This rather ambitious question was brought forth by Charles Dunn, a member of the Electric Utility Board, during a meeting on Tuesday. The board also discussed the development downtown and Lubbock Power & Light’s annual financial report at the meeting.
Dunn’s thought is this: If LP&L and the city are already paying to dig trenches and place the utility lines underground, maybe it’s feasible to go ahead and place high-speed fiber cables in there, too.
This is currently just an idea. The board voted unanimously to instruct staff to find out the estimated cost this would add to the project, and look into whether there are any state laws that place limits on municipal broadband networks.
“I think it’s a tremendous opportunity that we’re missing out on that we need to take advantage of since we are doing this anyway,” Dunn said to the board.
The biggest benefit of fiber is that it provides much faster speeds, more than one gigabite per second, over much longer distances than traditional technologies.
Dunn gave three reasons why this may be a good idea. The first is that it would address the Internet infrastructure the city needs. He said it would also be a marketing tool to attract new businesses an d residents in downtown Lubbock, specifically technology-based companies, and it would be a source of profit for LP&L.
Dunn’s suggestion raised a few questions from other board members. Other than the cost, Jerry Bell questioned whether the city should interfere with the private sector, and Clayton Isom was concerned if there could be any legal ramifications if LP&L opted to provide Internet.
These questions should be answered when staff report back at a later date.
LP&L has already completed phase one of the utility project, so it will also need to determine the cost to go back and bury fiber cables.
Dunn said if it were to get the network installed, the city would need to decide who would pay to get the connections to the businesses and give that entity authority to operate the Internet system.
The board also discussed the current development downtown.
The first phase of a downtown utility project, which was designed to bury utility lines, is complete. It stretches from 10th Street to 19th Street on Avenue O and heads east on Main Street before hitting the NTS building on Avenue L.
Eduardo Rodriguez, engineering manager at LP&L, said now that phase one is complete, phase two is soon to start. It is expected to take a year, and the engineering phase for phase three is in the works.
Rodgriguez said LP&L is ahead of schedule, but because a lot of their poles also hold cables for Suddenlink and NTS — who have not yet completed the task — many of their poles have yet to be taken down.
Master Developer Delbert McDougal said burying the utility lines is the most important step, as of now. He said North Overton is almost completely full, and once that happens, developers will begin focusing on the other side of Avenue Q.
He also said he’s spoken with several developers who are on hand and waiting for the utility project to be complete.
While that happens, though, he said he and the downtown development board will be focusing on the three gateway projects they hope to begin this year.
According to their financial report for fiscal year 2013-14, LP&L finished the year with a net increase of about $4.45 million, compared to $4.46 million the previous year.
©2015 the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal (Lubbock, Texas)
