Municipal fiber plan could mean gigabit speeds for $50 a month in Hillsboro

Posted on by Justin Pot

Look out, Comcast: The City of Hillsboro is seriously contemplating offering gigabit fiber internet access to all residents for $50 a month, with no bandwidth caps. For those who aren’t tech savvy, that’s an absurd amount of speed at that price. Families that qualify for free school lunches could be charged as little as $10.

It gets better: the $88 million infrastructure project required to do this could be paid for in 10 years, assuming 37 percent of residents and businesses use the service. That’s according to a report by Greg Mont, Information Services Director, and Suzzane Linneen, Finance Director, both of whom stressed that these are estimates during a a work session last week on Tuesday, March 20.

Every single city councillor expressed support for the plan during , meaning there’s a very good chance this could actually happen.

“I’m not sure why we didn’t do it sooner,” said Councillor Fred Nachtigal. “Hillsboro is the technology center of the state. Figure out what it’s going to cost and we’ll pay for it.”

The project will begin in South Hillsboro, where the city is already committed to install fiber under the roads at a cost of $4 million. If the plan goes forward fiber will installed next in the neighborhood south of Oak and west of 10th in southwest Hillsboro, with the rest of the city taking about 10 years to cover.

“It’s not a pilot program, it’s just the first phase,” Greg Mont, clearly excited about the project. “I don’t want to call it a pilot program because in my mind we’re doing it all.”

Here’s an outline of the initial plan, from a report sent by City Manager Michael Brown to city council:

Broadly speaking, the plan is to be able to build the network to approximately 350 homes in South Hillsboro by the end of 2018 and approximately 500 more homes in southwest Hillsboro by the middle of 2019. While building this portion of the system, we will be assessing the success, discussing timing and opportunities to best utilize the network, and developing a proposal for the next phase which will include newly constructed homes in South Hillsboro as well as expanding the service footprint in existing neighborhoods.

Municipal broadband is rare, but there are a few American cities that already do it. Nearby Sandy, Oregon offers 300mbps for $40 a month. Longmont, Colorado, about the same size as Hillsboro, offers gigabit speeds (1000mbps) for $60 a month, or 30mbps for $30. So it’s reasonable to imagine Hillsboro doing something similar.

Suzzane Linneen, the city’s finance director, said the program could, assuming 37 percent estimated take rate, generate $20 million a year annually. That could pay for the estimated $88 million of capital costs, plus associated interest and maintenance, in around 10 years, she said.

Things get really interesting once the capitol is paid for.

“We’re not trying to make money. We’re trying to provide a service, like we do with water,” said City Manager Michael Brown. “We may decide at some point that we don’t charge at all.”

That’s right: the manager of our city said, out loud, that he could see a future in which Hillsboro residents don’t pay for internet access. Even more surprising, to me, is how nonchalant the response from elected officials in the room was.

City Council will vote to finalize the code changes necessary to put all this in motion next month. Stay tuned: we’ll be covering this story closely in the months to come.

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