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Hudson, Ohio, to Wire Entire City with High-Speed Fiber

City officials have announced a years-long project to turn Hudson into a Gigabit City through the creation of Velocity Broadband, a city-owned Internet service.

(TNS) -- Hudson, Ohio, has a need for speed. Internet speed.

And it expects to meet that need by wiring the entire city with fiber optic cable, enabling speeds as fast as a gigabit per second — 100 times faster than typical copper wire connections now provide.

City officials on Wednesday announced a years-long project to turn Hudson into what is often called a Gigabit City through the creation of Velocity Broadband, a city-owned Internet service.

Velocity Broadband will compete with other Internet providers inside Hudson and will provide fiber optic connections to buildings. It’s first test-case fiber optic connections will take place in September — perhaps as early as Labor Day — for three businesses in the Executive Parkway business park.

The citywide project will be done in phases, starting with the downtown area in 2016, and could take as long as five years to complete.

Hudson could become the first city in Ohio to offer true gigabit Internet service, officials said.

How fast is that? That kind of speed and bandwidth would let someone download a full-length motion picture in just a few seconds.

“You can’t get that anywhere,” city spokeswoman Jody Roberts said. “We’re going to own it and operate it. ... We’re moving ahead because our businesses are demanding this.”

The fast Internet is aimed as an economic development tool — a cutting-edge service available to Hudson-based businesses. The city sees high-speed Internet as a means to attract and retain businesses, Roberts said. A city survey showed that 58 percent of Hudson businesses said current Internet services do not meet their needs.

Velocity Broadband grew out of a 94-page “Broadband Needs Assessment & Business Plan” the city commissioned in 2014 and presented to officials in February.

Velocity Broadband also will be made available to the city’s 22,000-plus residents. The city is discussing how it will roll out residential service, Roberts said. It might be simultaneous with business service.

“We’ll be doing data and voice,” she said.

Hudson’s initial investment in Velocity Broadband is $800,000, Roberts said.

“We’re looking for additional money,” she said. The city anticipates that as the broadband service is rolled out, the income generated will repay the investments, she said. Any excess revenue would be used on other Hudson infrastructure, such as road maintenance and improvements.

The city is not increasing taxes to pay for Velocity Broadband, she said.

Roberts declined to say what prices people and businesses will pay for Velocity Broadband, but said they will be comparable to or less expensive than what other Internet service providers charge.

One of the first three beta testers of Velocity Broadband will be Hudson marketing and public relations firm AKHIA, which is located near the city’s municipal offices off Executive Parkway.

“We’re excited about that,” said Jan Gusich, part-owner and chief executive officer of AKHIA. Her firm provided marketing services as part of the launch of Velocity Broadband.

Fast upload and download speeds are important to her business, which involves large volumes of video and art-intensive projects — data hogs. It can take an hour for a brochure to upload using the firm’s present 5-megabit-per-second Internet service, Gusich said.

“Our [current] Internet is constantly going down,” she said. When that happens, her staff leaves to find other places with available Internet, such as coffee shops, she said.

AKHIA will pay for a 50-megabit-per-second package from Velocity Broadband, not the full gigabit availability, she said. The 50 mbps service will be fast enough to improve productivity, she said. She declined to say how much the service will cost.

Hudson isn’t the only Summit County community that wants to provide high-speed Internet for businesses and residents. Earlier this year, Fairlawn announced it is seeking to create FairlawnGig, a city-owned broadband utility to provide high-speed fiber optic and Wi-Fi services.

©2015 the Akron Beacon Journal (Akron, Ohio). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.