There are a lot of fiber networks owned by government entities. Many states own fiber networks that connect to county seats and state facilities. Many counties have built fiber networks to connect cities and county locations. Cities of all sizes have built fiber to connect city buildings. School systems all across the country own private fiber networks. There are government fiber networks built for specific purposes like traffic light controls, public safety, or smart city applications.
What I find perplexing is that a lot of these networks are used only for government purposes and nothing else. In some cases, commercial use of the networks is prohibited by the original source of funding that paid for the network. However, a lot of these government-owned networks could be used for commercial purposes. A lot of the fiber in these networks is sitting idle. I’ve often run across government networks with large fiber counts that only use a few fibers for government purposes.
There are governments that have decided to share the excess capacity. Some networks were built in collaboration with a commercial partner that uses part of the network. In some cities, dark fiber is being leased to ISPs. But overall, I would guess that a majority of the excess capacity on government fiber networks is sitting idle, with no plans for use.
It’s a shame not to utilize excess fiber capacity at a time when there are so many possible uses for the extra fiber. Consider the many ways that the excess fiber could help communities. Excess fiber might become the middle-mile fiber route that can provide a low-cost connection for an ISP to build last-mile fiber in unserved or underserved areas. The fiber could make it easier to bring connectivity to public housing and other areas in cities that are badly underserved. This fiber could bring competition to business districts, which are the economic heart of most communities. Excess fiber could enable better backhaul to cell towers.
It’s particularly hard to understand why cities that don’t have vigorous broadband competition aren’t taking advantage of fiber networks. While many cities are being successful in luring ISPs to build last-mile fiber networks, the vast majority of cities are still served primarily by a cable company that is the only source of fast broadband. These cities suffer from what I call the competition gap. The one fast ISP is practically a local monopoly and usually acts like it. Broadband prices are high, repairs take too long, and customer service is not great. It’s hard to understand why a city would not use excess fiber to help lure more competition.
We know that government-owned fiber can be used to great effect. I can think of dozens of examples where municipally-funded fiber is being leased to an ISP or a carrier. In some cases these are considered to be public-private partnerships, while others are a straight facility lease.
It’s easy for local governments to make excuses for not allowing commercial entities on its fiber. For example, I know one county where the IT department says that sharing fiber is a security risk. That concern has proven to be wrong by the many ISPs that routinely share fiber networks using techniques that create safe physical and electronic separation between different entities sharing a fiber. There are still local politicians, often at the urging of the big cable companies, who say that the government shouldn’t compete with commercial entities – but a government that leases excess fiber to ISPs is not itself competing.
Every government that owns fiber ought to be taking a hard look at whether they are getting the best deal for citizens by sitting on idle fiber assets. These networks are sunk investments, and it’s wasteful to not make the fiber available for purposes that will benefit the community.
In my experiences, our company was successful in “swapping” dark fibers in routes we built in a community with fiber in routes built by the community or state agency. No money changing hands helped to facilitate the transactions.
Thank you Doug! This is one of my favorite gripes!
I worked in the DoD for years and became very familiar with their fiber network. I was surprised at the time how much of it was built on commercially available dark fiber or simply contracted out to a major ISP or MNO.
The federal government is handing out Billions of dollars in funding to build networks across the United States. However, I can’t help but think that if our government was really serious about bringing internet to everyone, they would leverage all of the existing federal networks. Especially because it is already in place and paid for with our tax dollars.
For example, every US military installation is interconnected with a fiber network, unfortunately the same can’t be said with every community located immediately outside the military bases.
What would happen if every federal network was treated like a commercial Open Access Network? Federal network PoPs and fiber routes could be leveraged to bring internet to unserved and underserved communities. We the people have already paid for theses networks and in several cases (like you mentioned) these networks are grossly underutilized.
It seems like a tremendous waste of money to give grants to someone to purchase access to Dark Fiber that physically sits in the same bundle of fiber with a half of a dozen federal networks that are already lit.
Amen!
My experience in Ohio was that commercial providers (i.e. cablecos) ensured with language in the enabling legislation that non-public use of the fiber was prohibited. I was told they were concerned competitors could use it. Given the lobbying power of the cablecos, I wuold guess municipalities are unable to change the rules.
The city of Ann Arbor has used millions of dollars of taxpayer money to build fiber. If you want to get access, here is their answer: “our cost model for utilization of the city’s dark fiber for a network the city implemented in 2017. There is a one-time fee of $105,000 per pair and an annual usage and maintenance fee of $10,500. City of Ann Arbor tax paying entities such as the Ann Arbor District Library and the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority (which we have agreements with) are exempt from the one-time fee because tax payer funds were use to pay for the original implementation.”