A new kind of muni FTTH network

Prior to beginning construction, the city distributed door-hangers to alert local residents of what was coming and included an opt-out card for people to return if they did not want their house wired for fiber.

“Less than one-tenth of 1% sent in the card saying they didn't want fiber, and that's despite the efforts of incumbents and others to create a negative image,” Bray said.

Powell's municipal power company also will be able to use the FTTH network to do automatic meter reading and to explore things such as remote power management, he said.

The other benefit to the community is increased revenues once the bonds are paid off. “The service provider is leasing capacity on a per-subscriber basis,” Bray said. “They buy wholesale capacity for each subscriber. After a certain number or subscribers, you hit break-even. As you sign up more subscribers, half of that excess flows back to the service provider, and the other half flows to the city. You could almost call it a windfall. If this is done right — and I stress ‘done right’ — the community stands to benefit with more money for schools, for parks, for other things.”

USM is “keeping our team intact” and looking for other opportunities by talking with other Independent telcos about similar projects, which would take it into neighboring towns, Bray said. He doesn't see much of a future in working with incumbents on their own turf.

“We've talked with the incumbents; they have a hard time with it because they already own that market or that's not their infrastructure,” Bray said.

TCT also is looking to expand — this time into a municipal FTTH network for Cody, but it is thinking of doing that one on its own. “We wanted to see how this partnership [in Powell] worked out before we tried another one,” Davidson said. “As it has developed, we get along well with the city, but we have a more difficult relationship with US MetroNets.”

Davidson credits USM with facilitating the bonds that helped pay for the project and negotiating the franchise agreement between Powell and TCT, but admits, “I wish there weren't three people in the partnership and we were dealing one-on-one with the municipality.”