The City Council recently approved hiring the consulting firm Kimley-Horn and Associates at a cost of $167,365 for a fiber optic network infrastructure design and services master plan. The project is expected to take six months.
The master plan will tell Modesto how it could establish the network, lay out options on how to pay for it, and define the network’s scope, including whether the city should offer high-speed internet to businesses. The council would have to approve any plans to establish a network.
Modesto Chief Information Officer John Dickey said the high-speed fiber optic network would provide internet service 20 to 50 times faster than what is now available throughout nearly all of the city. That service is provided by private companies and comes through coaxial cables and copper wires. Dickey said the city sees a fiber optic network as a key in keeping and recruiting businesses by offering them very fast service at competitive prices.
“It could provide Modesto with a competitive advantage,” Councilman Bill Zoslocki said about the proposal. “The study will see it if makes sense not only for the city but for business. Maybe they would look at Modesto a little more closely if we had it.”
But Zoslocki acknowledged businesses look at many factors – including the transportation network, quality of the schools, crime rate and skills of workers – when deciding whether to come into a community.
Dickey said his research shows that more than 500 cities across the United States have created fiber optic networks. He said the networks have contributed to success with economic development in those cities. He said some cities have created their own networks and run them as utilities, while others have entered into partnerships with the private sector.
“I think it was a great thing to do,” Loma Linda Assistant City Manager Konrad Bolowich said about his Southern California city’s decision to create a fiber optic network about a dozen years ago. He said there was no high-speed internet service in Loma Linda, which has about 24,000 residents and is a health care center with five hospitals and a medical school.
Bolowich said his city has kept and attracted businesses because of the network. He said the network helped Loma Linda land a 300,000-square-foot Veterans Affairs health care facility, which will open this month. He said the facility will treat 60,000 to 80,000 patients a month and employ about 8,000 people.
Loma Linda set up its network as a city utility. Bolowich said the utility’s operations are financially self-sustaining through what it collects from customers. But he said the city has not recovered its cost to build the network. He said that cost was about $8 million, and the city has recovered about $1 million so far.
Loma Linda’s network was costly because the city decided to provide internet service to homes, and a city ordinance requires that utilities – including the high-speed network – be placed underground. Dickey said Modesto is not considering providing residential service now and could string some of its network along utility poles, which is substantially cheaper than putting the network underground.
“This is not an easy thing to do,” Jim Fleming, a senior management analyst with City of Palo Alto Utilities, said about establishing a network. “The cities that have pursued this have had mixed results.”
But Fleming said Modesto’s idea of doing this to spur economic development and limiting the network to the city’s operations and to businesses makes sense. He said Palo Alto established its own network about a dozen years ago to serve city operations. But he said Palo Alto has about 95 commercial customers – primarily high-tech firms, as well as some telecommunications companies – that pay to use the network’s excess capacity.
As part of the master plan, Dickey said, Modesto will meet with businesses to solicit input on whether they want a fiber optic network and what kind of capabilities would be desired. He said Modesto also will talk to other local governments to see how its proposal fits in with their plans. Dickey said Modesto would be the first city in the Northern San Joaquin Valley with a high-speed fiber optic network if it established one.
©2016 The Modesto Bee (Modesto, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
