New funds take Ohio muni fiber model nationwide

The community/municipal network market might not be grabbing as many headlines these days but it hasn’t gone away. Just yesterday, the Knight Foundation agreed to pay up to $25 million for OneCommunity, a Cleveland-based non-profit group that operates a fiberoptic network in northeast Ohio, to share its approach with 25 other “Knight Communities” scattered around the US.

OneCommunity, which started out as OneCleveland, has successfully operated a fiber network to serve local hospitals, schools, libraries and other non-profit groups as part of its mission to use information technology to further economic and civic progress, said Andrea Castrovillari, director of development and communications for OneCommunity. In November of 2007, OneCommunity and the Northeast Ohio Regional Health Information Organization received an $11.3 million grant from the FCC to extend its health network into rural communities.

The Knight Foundation money will create the Knight Center of Digital Excellence in Akron, Ohio, which is on the OneCommunity fiber footprint.

“We are going to take our approach, which is where we bring all the stakeholders together and take inventory of a community’s assets and its needs,” Castrovillari said. “Everyone sharing the cost of the project decides what to do based on what the community wants and needs. We will use this approach in all of their communities, but we will customize what we do to each communities’ needs.”

That means the Knight Center might not build fiberoptic networks everywhere, Castrovillari said, but will also explore wireless and other options. Among the stakeholders OneCommunity brings to the table are the incumbent service providers, she said.

“We do partner with them,” Castrovillari said. “We’ve gotten donations of fiber, and sometimes we end up contracting with them to do services. Ultimately we create a market for them, we bring access to people who haven’t had it before, and that leads to them wanting more services.”

Craig Settles of Successful.com, a consultant in the muni broadband area, said the Knight Center could become a kind of “national help desk” for muni broadband projects.

“A significant portion of their grant creates a national resource
center with a sizeable knowledge base of best practices in community
broadband project execution, and experts to work hands-on with
communities and cities,” Settles said. “Currently, there is no muni broadband Help Desk now, so I'm expecting this to be a huge boon, particularly to mid-sized and smaller municipalities that don't have a lot of
technology expertise on staff.”

Settles said the OneCommunity approach also requires communities to have a “developed, credible plan” for how the network will function and be financially sustained, something that was missing from some early municipal network plans. And the Knight grant looks beyond just municipal government funding, Settles added.

OneCommunity currently funds 60% of its network operations with revenues from customers, with the other 40% coming from donations including grants, Castrovillari said.

The Knight Communities are a group of 26 towns, including Akron, that were home to Knight-Ridder newspapers. They are: Aberdeen, S.D.; Biloxi, Miss.; Boulder, Colo.; Bradenton, Fla.; Charlotte, N.C.; Columbia, S.C.; Columbus, Ga.; Detroit, Mich.; Duluth, Minn.; Fort Wayne, Ind.; Gary, Ind; Grand Forks, N.D, Lexington, Ky.; Long Beach, Calif.; Macon, Ga.; Miami, Fla.; Milledgeville, Ga.; Myrtle Beach, S.C., Palm Beach County, Fla.; Philadelphia, Pa.; San Jose, Calif.; St. Paul, Minn.; State College, Pa.; Tallahassee, Fla.; and Wichita, Kan.