies within the fiber ecosystem, serving a diverse assortment of roles within their own organizations. They bring unique, knowledgeable perspectives to FBA and our members that will help us advance fiber broadband deployments until every community is connected.”

Jimmy Todd, CEO and General Manager for Nex-Tech, was elected as the new Board Chair for a one-year term beginning on January 1, 2024. Todd has dedicated his time and leadership to the Association for many years, serving as Board Vice Chair in 2023, and Secretary in 2022. He also served as board liaison for FBA’s In-Home Experience Working Group Committee and serves as co-chair of the FBA’s newly formed Precision Agriculture committee. Joining the board as newly elected members are Ashley Brown, Evann Freeman, and Sachin Gupta. Each will serve three-year terms beginning in 2024.

Ashley Brown, Senior Director Field Marketing, Adtran Evann Freeman, Vice President, Government & Community Relations, EPB of Chattanooga

Scott Jackson, National Market Manager – Broadband, Graybar Ariane Schaffer, Government Affairs & Public Policy Manager, Google Fiber

Power Utilities Roundtable Steering Committee, Workforce Development Committee, and helped create a Working Group for Middle Mile Networks.

Departing Board members who reached the end of their three-year terms in 2023 are Katie Espeseth, Vice President of EPB of Chattanooga; Joe Jensen, Director of Market Development at Corning; and Joseph “JJ” Jones, President of On Trac, Inc., All three board members will continue to serve FBA on its Senior Council Committee, each for a three-year term.

Espeseth served on the board for six years, including as Chair in 2020 and 2021, and acted as the board liaison for FBA’s Women in Fiber Committee. Jensen also served on the board for six years, held the role of Treasurer in 2022 and 2023, and was the board liaison for the Trusted Fiber Working Group Committee. Jones served as Board Chair in 2023 and Vice Chair in 2022. Additionally, Jones has served or chaired various FBA committees for the past 16 years, including serving as the Fiber Connect Conference Chairman for seven consecutive years. .

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Dominion Energy Powers Up Middle-Mile in Virginia

By Doug Mohney

As an investor-owned utility providing seven million customers in 15 states with electricity or natural gas, Dominion Energy doesn’t fit the typical muni/co-op Fiber-tothe-Home & Business model. In its home state of Virginia, it will be providing middle-mile fiber to connect tens of thousands of unserved people across the Commonwealth as it builds out its fiber network for a smarter, more resilient grid.

Dominion Energy’s ability to offer middle-mile services came as a part of 2019 legislation enabling investorowned utilities in the state to lease excess fiber capacity to ISPs, resulting in a win-win for the company, the state, and the citizens of rural communities which didn’t have an affordable way to get high-speed broadband.

“The unserved areas across Virginia, and really across United States, look a lot like Swiss cheese,” said Ed Diggs, Rural Broadband Manager, Dominion Energy. “You have pockets of served in unserved areas, the point being it was too costly for any one provider to come in and close those larger unserved areas by themselves. The thought was, ‘Why not leverage utility companies which already have the power lines and rights of way in place?’ We could come in, build our fiber for our utility network, and then lease out some of that excess fiber to willing ISP companies.”

Under the 2019 legislation, Dominion Energy conducted pilot programs in Surry County and the Northern Neck of Virginia and is now transitioning to wider operations across the state, with involvement continuing to grow as other localities heard about the program and wanted to secure their own middle-mile access.

“We’ve got close to 30 different counties and jurisdictions involved,” said Diggs. “By having a middle-mile partner with Dominion, they can focus on being last mile providers. We’re forecasting to build close to 3,000 miles as part of the Virginia broadband initiative, using a portion of that fiber to communicate along our electric distribution infrastructure with our major devices. More importantly it’s allowing our ISP partners to close the gap and serve the unserved areas in Virginia where otherwise the economics didn’t make sense and they couldn’t afford to do it by themselves.”

Dominion Energy started its middle-mile efforts with a single person (Diggs) in 2019. It now has 30 internal employees dedicated to its middle-mile effort, working with hundreds of vendors to research, design, and build out its

network at a rate that Diggs described as “very fast, a very compressed timeline.”

Given Dominion’s status as a regulated utility operating in the state of Virginia, each fiber build must be approved by the State Corporation Commission. The first petition to build 500 miles of fiber took place in 2022 with this year’s petition adding almost 1,900 miles. A few more counties are expected to file petitions in 2024 to continue to increase the size of the network.

Internet service providers are leasing the dark fiber from Dominion and provide the electronics necessary to connect and light it, with the leasing costs being used to offset the construction build and other overhead costs to maintain and repair it. Most of the fiber is aerial deployed and is being installed in such a way to minimize any make ready costs.

Any excess capacity not used by the ISP or Dominion could be available for other parties. “There’s no provision to say we can’t lease any excess fiber to other broadband providers, whether they’re cellular providers or another ISP company on the back end once we’ve met the unserved obligations with our ISP partner,” said Diggs.

Dominion Energy is adding middle-mile fiber for the benefit of its power grid and rural communities seeking broadband Source: Dominion Energy.

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The Costs for Deploying Fiber

By Doug Mohney

How much does it cost to construct a fiber network?

Anyone with experience in the field would first answer, “It depends,” listing factors affecting expenditures that include labor, underground vs. aerial, what region of the country, and rural vs. urban settings. Some variables are less determinate, such as potential supply chain shortages or rising prices due to inflation.

Nevertheless, quantifying the costs to construct a fiber network is necessary to help fiber broadband service providers and their contractors evaluate their budgets and identify areas of inefficiency. In January 2024, the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) announced the results of its first Fiber Deployment Cost Study. Conducted by Cartesian, the 2023 study provides the industry’s benchmark for costs across the fiber deployment ecosystem in the United States.

“As broadband providers across the country look to leverage public and private funding to connect communities to high-quality broadband services, understanding the cost variables of deployment remains a vital component to broadband plans and proposals,” said Deborah Kish, Vice President of Research and Workforce Development at the Fiber Broadband Association. “Our annual Fiber Deployment Survey uncovers fiber cost benchmarks and how costs change over time—information that is critical for broadband providers and state broadband offices as they prepare competitive applications for NTIA BEAD funding to connect their communities to reliable fiber broadband services.”

FBA’s comprehensive study surveyed network operators, municipal broadband providers, utility/electric cooperatives,

prime contractors, and subcontractors, exploring many factors that influence cost but often make it challenging to compare costs across deployments. There’s no cookie cutter approach to network construction with labor and materials, build scenarios such as terrain and housing density, and the choice of construction methods are all unique to a particular network build.

It’s All About the Labor

Sifting through the data collected through phone interviews and an online survey from respondents representing 35 states in total, the 2023 Fiber Deployment Cost Survey found that, on average, labor contributed to 73% of underground build costs and 67% of aerial costs. This should be no surprise since previous studies by Corning and others have identified labor makes up the majority of costs in a fiber build.

With labor’s share of costs roughly twice that of materials, network builders are looking to find the most efficiencies there, with aerial enabling construction crews to deploy fiber faster over existing infrastructure than having to move dirt, deploy conduit, and pour concrete in underground builds.

Other common themes across deployment projects were clear as well, with many seeming self-evident. The cost per foot of aerial deployment is less than half of underground, at a cost from $4 to $9 per foot, as compared to $11 to $24 per foot for underground deployment with the median cost of deploying fiber underground over twice that of deploying fiber aerially.

For underground, the highest share of responses fell between $10 and $20 (43%); the majority of respondents (63%) had costs of less than $20/ft and almost all (90%) were under $30/ft. Notably, there were some cases where costs were significantly higher – above $70/ft at the top end. The most expensive builds were due to local factors such as navigating waterways or challenging underground situations in dense urban areas.

Choosing between aerial or underground was driven by factors including access to poles, risk of adverse weather events, and deployment costs. Underground deployment was viewed as more resilient and better protected against adverse weather, such as hurricanes, tornados, high winds, and ice storms.

For aerial, most respondents (75%) reported costs of $10/ft or less. In fact, over half were between $4/ft and $8/ft. As with underground, there were some more expensive outliers, with the highest reported costs reaching $30/ft or more.

Labor accounts for over two-thirds of build costs

Using aerial is, of course, dependent upon physical access to poles, with economic factors playing a role as well and, in some cases, skewing projects towards underground. Makeready costs can vary significantly, with some study participants estimating that make-ready costs can add $5 to $6 per foot to unit costs while other estimates added anywhere from $500 to $5,000 per pole, depending on the amount of preparatory rework required to do such things as reposition power lines.

terrain is, the more costly it becomes to dig under the surface, regardless of the method involved. Underground deployments have a median cost of $10 per square foot in soft earth and double that in rocky terrain at $20 per square foot. Rocky terrain is more expensive as it requires more cutting and drilling, with slower progress. It also had the top-end of reported underground costs at over $70 per square foot.

To understand the costs in more detail, respondents were asked to report labor and materials costs separately.

Across all responses, labor was the dominant cost, accounting for at least 50% and up to 90% of reported unit costs. On average, labor contributed 73% of the underground build cost and 67% of aerial.

Given labor ’s share of cost is roughly twice that of materials, it is understandable that network builders will seek efficiencies here. As we show later in the report, the construction method has a large bearing on cost and more efficient techniques enable construction crews to faster cover ground.

Looking at the distribution of labor and materials costs in the chart below, it’s clear that the labor drives the long tail of higher unit costs seen above. The labor costs for both aerial and underground show a similar long tail, whereas the material costs are more closely clustered.

Where available, a choice of underground construction methods can reduce cost. Trenching had the lowest reported median cost at $12 per foot and plowing the highest median cost at $17 per foot. Directional boring fell in the middle at a median of over $15 per foot, but also had the highest reported costs of any method.

The median underground labor cost was $12.15/ft and in most cases (90%) was no more than $30/ft. For aerial, the median was $4/ft with most (92%) less than $12/ft.

The 2023 study also considered deployment costs by four U.S. regions: Northeast, South, Midwest, and West. The Northeast had the lowest costs for aerial and underground with the West being the most expensive, with regional cost variations attributed to topography and the extent of rocky ground. Aerial costs in the Northeast fell between roughly $4 to $5.95 per foot using the 25% to 75% percentile for cost per foot on labor and materials while the West aerial range ran from $6 to $12.50 per foot and $15 to $29 per foot for underground deployments.

Cost Trends and Future Cost Optimism

For materials, costs ranged up to $6/ft for aerial and $12/ft for underground. The median underground materials cost was double that of aerial ($4/ft and $2/ft respectively).

Geography and Terrain

Population density has a large impact on the cost per foot of aerial and underground builds, with median costs increasing with density. Extremely rural areas represent the lowest median costs, with $5 per foot for aerial and $12.50 per foot for underground. Urban areas had the highest median costs at $6.54 per foot for aerial and a whopping $23.25 per foot for underground.

When ber leads, the future follows.

Almost half of respondents reported significant costs increases from 2022 to 2023. Of those with rising costs, the majority reported increases of at least 10% with the most often citied factors being labor and materials. For aerial deployments, make-ready was the third most cited cost driver while engineering and permitting were the third and fourth most cited cost drivers in underground projects.

14

Factors increasing underground costs with increasing population density include the presence of roads and sidewalks, which have to be displaced and then repaired. Building in more dense areas also requires more caution with locates and the use of heavy equipment due to other underground utilities likely to be present.

Terrain plays a significant factor in costs, with underground costs especially affected. The denser and harder the

While labor and materials are anticipated to increase costs over the next year, that impact is expected to be less steep than in 2023. Improved economic indicators and increased preparation efforts are creating good conditions for increased fiber deployment, with less uncertainty around inflation and interest rates. Early BEAD projects are expected to break ground towards the end of 2024 while private investors are continuing to back fiber projects. Manufacturers are ramping up domestic production in response to Buy America Build America (BABA) provisions and the industry is looking to reform rules around permitting and make-ready to reduce costs and delays.

North American Fiber Growth Hits Highest Annual Record

by Doug Mohney

Last year, fiber broadband hit all new records, with 9 million newly passed U.S. homes added by network operators in 2023, of which 6 million of those newly passed homes previously did not have fiber, according to the latest annual research conducted by RVA LLC Market Research & Consulting (RVA) for the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA).

“Cumulatively we’re now at about 78 million homes past, including second and third passings,” said

Michael Render, CEO and Principal Analyst, RVA LLC Market Research and Consulting, as he presented the research during a December 2023 Fiber for Breakfast webinar. “We’re at about 69 million unique homes passed. We’re now passing 51.5% of U.S. households, unique primary homes.”

Fiber broadband also passes a growing percentage of second homes or short-term rentals. RVA estimates the total available market remaining for FTTH may be over 100 million homes including second and third passings in many areas, and there is likely a decade of deployment at or above the current momentum.

when compared to historic data, while both Consolidated and Windstream have inferred take-rate increases of over three times for 2023 builds.

“We’ve known for years that the benefits of fiber outweigh any other broadband technology available, but it is always refreshing to have this annual survey validate those facts,” said Deborah Kish, Vice President of Research and Workforce Development at the Fiber Broadband Association. “Year after year, our research demonstrates the growing preference for fiber and the increased success of the fiber broadband ecosystem in extending the reach of high-quality broadband networks.”

There are now 30.9 U.S. million homes “connected” by fiber, with the take rate over the last year on the increase. “We’ve dipped a bit in the past, but we’re on the rise again to about 45.4% in average,” said Render. “Some companies are showing in their public information that their first year take rate is really improving.” Render citied public statements and data from larger service providers where recent take rates have significantly increased, with AT&T reporting new builds are achieving double the take-rate

Healthy fiber progress has been observed in Canada as well. Overall Canadian passings had 12% growth in 2023 to 12.1 million. Fiber now passes 11.2 million unique Canadian homes and fiber uptake in Canada is estimated at 44.6% (including incumbent providers and CLEC providers utilizing fiber installed by others). “Of course, it gets tougher from here in Canada, because of the rural nature of much of the country,” Render stated.

RVA analyzed multiple sources of data to arrive at its 2023 numbers, including public company data, the FBA/RVA 2023 surveys of mid-size and smaller providers, data from the FBA/RVA 2023 Consumer Study, review of the 2023 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mapping data, data from other industry association surveys, and interviews and data from vendors and engineers.

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As the number of homes passed and homes connected with fiber have increased, so have the number and type of fiber providers delivering those services, especially with the growth of rural electric fiber broadband providers over the past five years. While their overall share of homes passed is currently the smallest at 2.2%, rural electric providers have quickly entered the fiber broadband market and now almost match homes passed by municipalities at 2.7%. Incumbent telephone tier 1 and derivative fiber providers still lead with 64.7% of homes passed; incumbent telephone tier 2 and 3 providers have 11.3% of homes passed; private competitive providers/ CLECs have 9.9%; and MSO/Cable operators have 9.1%.

Assessing exactly how fast 2024’s growth will occur will take some time, between data collection and weather playing a factor in construction. “There’s some seasonality [to building],” said Render. “The slowest time is the first part of the year with cold weather-related issues. You reach your peak in the middle of the summer.”

manufacturers versus outside plant enclosures and so forth. I also think some service providers are realizing there is an opportunity to build while they have workforce available before all that additional government money hits, so I expect deployment to turn up even further in 2024. Those two things could connect quickly.”

Small to mid-sized service providers faced their own challenges in 2023, with labor availability quality rating the highest at 24% among respondents in an RVA survey conducted earlier in the year, followed by rapidly rising construction costs (18%), materials concerns (15%) and permitting (8%).

However, there were some hiccups to 2023 as well, with the stock price of fiberrelated equipment manufacturers dropping to about 40% of their value over the course of the year. “It’s an inventory correction factor coming into play,” said Render. “There was a huge bubble at the end of 2021 and through 2022 as companies were concerned about supply shortages. People were building up to try to make sure they had the inventory they needed in their warehouses to go forward. But they overdid it a bit. And then interest rates went up and Wall Street said they needed to get inventories down.”

Render believes the fiber ecosystem is close to reaching equilibrium between supply and demand, as companies reduce their inventories back to pre-pandemic levels. “It could be turning around now, or it could be the first part of the year,” he said. “It depends on the type of vendor since there are differences in the supply chain for fiber cable

“There are concerns out there,” said Render. “The Fiber Broadband Association is the association working on all of these concerns and smoothing the road going forward.”

Private funding is expected to play a key role in 2024 fiber expansion, with numerous investment firms putting money into telecommunication infrastructure projects. “There’s been a huge realization that for every dollar of fiber, the valuation is much higher than other kinds of internet,” said Render. “People have seen the opportunity to get a very solid return on their investment, whether they continue to operate it or eventually they’ll be flipping companies and consolidating companies.”

When asked what 2024 growth will look like, Render did not have a specific number to provide, but felt the trends were good. “This is the time of year where we do our forecast report,” Render stated. “I think it will definitely be in the range of [2023’s growth of 9 million homes]. Most people think it will be later, 2024 or even 2025 before the BEAD money starts flowing in a big way. But there’s other government money out there and all this private money, so we need to analyze that carefully. But barring some geopolitical economic catastrophe, we expect the numbers to increase next year.”

Plenty of Work for New Middle Mile and Precision Agriculture Committees

By Doug Mohney

The Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) added two new committees to its roster at the December 2023 Premier Members Meeting for Middle Mile and Precision Agriculture, bringing the total number of committees actively involved with the Association to 16. Committees enable like-minded FBA members to discuss issues that directly affect them and the larger fiber broadband ecosystem, providing a forum to raise concerns, provide education, and implement solutions when feasible.

Both new committees arrive at a critical point for their respective specialties. By any measure, NTIA’s Middle Mile grant program was substantially oversubscribed, leaving most applicants frustrated and wondering how they will be able to bridge the gap between existing core network capacity and rural needs for low latency, high-speed broadband. Precision agriculture is the path to drastically improve farming sustainability and efficiency, but fields full of sensors, fleets of autonomous vehicles, and data-driven methodologies require reliable, resilient connectivity.

Middle Child Middle Mile

The NTIA Middle Mile Program awarded nearly $1 billion dollars to 39 organizations spread across the United States and its territories. But it’s only a down payment to the actual

infrastructure needed to be built, with millions of new rural households to be connected over the next four years through programs such as BEAD.

“Once NTIA tallied everything up, there were over seven and a half billion dollars in applications,” said Sachin Gupta, Chair of the FBA Middle Mile Committee, FBA Board, and Director of Business Development at Centranet, a subsidiary of Central Rural Electric Cooperative (CREC). “Middle mile tends to be that stepchild that always gets neglected by most state and federal bodies when it comes to fiber networks. They do not see an immediate need for a large-scale fiber network. Yet, when it comes to delivering connectivity to constituents in rural areas, there’s no affordable way to deliver internet to the last mile. That is the short-term thinking that has gotten us into the situation we’re in.”

Gupta has seen first-hand the many problems of inadequate middle-mile infrastructure in his own backyard. CREC is building out a fiber network in its seven-county service area in Oklahoma. “Our average household density is about four to four and a half households per mile wherever you go. Unlike urban areas which have six to eight choices for middle mile, we’re lucky to have two choices. And most of the time, those two choices may be on the same glass, the same right-of-way route, so really, it’s just one choice prepending to two choices. That affects

Precision Agriculture Co-chair and FBA Board Chair Jimmy Todd. Source: Fiber Broadband Association.

reliability and redundancy because there’s only one route. And because we don’t have enough choices, it makes the cost exceptionally high compared to what you pay for bandwidth in urban areas.”

For example, buying 100 Gbps of transit capacity as a rural service provider may cost 10 to 11 cents per megabyte, as compared to roughly 4.5 cents per megabyte if directly located at an Oklahoma City data center. The higher cost of bandwidth and the dearth of middle mile options for rural providers makes financially sustainable operations challenging even before considering new applications.

“Companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft are accelerating deployment of their low-latency applications,” Gupta said. “Gaming, manufacturing, edge computing, virtual reality. Lack of affordable middle mile will place the use of these new technologies out of reach, so it will put them into a new digital divide, because they can’t do telepresence or use VR for remote work or learning.”

In addition, a single middle-mile provider running past rural areas presents a single point of failure because there’s only one path serving a community. Given the necessity of highspeed low latency broadband, Gupta said there should be more middle mile construction to increase redundancy through ring topologies in rural areas.

will allow you to connect the corners of a state. There are pros and cons to both models. The biggest con to coalition models is there’s no dark fiber available for linkages, because it’s created by leveraging existing assets. People have some overcapacity, but not a lot.”

On the plus side, a coalition-based organization that can reach urban-area exchange points now possesses the ability to drive the cost of connectivity downward. “The coalition can buy bandwidth as one huge network,” Gupta said. “They can get a substantial discount on transit and potentially can even peer at an IXC.”

I’ve got a lot of farmers in our area that are still using low bandwidth unlicensed fixed wireless access because they can’t get anything better. Or they’re using their cell phones and a hot spot and that’s just no way to run a farm.

– John Greene, Co-Chair of FBA’s Precision Agriculture Committee

Because of the necessity for rural middle-mile redundancy, Gupta said the traditional model for building it is starting to evolve. “Traditionally, someone comes and builds the entire thing and one entity runs it,” said Gupta. “That works in a lot of places where you have the investment to make it work.” Winning NTIA Middle Mile grant applicants put in an average match of 40%, with some going as high as 50%, on an average grant award of $10 million.

“The new middle model is a coalition-based model,” said Gupta. “If I’m a provider, and next to me there’s a provider, and right next to them is another provider, and so on, you connect them all and you have a middle mile network that

Uploading and Downloading the Farm

Middle mile is only one of many issues facing rural farms implementing precision agriculture technology, which just isn’t working without low-latency, high-speed connections. “I’ve got a lot of farmers in our area that are still using low bandwidth unlicensed fixed wireless access because they can’t get anything better,” said John Greene, Co-Chair of the FBA’s Precision Agriculture Committee. “Or they’re using their cell phones and a hot spot and that’s just no way to run a farm.”

“Some of them are using old satellite technology because they can’t even get fixed wireless,” stated Jimmy Todd, Precision Agriculture Committee Co-Chair, 2024 FBA Board Chair, and CEO and General Manager at Nex-Tech. “Copper doesn’t cut it, geostationary doesn’t cut it.” Todd allowed that wireless likely had a role on farms and ranches that needed connectivity across what he dubbed “the last acre” to outbuildings, vehicles, and devices, but fiber was the anchor for broadband connectivity to cloud services and edge computing tasks that need to be performed locally.

“As precision agriculture evolves, more data will be generated that needs to be processed with less latency,”

FBA board member Sachin Gupta making the case for a Middle Mile committee at the December 2023 Premier Members meeting. Source: Fiber Broadband Association.

Todd said. “More dependable connectivity has to be there for real-time analysis and action. A lot of precision agriculture is based on iterations or steps, phases where data is collected, batched, and then processed to generate a plan of action, which is then implemented. Eventually, farmers and the support systems they will use will want to be able to do analysis and action in real time. To get that speed will require last-mile fiber for the bandwidth and latency.”

Todd speaks from his experience working with the Federal Communications Commission’s Precision Agriculture Task Force over the past four years. “I’ve heard farmers all over the U.S. talk about how fixed wireless is not cutting it,” Todd said. “They don’t have mobile connectivity in rural areas, and satellites are horrible. Farmers are trying to run a business that feeds the world, so they need the best technology available.”

Precision agriculture is extremely important to the ongoing success of farmers and the future of the environment. By leveraging IoT devices and remote sensing data from drones and earth observation satellites, farmers can deliver the precise amount of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers to the fields and deliver the necessary water to the crops that need it when they need it. The flow of information in precision agriculture is a two-way street, with field and crop conditions flowing into cloud services for analysis and returning what appropriate amount of materials fields and crops need to maximize growth without wastage.

“We are the breadbasket of the world,” said Greene. “We have been for decades and will continue to be for decades. The largest manufacturer of agricultural equipment in the world is John Deere, and not by just a little bit, but by quite a bit. As the 800-pound gorilla in that space, they continue to be more technology-oriented in their business. Working with their equipment will require low latency and you can’t get that from fixed wireless. We’re going to need higher symmetrical bandwidth, because we’re moving more information upstream and that’s the case even today.

Greene cited the growing broadband needs in Indiana, where he resides and is the is the Chief Executive Officer of New Lisbon Broadband and Communications and Chairman of the Board for Hoosier Net. The state was the fifth largest producer of hogs in the United States, according to a 2023 U.S. Department of Agriculture report, and third in the nation for the total number of chickens produced.

“Farmers have got cameras everywhere in the barns, monitoring thousands of hogs and tens of thousands of chickens and turkeys,” stated Greene. “That’s a lot of bandwidth, not some small note from your tractor that you need to change the air filter. You have many video streams that need to go somewhere, and you can’t do it on a [fixed] wireless or a cell phone connection.”

Beyond bandwidth, Greene and Todd see a role for the committee in promoting interoperability standards for devices on the farm. “John Deere and other equipment manufacturers are using proprietary wireless to connect the tractor, combine, sprayer, whatever it is, back to a hub location,” said Greene. “From there, they upload it into their databases, churn the data, and generate maps with information on rainfall, yield, and so on. The downside is it’s all proprietary. That’s unfortunate because if I buy a combine from John Deere but have a spray from, let’s say, New Holland, now I have two disparate systems and they don’t communicate. That puts farms in a bad position.”

“What this reminds you of is the smart home/connected home. Ten years ago, everyone had their own little walled garden,” said Todd. “Until standards of interoperability are put out there and accepted, you won’t have what we’re seeing now with [the Matter home IoT standard] and the rapid advance of connected home and secure devices.”

Precision agriculture faces other challenges beyond interoperability standards, including affordable and reliable high-speed wireless systems, and working through the balance between onboard computing, edge computing, and cloud resources for robot systems.

“At CES last year, companies were demonstrating how they were spraying fertilizer on the seed while moving forward, and they also showed the use of cameras looking for weeds to directly attack,” said Todd. “But every single part of that rig had its own little computer. Most folks that work in the fields are pretty hard on equipment, right? Computers sitting on the arm of an implement or a boom are going to be in a very challenging environment. Simplifying that setup to an edge computing device or server on the farm with low latency connectivity and the ability to analyze the soil in real time, determining how to adjust that fertilizer or herbicide or perform another action is what you will want in the future of precision agriculture.”

Precision Agriculture co-chair John Greene (R) discussing potential committee functions at the 2023 Premier Members meeting. Source: Fiber Broadband Association.

Public Policy Update

By Marissa Mitrovich, FBA Vice President of Public Policy

The Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) brings great momentum for public policy into 2024, which comes on the heels of a fly-in that took place last November on Capitol Hill.

Led by FBA President & CEO Gary Bolton and myself, we were joined by executives from our member companies who met with legislators and their staff, allowing for policymakers to familiarize themselves with the broad fiber optic ecosystem that our membership represents. The group advocated for many FBA priorities, especially a need for additional funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) and permitting reforms. In December at the FBA Premier Member Meeting in Palm Springs, public policy committee members shared their input on our 2024 policy goals, mainly where and how do we grow our engagement and conversation with legislators. The result will be more opportunities for more members to meet with policymakers, new public policy subcommittees and working groups, and more public policy research. Stay tuned!

Fiber Day on the Hill

On April 11, 2024, FBA will host our second annual “Fiber Day on the Hill” in Washington, DC. Last year, this event brought over 200 bipartisan attendees from Congress and the Administration and was an incredible, interactive educational opportunity to learn about fiber broadband. This year’s Fiber Day on the Hill will bring exciting new demos, while maintaining a focus on the fundamentals of fiber and the opportunity to learn to splice fiber as part of

the event. Fiber Day on the Hill provides an opportunity for participants to see demo stations presented by FBA members that explain what fiber is and how it improves U.S. households, communities, and the economy. We hope you will participate in this event. Please reach out to FBA to learn more about this opportunity.

Quarterly Overview

Broadband Equity, Access, and Development (BEAD) Grants

On December 15, 2023, Louisiana became the first state to receive approval for its Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program proposal and this quarter brought additional approvals of proposals. With much anticipation, FBA is working to help our members navigate grant criteria and continues to advocate for ongoing BEAD priorities.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) BEAD timeline predicts that most funding distribution will start by late 2024 into early 2025. As a reminder, NTIA has a great BEAD proposal tracker on the Internet for All website: www.internetforall.gov.

Letter of Credit Requirement

An important issue that FBA advocated for on behalf of our membership was the irrevocable standby Letter of Credit (LOC) requirement for subgrantees receiving support under BEAD.

FBA supports assuring that all parties have the financial capabilities to complete projects, yet the initial proposal reached beyond what we believed necessary to achieve that goal. NTIA responded to stakeholder input by issuing a programmatic waiver on November 1, 2023, that will ensure more midsize and small providers, which have long supported underserved communities, have a fair opportunity to participate in the historic BEAD program and connect Americans to high-speed fiber broadband. The waiver modifies the LOC requirement for subgrantees of all Eligible Entities in the following ways: Allow Credit Unions to Issue LOCs; Allow Use of Performance Bonds; Allow Eligible Entities to Reduce the Obligation Upon Completion of Milestones; and Allow for an Alternative Initial LOC or Performance Bond Percentage.

Uniform Guidance

NTIA released a policy notice on December 26, 2023, providing “tailoring” on the application of the Uniform Guidance in the BEAD program. The Uniform Guidance is the federal government’s framework for grants management, providing rules and requirements for federal grant programs. NTIA guidance addresses program income; fixed amount subgrants, enables service providers to make network upgrades without prior approval; and establishes a ten-year Federal Interest period for broadband infrastructure projects after the network is constructed.

Availability of Advanced Telecommunications Capability to all Americans

FBA submitted comments on December 1, 2023, to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Section 706 Notice of Inquiry (“NOI”) “concerning the ‘availability of advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans.’”

The FCC is required to conduct this inquiry on an annual basis to evaluate the state of broadband across the country and consider many characteristics of broadband deployment, including affordability, adoption, availability, and equitable access when determining whether broadband is being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion. FBA encourages the FCC to create a long-term gigabit symmetric, low latency benchmark in tandem with other federal agencies.

Open Internet Regulation

The FCC has proposed classifying broadband internet access services as a telecommunications service and imposing common carrier and “open internet” regulations on broadband service providers. FBA believes this is both unwarranted and will undermine broadband investment, particularly in fiber infrastructure and service innovation. In December, FBA filed comments in opposition to this proposal. Congress, not the FCC, should address this issue.

Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP)

In early January, Chairwoman Rosenworcel and the FCC communicated wind-down guidance for the ACP to industry

and households subscribed to the program. With over 20 million households subscribed to this program, FBA encourages Congress to appropriate funding to continue this program, which has been integral in keeping Americans connected to the internet and allows them to participate in all aspects of the economy and society. We appreciate the bipartisan, bicameral leadership on this issue and support the legislation introduced in early January that would allocate $7 billion in additional funding for the ACP. The legislation was introduced by Senators Peter Welch (D-VT) and J.D. Vance (R-OH) and Representatives Yvette Clarke (D-NY) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and we appreciate their leadership. This is an issue that impacts every congressional district and while Congress looks for longterm reforms, the ACP should continue to be funded.

Fiber Broadband Association Public Policy Leadership

FBA’s Public Policy Committee is led by co-chairs Chris Champion, Vice President, Government Affairs, C Spire; and Jordan Gross, Manager of Federal Government Affairs, Corning. Ariane Schaffer, Government & Public Policy, Google Fiber, is the FBA Board Liaison. If your company is interested in joining the public policy committee, please email mmitrovich@fiberbroadband.org to join.

FBA leadership gathered for meetings on Capitol Hill.

Source: Fiber Broadband Association.

Annual FBA Latin America Research Measures Expansion, Expands Measurement

By Doug Mohney

In January, the Fiber Broadband Association – LATAM Chapter released its annual “Panorama FTTH LATAM” market report. Published since 2013, the study conducted by consulting company SmC+ focused on the Latin America market, analyzing fiber deployment in the region, challenges, impacts, trends, and projections for the coming years.

The 2023 report comes with a different look and new analysis of industry factors. “We are deepening the regional knowledge about the FTTH momentum the region is living nowadays,” said Sebastian Cabello, CEO of SmC+ Digital Public Affairs.

“For this new 2023 edition, we added a couple of new indicators like number of sockets, network overlap, and competition levels that reflect different aspects of the growth we are seeing, that is reflected not only in coverage but also in quality levels.”

Fiber to the home services passed 114 million households in Latin America with a total of 57 million FTTH subscribers in 2022 (51% of total broadband subscribers), at a rate of 22% year-over-year subscriber growth. Over 111 million households had a broadband subscription in Latin America while there are 69 million without any connectivity, making up 38% of total households in the region. Expansions in data traffic demand and government initiatives to close the digital divide are expected to drive growth of 20% annually over the next five years. As a result, FTTH is expected to make up 69% of all broadband subscriptions by 2027.

“The Fiber Broadband Association is extremely encouraged by the results of this Latin America study, as the strong growth of fiber broadband deployment and adoption will elevate the quality of life in the LATAM region for

generations to come,” said Gary Bolton, President & CEO, Fiber Broadband Association.

Among the countries with the strongest growth are Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, and Argentina. Data used to build the Panorama FTTH LATAM was collected from the main vendors in the region and from the regulatory agencies of the 18 countries that make up the region. Over the next five years FTTH and FTTB coverage combined is expected to grow from 62% to 77%, with FTTH/FTTB take rates going up from 50% to 66%. As deployments continue, users in urban areas are expected to have increased competition through multiple fiber choices available in the marketplace.

The report also recognizes continued challenges and barriers to new service offerings even as growth continues. Challenges for service providers include sustainability, supply chain bottlenecks, expanding coverage to rural areas, and vandalism. Obstacles to deployment include a lack of qualified staff, existing and in-deployment 4G and 5G networks, economic uncertainty and ROI, and a desire by incumbent service providers to maximize their investment in legacy technologies.

“The LATAM Panorama is recognized as a key tool to reflect the growth of the sector and understand barriers and opportunities around the Latin American industry,” stated Nelson Saito, president of the Fiber Broadband Association LATAM Chapter. An executive summary of the report is available on the FBA website at www.fiberbroadband.org, while the full report is available exclusively to members of the Fiber Broadband Association.

Stealth Communications Connects NYC

By Doug Mohney

With a population of over 8.4 million people living in its five boroughs, New York is one of the most vibrant cities in the world, home to Wall Street, Broadway, Fashion Week, Saturday Night Live, and a plethora of other cultural and business movements. The “City That Never Sleeps” was the anchor for $1.66 trillion dollars in economic activity in 2022, according to the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

Deploying fiber in this most urban of urban cities is no trivial task, much less build an independent business that started life as an internet dial-up firm 28 years ago.

“Stealth Communications started in 1995,” said Shrihari Pandit, President and CEO of Stealth Communications. “My wife and I started it entirely self-financed. We were originally a consumer ISP. It was a very difficult business because there was huge pricing pressure. We transitioned out of it and ended up focusing on businesses and business internet connectivity, selling fractional T-1s, T-1s, and ultimately T-3s.”

As Stealth grew through the late 90’s to 2010, buying circuits and dark fiber from other providers became increasingly problematic. “Your competitors want to sell to you, but they really don’t want to because you’re competing with them. They want the revenue, but they’re

very picky when they want to do transactions, especially when it comes to fiber.”

Stealth realized they needed their own infrastructure and independence, petitioning the City of New York to receive information and telecommunications franchises authorizing the company to install its own fiber throughout the city’s public right-of-way, obtaining them in 2013. That same year, the company started construction of its new fiber network, starting from midtown Manhattan towards the Financial District.

“We now have our own system,” Pandit said. “We don’t contract with any other telephone company for service. We have our own in-house construction team that’s vertically integrated where we can excavate the roadways, put our own conduits in, put our own manholes in. Often, we’ll have to bring fiber into the buildings, and build risers to take them to the top floor. Having our own in-house staff allows us very quick mobilization for repairs and installation. We’re very unique in the city from that perspective.”

Stealth has deployed over 100 miles of fiber in its network, with its core in Manhattan and coverage in the Bronx and Brooklyn. The Brooklyn section was built as a part of a public-private partnership with the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) under the organization’s Connect IBZ program to build broadband infrastructure in the city’s unserved “digital deserts.”

In Manhattan, Stealth uses the Empire City Subway Company, a Verizon subsidiary that holds a franchise dating back to 1891, to build and maintain the vendor-neutral conduit and manhole infrastructure under the streets. “In Brooklyn we had to build block by block and put in our own conduit,” said Pandit.

Being an independent fiber provider in NYC gives Stealth access to a wide range of very large institutions, including federal agencies and Fortune 500 companies, with hundreds of office buildings wired up. It also means meeting the expectations of customers who want highspeed unshared services, such as firms that want direct connections to the Nasdaq stock exchange. “We allocate a unique wavelength for each business,” said Pandit. “It’s a little bit higher cost, but this means there’s no loading or competition when compared to shared mediums such as XGS-PON. There’s no hardware between the customer and a core router.”

Stealth Communications had to install its own manholes when trenching fresh fiber to reach unserved Brooklyn. Source: Stealth Communications.

June 2024 –Fiber Connect 2024 Issue!

Materials due April 22, 2024

• Sustainability

• Permitting Progress

• Enterprise Fiber

• Executive Insights | Federal/State Update

Community Profiles | Innovation at Work

August 2024

Materials due July 18, 2024

• Workforce Development and Diversity

• Progress One Year after BEAD Allocations

• Measuring Progress in Closing the Digital Divide

• Executive Insights | Federal/State Update

Community Profiles | Innovation at Work

November 2024

Materials due September 25, 2024

• BEAD Milestones

• The WISP Transition to Fiber

• Cities Driving Change

• Executive Insights | Federal/State Update

Community Profiles | Innovation at Work

South Bend’s Dark Fiber Non-Profit

By Doug Mohney

Sitting at the crossroads of the Midwest, South Bend, Indiana, has been a major manufacturing and logistics hub due to its location along railroads and the interstates. Twenty years ago, community leaders, local businesses, and The University of Notre Dame found themselves bandwidth starved, without access to the high-speed fiber necessary for the continued operation and growth of themselves and the surrounding community. The solution was unique, an organization dedicated to deploying dark fiber infrastructure – just dark fiber, not a traditional internet service provider -- for the economic benefit of the region.

“ChoiceLight was formed in the early 2000s, with the construction of the network beginning in 2006,” said Regina Emberton, CEO, ChoiceLight, Inc. “There was no on-ramp to the internet, no one in our community was able to connect to it, no one was building out the market to provide that. Community, economic development, and business leaders got together and created a nonprofit. The founding capital contributors each put in a significant amount of money to cover the cost of the initial build of the dark fiber and in exchange got 10 years of dark fiber access.”

Founding capital contributors in ChoiceLight included the University of Notre Dame, Everwise (formerly Teachers Credit Union), Beacon Health System, St. Joseph Health System, Robert Bosch Corp., Madison Center, and South Bend Medical Foundation. In addition, ChoiceLight negotiated reciprocal agreements for conduit access in South Bend, Mishawaka, and St. Joseph County in exchange for access to dedicated fiber for each municipality’s exclusive use.

ChoiceLight paid for the cost of installing the fiber, expanding the network, and building the redundant ring structure. As a non-profit, it was limited to serving government agencies and tax-supported schools. A forprofit subsidiary, CLight, was created to provide services to commercial users, including banks, medical facilities, and other commercial and business subscribers. Dividends from CLight operations are channeled back into ChoiceLight to cover costs and enable it to expand operations over time.

“It started out as a small group in South Bend to service those initial users,” said Emberton. “Now ChoiceLight serves a three-county area, about a half million people in the region. Ten years into the process, we extended the network south to Marshall County. A couple of years ago, we built west to

New Carlisle where a lot of economic development growth is happening. The attractiveness of that area is the land, the workforce, but also that there’s fiber available. They just announced a new EV battery plant.”

Today, ChoiceLight has a little over 300 dark fiber end users, many served through the numerous internet service providers in the region that use its services. Having these partners enables ChoiceLight to provide a turn-key solution beyond dark fiber when organizations require it.

“All of the subscription revenue is reinvested in the nonprofit organization,” said Emberton. “We work with the counties and cities and economic development professionals to identify areas of growth in the region and try to ensure that we’re proactive in extending the network. Another aspect of our mission is to support our partners in their efforts to expand services to underserved residential areas. Partnering to support our schools has been most interesting. Last year, we partnered with Notre Dame, enFocus, and the South Bend Community School Corporation, extending our fiber by several miles to three different sites in support of a private LTE network that enables Wi-Fi to reach students in their homes.”

Cassandra Graber mural titled “Inno-Vision” is her interpretation of South Bend, Indiana innovation, including the region’s fiber optics and a hydroelectric turbine under Seitz Park. Source: ChoiceLight.

FBA 2024 Events

April 11, 2024

Washington, D.C.

2024

April 16, 2024

Little Rock, Ark.

2024

June 4, 2024

Deer Valley, Utah

July 28-31, 2024

Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center

Nashville, Tenn.

2024

2024

2024

September 10, 2024

Des Moines, Iowa

November 7, 2024

Albuquerque, N.M.

December

(cont. from page 25)

“We haven’t yet done any major marketing. Our take rate is running around mid to upper 30 percent,” said Lee. “Our initial take rate was 35% and while word of mouth is still the most powerful advertisement, we’ll begin a mass marketing campaign sometime in 2024 and fully expect to pick up an additional 10%. We understand some of our senior members haven’t yet latched onto the power and convenience of the internet, but we believe, if you don’t have it now, you’re going to need the access provided by broadband within five years. We’re looking to be around 50% [take rate] like most of the co-ops that have undertaken broadband buildout efforts here in Virginia.”

The state has been proactive in promoting connectivity through the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative (VATI), putting state general funds as well as available federal program monies into broadband projects to close the digital divide.

“Virginia has invested a tremendous amount of money in fiber, even before the BEAD money arrived,” Lee said. “Our latest VATI application is to backfill the remaining holes that don’t have fiber access and targeting those pockets that, for a variety of reasons, were not included in previous applications. Our service area for fiber doesn’t exactly match our electric service territory. For example, we’ll be providing service to a substantial number of Dominion Energy customers as well, through an agreement with them that allows us to utilize their middle mile fiber facilities. We do have some pockets and some outlying areas of our electric service territory where another vendor got RDOF or CAF money to service a small portion of our service area.”

Like other electric co-ops, fiber is expected to play an increasingly important role in MEC’s demand-side management programs as consumer needs become more complex. “We’re going to have our hands full with electric vehicles,” Lee said. “EV charging stations are a growing issue in Virginia. We have to figure out how to handle charging stations, what kind of electric use rates will be associated with them, and then figure out the most effective way to process credit cards. All of these challenges require efficient communications. Think about all that is coming down the pipeline for electric utilities. All these issues can be impacted in a positive way by the robust communications fiber enables between the devices in the field, substations, and district offices.”

Fiber and Electric, Restored Side by Side

Cullman Electric Cooperative (CEC) in Cullman, Ala., has the distinction of being a part of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) cooperative community. Founded in 1936, CEC has 48,000 members and 3,700 miles of primary electrical lines distributed across 18 substations. It has pulled over 1,400

miles of fiber and services 9,000 broadband customers through its Sprout Fiber Internet subsidiary.

“We took a phased approach to installing fiber,” said Justin Lee, Manager of Engineering and Technical Services, Cullman Electric Cooperative. “The first goal was interconnecting our substations. We didn’t start building the fiber network looking at how many people we could connect to the internet because we knew that the electrical system would be the first beneficiary of fiber. We weren’t going to do fiber if we couldn’t also improve the electrical system.”

The electric co-op’s internal network delivered substantial benefits to CEC, including migrating all the company’s existing WAN connections and consolidating them onto the organization’s new 144-strand fiber ring. CEC could have done fiber as an independent system that had nothing to do with the electrical network and deployed customer broadband sooner, but it would have likely been “very costly,” said Lee.

Instead, CEC took a conservative approach which is expected to save money while improving the grid, with customers getting connectivity as the electric-side network grows. “We had internal savings of six figures or better in a year for the internet connections we had in different places for our business,” said Lee. “We were able to add 24/7 video access to all of our substations. If we hadn’t gone to Sprout for that bandwidth and instead used a third party, the cost would have been quite significant. We’re now getting our feet wet and expanding systems operations.”

Chicopee Electric Light General Manager Jim Lisowski says the utility is taking a methodical pay-as-you-go approach to delivering broadband. Source: Chicopee Electric Light.

Establishing the initial fiber network allowed CEC to look at ways to leverage its substation connectivity and expand out to reach its members as more parts of the electric system are connected. “Now that all of our substations are connected, we’ve started working on adding mainline devices downline.”

Putting fiber connectivity and electric power delivery in parallel also means both systems will likely be repaired at the same time, given that roughly 95% of overhead power and mainline fiber are on the same poles. “We know main trunk lines have to come up first,” stated Lee. “They’re often on the same lines as fiber. It’s been designed that way, so if we need to restore electrical, we can restore broadband just as fast if lines or poles fall.”

Second-Fastest ISP in the Nation

Nearly an hour’s drive north from Denver in good weather, the City of Loveland has built an excellent broadband service for the residents of the region. Loveland’s Pulse utility boasts a Net Promotor Score (NPS) of 68.4 in 2023, among the highest in the nation. PCMag’s December 2023 wrap-up of the best ISPs in the U.S. cited Pulse as the second-fastest ISP in the nation.

Pulse’s success is all the more amazing since it is a part of the Loveland Water and Power Department, a municipallyowned utility providing Loveland residents with power, water, and wastewater services. Loveland Water and Power started operation as a utility almost a century ago in 1925, with Pulse established in 2018 and starting consumer operations in 2020, a small fraction of that history.

“We have just over 40,000 electrical customers in total,” said Adam Bromley, Electric Utility Manager, City of Loveland. “Loveland is one of four cities that co-owns and operates our generation and transmission provider, Platte River Power Authority. We made the decision to implement fiber throughout our service territories as backhaul for our data operations in the 1990s. It has provided us with a lot of ability to communicate and ensure reliable operations from a utility perspective.”

Prior to fiber, the utility system was using 800 MHz radios to communicate between facilities but found the system problematic and prone to weather interference. Having provided fiber as a better communications medium for the utility, the municipality was willing to approve the utility to move broadband operations for the community, with the existing network providing the base for expansion.

“There’s a lot of synergies that happen between the two sides of the utility,” said Brieana Reed-Harmel, Broadband Manager, Pulse. “We share resources where they make sense, like locators, GIS databases, and those things where there’s a lot of collaboration to see each other’s

infrastructure and share information. And of course, there’s the nexus points along the way with smart grid and other utility operations where you have communications devices out in the field, it makes sense to make sure these things overlap.”

Pulse has deployed around 921 miles of fiber, with the initial construction funded through Loveland’s communication’s enterprise fund generated from revenue bonds backed by the city’s electric and communications enterprise. It has received some smaller state grants to build out some underserved areas on the edges of the community and is planning to apply for BEAD money when the state is ready to accept applications.

“We have about 40,000 passings and we are at a 35% take rate for the areas we can serve,” said Reed-Harmel. “We have parts of the city we don’t have broadband access to, like MDUs, mobile home parks, that type of thing.” She expects that take rate to go up over time as customers come to the end of their existing broadband contracts and switch over to Pulse’s service.

Pulse will also be working to expand its network over time as new developments open up, as well as working with unserved and underserved areas outside the city boundaries in local unincorporated areas and neighboring communities.

“I see a lot of parallels to the electrification of America 100 years ago,” said Reed-Harmel. “Loveland started a municipal electric utility because the service provider in the area was not meeting our electrical needs. They were limiting the number of light bulbs you could have in your house. It wasn’t good for our community. In 2015, we were really struggling with having good connectivity for our schools and we had pockets of the city that were being left behind because they had one service provider and poor broadband. We took things into our own hands and started the broadband utility, leveraging the electric work that came before. It’s the same mentality as electrification.”

Broadband and electric staff inspecting conduit path into electric vault. Source: City of Loveland Pulse.

Reliable broadband is necessary to operate autonomous vehicles remotely. “We need constant connectivity for that machine to work,” said Arthur. “If we lose connectivity, we can’t see it anymore, then we stop the tractor. High levels of connectivity are critical for use to be able to do what we do.”

Available in limited quantities today, John Deere is making automation available through add-on kits that can be retrofitted to existing machinery with the appropriate electronics package, keeping the seat, pedals, and wheel in for a human to drive it at other times. “Farmers would use this tractor for other jobs besides what it is doing today,” Arthur stated. “Second, we’re not going to do autonomy on the road.”

John Deere is steadily applying automation to harder problems, with “Furrow Vision” their latest challenge. “We put a laser down where we can measure how deep the furrow is going to be, so we can measure the depth of the trench. Farmers usually need to know how deep they are planting. I’m doing cotton, it could be an inch or less that I need to plant. The planting unit has other sensors that will tell you exactly where a seed is planted geospatially, how many seeds are there, and we use that data to create a geospatial map.”

The geospatial map, combined with other data, provides the ability to directly apply the exact amount of water, fertilizer, herbicide, and pesticides necessary to keep the plant healthy and growing, saving resources and money. When it’s time to harvest, the map knows where the plants are and can tell the appropriate machines what to do to bring in the crops.

AgeTech Booms

Technology is more important than ever for many communities, but few are embracing it more than the American Association of Retired Persons, better known

simply as AARP. The association has created and fostered a huge ecosystem of companies involved in using technology and artificial intelligence to help older adults “live longer, better, and more independently,” according to a January 4, 2024, blog post.

AARP had a massive 12,000 square foot showcase of AgeTech, which included a stage that hosted more than 20 talks and exhibits from over 30 companies. The association’s AgeTech Collaborative™ ecosystem is made up of nearly 370 companies which anticipate serving a $28.2 trillion dollar market by 2050. Anywhere from 50 to 60 new AgeTech startups are sourced each year through its accelerator program from fields including smart home, mobility, fintech, and health tech.

Most of these startups are working with bandwidth-rich tools such as AI, AR/VR, robotics, real-time communications, and health and wellness data monitoring systems requiring symmetrical bandwidth for video and other interactions. Samsung’s Health House in the AARP booth featured 10 startups designed to monitor and assist in improving aging at home, including an AI health care coach, contactfree (no wearables required!) sensors to track health rate, respiratory rate, motion, and presence, and a toilet seat that can measure heart rate, blood oxygenation, and soon blood pressure. While a health-monitoring toilet seat isn’t the most glamorous application, it’s practical and requires reliable connectivity to a secure cloud.

Once you start incorporating AgeTech smart devices into the home and add in some videoconferencing and AR to communicate with relatives, the need for future-proof bandwidth becomes apparent for people of all ages. AARP is demonstrating high-speed, low-latency connectivity is no longer a desire for hard-core gamers, but necessary for people of all ages.

Lumen Technologies XGS-PON and Wi-Fi 7 solution at CES 2024. Source: Doug Mohney.

(cont. from page 28)

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