“Evan Roe, Choptank Fiber AMI Network Technician, carefully splicing fiber cables together in Choptank Fiber’s trailer. (Source: Choptank Electric Cooperative)”

“The need for fast, reliable internet was undeniable among our membership,” stated Tim McGaha, Vice President of Technical Services, Choptank Electric Cooperative. “Choptank Electric had hundreds of miles of fiber that it already deployed to connect substations, downline equipment and grid operations. The membership saw it and said, ‘We know you’ve been running all this fiber for the last decade. Isn’t there some way you can make residential broadband work?’ The pressure got to be substantial.”

A changeover in management in 2019 led the incoming executive team to evaluate its options and the needs of the communities in Choptank’s service footprint. The vast majority of members are residential. The cooperative’s biggest business customers are a Solo® Cup factory, a Walmart store, and SunMed Growers cannabis company. 

“It’s a really heavy lift to build out an entire broadband company and all the residential infrastructure needed,” said McGaha. “But when you see the folks that are just starving for internet, and you know you’ve got these existing fiber assets that can be utilized to help, you have to make the effort. The fiber is a valuable asset, and it gave us a head start. It’s one of the reasons we were able to get as far as we have so quickly in just a few years.”

Incoming Choptank President & CEO Mike Malandro got approval from the Board to move forward, despite the challenges of deploying residential fiber in rural areas that had anywhere between six to eight houses per mile. To leverage its electrical assets to deploy fiber, Choptank Electric had to get the Maryland General Assembly to change its status from being a publicly regulated utility accountable to the state Public Service Commission to a member-regulated one.

“We became deregulated in March 2020 and then we had to have a vote of our membership,” said Valerie Connelly, Choptank’s Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Relations. “I think 97% of those that cast a vote, voted to become member-regulated because they knew it was tied to getting broadband. That made it possible for us to use the trucks, the staff and the poles that were already in our electric system for this dual purpose of providing broadband.”

The critical need for broadband among its rural members has led Choptank to provide financial support to customers who may not be able to otherwise afford it through their Low-Income Access Program (LIAP). This $30 monthly discount will be provided to fiber customers who already receive energy assistance on their Choptank Electric account. “We have been trying to find ways to help make it possible for all families to take service. At the end of the day, we don’t want the reason they say ‘No’ to be that it’s not affordable for them.” 

This article and similar stories can be read on the latest edition of the Fiber Forward Magazine.

The city has taken a similarly diverse approach to the different types of licensing agreements it has put in place for fiber. “We want to encourage full market coverage, competition, and availability. We have four license agreements for fiber for the city,” said Mark Leech, Director, Technology and Innovation (CIO) for the City of Albuquerque. “There’s a combination that covers different parts of the city with different business models. Some are supplying end-to-end fiber to the home and businesses. Others are putting fiber into the ground for an open access network, contracting out the last mile to others.”

Albuquerque hosts a vibrant arts community, hosting such events as the annual Balloon Fiesta. (Source: Vexus Fiber)

Albuquerque’s current economic base, anticipated growth, and dearth of fiber is attracting interest from numerous firms, including the privately-financed Gigapower open access fiber network provider, which is building projects in cities around the country. “One of our missions is to bring fiber to markets that really don’t have it. We feel we can bridge that gap and provide a different class of service than what they have today,” said Tom Kearney, Chief Operating Officer, Gigapower. “There’s definitely a need to be in that market to augment and provide different classes of service.”

The National Museum of Nuclear Science and History are just as tied to Albuquerque’s history and culture as its vibrant art scene. (Source: Doug Mohney)

Vexus Fiber, which has committed to covering 97% of the city, also sees a bright future for the city.
“The prospects of Albuquerque from an economic development perspective are just continuing to grow,” stated Kevin Folk, Regional Vice President of Operations Southwest, Vexus Fiber. “Intel is a big presence here. You’ve got Sandia Labs, the Air Force base, solar companies looking to move here. There are a lot of huge things. It brings more workers to the city that require better, higher quality [internet] connections.”

Currently Albuquerque has what Leech describes as an “adequate” standard of broadband, but notes that different parts of the city have been skipped over due to geographic and economic reasons. “We’ve got digital deserts, with no infrastructure there,” said Leech. “There are pockets all over the place. If you think about the whole of Albuquerque as a piece of chart paper, we have areas that are red squares without coverage, yellow squares that have more than one incumbent, and green is the best broadband we can provide. We want to cover Albuquerque in green.”

The lack of broadband in parts of the city is not only a macro concern to city officials but also one that affects city operations in a rapidly growing municipality. As the city purchases older properties and puts up new buildings as the government develops, selling off older properties they’ve outgrown, having broadband everywhere is vital to ensuring the IT needs of departments moving into their new facilities. 

Fiber is used in many typical ways by the city and to support some unique applications as well, tying back to the city’s embrace of the arts. “Within our portfolio, we provide fiber for traffic management for stoplights,” said Leech. “There’s an increasing push for our smart community efforts, that’s more about putting cameras in high-crime areas. We may have locations that have one connection and need to support six cameras. We’re working closely with law enforcement for those needs at that point.”

Various wireless services utilized by the city, including the LoRaWAN® Internet of Things protocol, generic Wi-Fi, and CBRS services to provide bridging connectivity to Wi-Fi hotspots are all supported by city fiber that it owns or, more typically, is leased from a third-party. Connectivity will follow around the city’s bus lines and a seven-mile urban Rail Trail designed to link Albuquerque’s downtown area to nearby neighborhoods, cultural destinations, entertainment districts, and its historic Rail Yards. One area where fiber isn’t going are the city’s arroyos, dry gullies outside the city that quickly fill with fast moving water when it rains, leading to flash floods that can endanger people and property. 

“We will use the fiber along the Rail Trail to monitor things like pedestrian flows, smart trash cans, and enable art being created through a collaboration with Central New Mexico Community College,” said Leech. “I’m really excited about the collaboration. We’re on our third cohort of artists. We put artists through IoT classes, and they build art that incorporates it. We put the pieces on the Rail Trail or in our city art gallery. It supports Albuquerque’s thriving and vibrant art community.”

Multi-state service provider Vexus Fiber believes in Albuquerque’s current and future potential, as well as that of the surrounding areas. The company is putting $250 million into covering the city, along with another $50 million going into the town of Santa Fe, roughly an hour’s drive north, and plans to expand to the adjacent township of Rio Rancho directly northeast. Albuquerque will be the company’s largest build to date, passing its projects in Texas and Louisiana. 

“This is going to be a five-, six-year build. Albuquerque has about 360,000 homes,” said Folk. “Our commitment to the city is 97% of the homes passed, so we’re talking 350,000 homes. We’ve already got over 2,000 homes passed and we are anticipating a ramp up of our construction activities to be in multiple locations throughout the city at the same time. Our goal is 20,000 homes passed by the end of the year, and we’ve already started our project planning for the next year.”

Vexus Fiber has been working with the city government for several years, obtaining its license two years ago and trying to smooth out the various requirements it needed in order to move forward with construction, including the volume of permits it needs as it increases its construction tempo.

“Albuquerque is a little bit different than some other markets that we operate in,” said Folk, compared to the company’s operations in Louisiana and Texas. “A lot more restrictions, permitting requirements. The city has had to figure out a permitting approval process with the amount of workload that we’re bringing to them and how they work. That took a little bit of time, it took a little bit longer as well with pole attachment permits.”

The service provider is deploying a combination of underground and aerial fiber, working with energy provider PNM for pole access in both Albuquerque and Santa Fe. “In Albuquerque, we’ll be on 40,000 poles,” said Folk. “That’s a lot of work for a company to ingest that resource load into their system. 

“We’re also very conscious of the impact [our construction] has on the city’s resources as well as the residents. We’re not tearing up roadways, we’re doing boring as well as aerial work, but it does have an impact on the communities, in the neighborhoods where we work. You’ve got to be mindful of that, we’re very conscious of that impact because you know, where we’re building these are potential customers for us.” 

Folk anticipates that Vexus will create around 150 new permanent jobs in Albuquerque and the company is now working to establish partnerships with community institutions and the larger businesses in town, such as Intel, NBC/Universal, Netflix, and Amazon, along with the Mesa del Sol master-planned community of 30,000 homes being built in the southeast corner of the city. 

However, Vexus faces a well-funded challenge from Gigapower, jointly owned and governed by AT&T and BlackRock investment management group. “We’re making a several hundred-million-dollar investment in the market,” said Kearney. “We keep it open-ended, but it’s close to several hundred million in Albuquerque holistically. Our minimum commitment to the city is to service 150,000 homes and businesses while constantly evaluating opportunities to increase and add to our build plan.”

Gigapower will offer services up to 8 Gbps symmetrical services initially using XGS-PON with the ability to scale upward to a minimum of 25 Gbps in the future. Construction will include a mixture of aerial and underground fiber deployment, leveraging PNM’s network of electric utility poles where available to increase speed to market. 

Access to PNM utility poles in Albuquerque and the surrounding region is key for deployment of fiber in the area. (Source: Vexus Fiber)

Kearney said Gigapower is very far along in its initial engineering and construction plans and expects to start breaking ground and placing fiber this summer. “We’re working side by side with the city, PNM, and other municipal partners for permitting.” 

Gigapower has two unique characteristics in its fiber builds in Albuquerque and other cities. First, it is an open access commercial wholesale provider and AT&T is its anchor tenant.  “We’ve had conversations with dozens and dozens of ISPs that are interested in partnering with us and we’ve had discussions with various service providers.” 

Other announced areas and cities Gigapower is competitively building out are Las Vegas; Chandler, Gilbert, and Mesa, Arizona; parts of Northeastern Pennsylvania, including Scranton and Wilkes-Barre; and parts of Alabama and Florida outside of AT&T’s current service areas, with company officials suggesting more announcements would be forthcoming in the future. 

Vexus says it is ready for competition in Albuquerque and feels some providers will not be able to deliver. “There are some big challenges for city resources as you bring more competition. You have four to five providers that want to build their own network of attachments to the poles, that means somebody’s going to miss out,” Folk said, with Vexus having an advantage by being first in the market for a city-wide build and working with local officials to scale up the permitting processes. “We feel that with our customer engagement, customer service, local technicians, and local footprint, we can compete against the big boys.” 

“We launched our telemedicine program because of our recognition that so many patients had challenges accessing our specialty providers,” said Dr. Karen Rheuban, a pediatric cardiologist and professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and co-founder and Director of the UVA Center for Telehealth, which now bears her name in recognition of her work.

“The University of Virginia traditionally served patients in the western half of the Commonwealth of Virginia, which extends to the far southwest corner of Virginia, which is in fact as far west as Detroit, Michigan,” said Rheuban. “For many decades, my pediatric colleagues and I traveled to Bristol, Virginia, to see patients every other month. With that came the recognition that in between our visits, it was a hardship for our patients to travel to Charlottesville to access our care. That was the genesis of the development of our telemedicine program.”

Advances in personal computing and increased broadband availability enable virtual office visits delivering care to individuals and families who would otherwise have to travel long distances for specialized needs. Source: UVA Health.

Specialty medical care such as neonatal care, pediatric and adult specialty care, and other services such as acute stroke intervention or high-risk maternity care has always been more accessible in urban areas and municipalities with established medical schools, such as Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia. For rural patients, there are often sufficient numbers of primary care providers, but accessing specialized providers is a challenge due to the travel time necessary to reach them.

In The Beginning

“Thirty years ago, we launched our telemedicine program to provide improved access to specialty care from healthcare facilities such as hospitals and clinics. Medicare and Medicaid regulations related to reimbursement required patients to be at healthcare facilities. Of course, most homes were not equipped with connectivity to support telemedicine encounters,” said Rheuban. “At that time, few patients or providers knew about telemedicine and broadband was certainly a far cry from ubiquitous.”

Establishing on-site rural telehealth facilities in the mid-90s was no trivial task. Running a (then) state-of-the-art 1.54 Mbps T-1 connection to a southwest Virginia community hospital or health center cost $6,000 per month, along with $150,000 per site for networking and proprietary video equipment. Electronic medical records (EMR), if they existed, had to be accessed through a separate dial-up process.

“It was an environment where there was little to no reimbursement of telemedicine services, and a lack of understanding of the applicability of telemedicine both by patients and by providers,” said Rheuban. “However, when patients began to use telemedicine, even as far back as the mid-1990s, the value and convenience was clear. After testing a telemedicine link to a remote community hospital, my longstanding patient’s father said, ‘Tell everybody that if I don’t have to drive back to Charlottesville, I’m never coming back. I want all my son’s care to be this provided this way.’”

Navigating technology, pricing, and payments weren’t the only challenges UVA faced as it built and established telemedicine standards. The regulatory environment had to be modified as well to permit the practice.

“Early on, every provider who was to deliver a telemedicine service to a hospital, contractually would need to be fully credentialed and privileged at that hospital,” Rheuban said. “You can imagine what it would take for a 25-bed rural critical access hospital to credential and privilege 1,000 UVA providers; a huge amount of work and a gigantic burden. We were very fortunate to work with the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organization (JCAHO), now known as the Joint Commission, and CMS to facilitate new regulations that enabled credentialing and privileging by proxy. In other words, if I’m credentialed and privileged at the University of Virginia, the medical staff of a community hospital could elect to accept my credentials by proxy. That policy change eliminated a huge burden for telemedicine providers and patients originating at site hospitals as well.”

The Pandemic Accelerator

Telehealth is incredibly important today in terms of delivering health care and contributing to better outcomes – in other words, making people better and keeping them out of the ER and hospital when not needed, along with saving patients time and money. Any topical discussion about telemedicine goes hand in hand with the changes in regulation and mindset that took place during the pandemic, when face-to-face meetings with a doctor or a visit to the ER for anything except the most necessary critical care were discouraged.

Telemedicine emerged as a necessary lifeline for doctors and patients alike. “The COVID-19 public health emergency truly transformed telehealth,” said Rheuban. “Those of us who were already using telemedicine were able to rapidly scale to provide services across all the disciplines, and not just for specialty care, but also for primary care. That was probably the one blessing of the COVID-19 public health emergency…scaling up telemedicine. We learned a lot during the last four years in terms of utilization, technology, integration, broadband, and what works, what doesn’t work. And hopefully, as we scale our broadband infrastructure, access to telehealth becomes available to every patient – wherever they are located. And adopted by every provider and health care facility as well.”

Public policy waivers issued during the crisis enabled health care organizations to implement telemedicine service more broadly and integrate them into everyday care, particularly since Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial insurance companies issued waivers that enabled reimbursement for telemedicine services, regardless of patient location. That being said, Congressional action is necessary to make those changes permanent.

“Policy changes at the state and federal levels exponentially increased the availability of telehealth services to patients. Reimbursement is critical for adoption by providers, and broadband is critical to patient engagement and a high-quality encounter,” said Rheuban.

Better and faster bandwidth to health care facilities and homes delivered via fiber has opened a wider range of uses, including early access to care in the home, a possibility that was literally science fiction when UVA first started its telehealth program three decades ago. Virtual telemedicine visits are now integrated with electronic medical records, patient portals, scheduling systems, peripheral devices, and remote monitoring tools.

Today, UVA Health conducts approximately 8% of its ambulatory visits via telemedicine across all specialties and via many different modalities. Although down from 30-40% of visits during the peak of the pandemic, the transition to virtual care is here to stay.

Prior to COVID-19, the use of telemedicine saved UVA Health patients more than 35 million miles of driving. “We stopped counting after the public health emergency when we scaled telemedicine exponentially,” Rheuban added.

“Nearly every specialty can incorporate a form of telemedicine in its care delivery model. The modalities range from synchronous telemedicine supported by real-time video to asynchronous evisits conducted through a patient portal and econsults between providers,” Rheuban said. “Telemedicine facilitates earlier access to care, and remote monitoring programs allow for the monitoring of vital signs obtained at home and tracked by the care team to enable timely interventions and better outcomes.”

FBA Board Member Kimberly McKinley with University of Virginia Center for Telehealth’s Dr. Karen Rheuban discussing about how fiber is essential for telemedicine and the future of health care. Source: FBA.

Delivering mental health service using broadband in the home has grown in utilization and offers some advantages compared to a traditional office visit, Rheuban said. “Behavioral health visits represent one of the most utilized of all telemedicine services. Some say, ‘Think inside the box’ because the video connection is often non-threatening for patients, reduces no shows, and helps to maintain continuity of care.”

Higher broadband speeds enabled by fiber have significantly expanded the tools beyond simple video consultations between doctors and patients, enabling a telemedicine wave of specialized care available to hospitals regardless of location. There are many reasons to deploy and integrate telemedicine solutions in both rural and urban settings, to make the right care and right provider available at the right time to the patients that need them.

“We have deployed technologies to hospitals that require significant bandwidth,” said Rheuban. “Hospital-to-hospital, and hospital-to-clinic services require more bandwidth than does a home telehealth visit because of the need to transmit large files necessary to manage higher acuity conditions. For example, in a telestroke encounter, we require high-quality video to enable detailed patient examinations and expeditious review of CT scans and other imaging modalities to render an opinion and initiate care when every second counts.”

There is still a need to ensure sufficient reliable high-speed broadband availability across the spectrum of care — from in-home services, to care through local clinics and hospitals, and through facilities providing specialized care. Not every condition can be treated virtually, particularly when hands-on care and ancillary services such as imaging, laboratory testing and procedures are required.

Rheuban noted that there are communities 20 miles from Charlottesville that don’t have sufficient bandwidth to avail themselves of telemedicine services, forcing patients to drive back and forth for care. “We are exploring the feasibility of alternative access points for patients if they don’t have access to broadband in their homes,” said Rheuban.

Preserving and extending many of the advancements gained following the COVID-19 public health emergency will require more legislative effort. Making permanent the Medicare telehealth waivers put into place during the COVID-19 public health emergency represents a priority for patients and providers alike. The Medicare flexibilities currently extend through December 31, 2024, and require Congressional action to be made permanent.

Other policy considerations include licensure, which is a function of the states, and to ensure equity in access, the deployment of ubiquitous broadband. Federal BEAD funding is rolling out to the states for broadband expansion. A number of federal agencies have taken additional leadership roles, such as the FCC, USDA and HRSA, in expanding telemedicine services.

“We’ve worked with the FCC in their universal service programs and the USDA to scale telemedicine to rural and underserved communities,” said Rheuban. “The Rural Healthcare Program and the Affordable Connectivity Program enabled providers and patients to secure bandwidth, and under certain circumstances, covered the acquisition of devices. These programs impact low-income and rural patients who truly need [broadband] as a health equity consideration.”

In partnership with state and federal policymakers, Rheuban sees an ever-expanding future for telemedicine. “Patients and providers have become very comfortable with telemedicine following the public health emergency. The evidence is clear – telehealth IS healthcare in the 21st century, and with universal broadband access, we can deliver on the promise of connected care.”

As a part of its Smart City approach, the City of Calgary views fiber as a key technology to enable businesses, entrepreneurs, and communities to create solutions along with delivering services and solving community problems. The city currently operates around 800 kilometers of fiber at 1,000 locations, with demark points ranging from office buildings accommodating hundreds of employees to control cabinets necessitating machine-to-machine direct connections and backhauls to specialized control centers.

The primary function of the city’s fiber network revolves around supporting various specialized city-owned networks and emergency services. It also plays a pivotal role in bolstering the Smart City program and facilitating the city’s LoRaWAN® network, crucial for IoT applications. “Smart Calgary Strategy,” a white paper released in February 2023, says the city has been investing in digital infrastructure to delivery Smart City initiatives since 2003, with the Information Technology Department leading its Smart Cities initiative since 2017. 

Calgary leverages other city construction projects to deploy its own fiber. (Source: City of Calgary)

“The City of Calgary’s demand for network connectivity continues to grow significantly,” said Ryan Angelo, Information Technology Leader – Fiber Optics, City of Calgary. “There has been a notable surge in the deployment of fiber to city infrastructure, including high-bandwidth connections to critical systems like traffic control, water and waste networks, security and safety locations, as well as wireless towers.”

Deploying fiber in Calgary has had its challenges, particularly with escalating construction and deployment costs, given the vast size of the city. City planners have implemented a strategy of integrating fiber deployment in large-scale city construction projects to keep costs in check. For example, building an airport tunnel included incorporating direct connections to a mobility operating center and Calgary fire and water services.  

But, like most cities, there’s always extra cable capacity available once the enterprise WAN is enabled and all the government buildings, traffic lights, cameras, and IoT devices are up and running. “Recognizing the importance of fostering innovation, economic growth, and competition within the community, the city licenses its excess dark fiber to businesses and organizations,” said Angelo.

According to the city’s website, “The City of Calgary’s dark fiber network stands as a testament to its commitment to technological advancement, operational resiliency, community empowerment, and fostering collaborative partnerships for a more connected future.” The city’s dark fiber enables new options for organizations to expand their high-speed networks within Calgary, but to be clear, the city is not providing internet access or any other sort of public access to its mission critical or regulated assets. It is, however, more than happy to lease available dark fiber not actively used to connect city buildings, facilities, or other assets. 

Calgary’s dark fiber is also helping research groups in town develop new technologies and innovative services and wider connectivity with the rest of the world, including collaboration with the Calgary Internet Exchange (YYCIX) while partnerships with entities like Cybera and the University of Calgary further amplify the network’s impact. Cybera, a not-for-profit agency helping Alberta advance IT, operates CyberaNet, Alberta’s publicly funded high-speed network connecting the province’s educational institutions, researchers, and IT entrepreneurs, and provincial, national, and international research networks. The University of Calgary uses the city’s dark fiber and space in some facilities to conduct quantum encryption research and enable its research with fiber-as-a-sensor technology. 

“I would like to say the challenges are all due to Hurricane Maria, but it isn’t,” said Maximiliano Trujillo, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rural Development State Director, Puerto Rico. “There are historical challenges that Puerto Rico has had. Maria has exacerbated that need or highlighted more the need for broadband communications.”

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is in the process of promoting the deployment of advanced, hardened voice and broadband networks in Puerto Rico through the Bringing Puerto Rico Together Fund. With $127 million allocated in Stage 2 deployments to deliver fixed voice and broadband service across 1.22 million locations across the island, 40% of the locations are expected to be turned up by the end of 2024 and an additional 20% more expected to be added each year thereafter until 100% of the locations are covered. Around 69% of locations are expected to have access to download speeds of at least 100 Mbps or faster with 31% percent having download speeds of at least 1 Gbps. 

The FCC’s efforts are only the tip of the iceberg, with the USDA bringing in separate funding for creating opportunities and improving economic conditions outside of urban areas. “Rural Development has different areas of focus, providing mortgages for rural residents for housing and assistance to repair homes,” said Trujillo. “On infrastructure, [Rural Utilities Services] helps municipalities and communities to help build their community facilities and equipment. One series of grants that [USDA] have is distance learning and telemedicine programs that have a broadband component. We are living in a historic moment where the Biden-Harris administration has focused on Puerto Rico’s infrastructure needs and Rural Development is part of this effort to strengthen the economic development of the rural areas of the archipelago.”

Maximiliano J. Trujillo, State Director for Puerto Rico, USDA Rural Development, keynoted at Fiber Connect LATAM Puerto Rico about broadband’s impact on economic development. Source: FBA.

The goal of the Rural Utilities Services (RUS) loans, grants, and loan guarantee programs is to build the infrastructure or provide infrastructure improvements in rural communities to help expand economic opportunities and improve quality of life for rural residents, and to do so in a sustainable manner that puts investment into the area and continues growth in the community. 

USDA is funding fiber in Puerto Rico through the ReConnect program in areas where it is expected to make a significant impact in socially vulnerable communities. Service provider VPNet won an $8.8 million grant in 2022 to deploy fiber to seven public schools in the Arroyo and Patillas municipios that is also expected to reach roughly 200 households.

For Puerto Rico, USDA rural development efforts means funding electrical infrastructure projects to enable and support broadband deployment as well as keeping the other daily necessities of life going, including potable water, doctor’s offices, pharmacies, and the local supermarkets. 

“If you look at a [satellite photo] of Puerto Rico at night just before Maria hit, it looked like a flashlight in the Caribbean,” said Trujillo. “The night that Maria struck, it all went dark and it took years in some communities to get their power back. Without energy, you cannot have anything else. Because of Hurricane Maria, the system was proven to be completely unreliable. 

“There’s a strong drive to move into renewable energy. In the last fiscal year, we impacted 51 projects with grants over $8 million. With the private sector investment [match] of $18 million, we have solar panel investment with batteries of over $26 million in rural areas, that’s an investment not usually seen here, that’s a huge deal. With that, they can have operational internet and their Wi-Fi.”

UTOPIA is no novice in building networks, with 23 completed city-wide projects, three more under construction, and some fiber operations in 70 cities across the country through operation of middle-mile and long-haul networks. And it’s the train tracks that are the biggest headache. 

“Railways can be an enormous obstacle,” said Roger Timmerman, CEO, UTOPIA Fiber. “You try to design your network to avoid as many obstacles [as possible], you want the path of least resistance. When we’ve got a railroad permit that’s required, there are multiple stages involved. Your first pass, everything has to be engineered to a different standard than any other [build process] and each individual railroad [company] is different. You can’t standardize it. The design specs are a little challenging to deal with and because of that you’re more likely to get rejected and have to go back and forth. You might end up with weeks of time between each pass, back and forth through to get through this process.  

“When you get through that and paid your permit fees, there’s another set of work for the build process, it’s another project of just getting it on the schedule to be able to perform the work. You have to schedule when you can build, you must have an approved vendor for flagging and schedule with the flagging company, so that’s another month or longer.”

Source: Microsoft Designer AI

The Association of American Railroads (AAR) asserts that the broadband and utility crossing permit process may take anywhere from four to eight weeks, but Timmerman says that assumes a clean design with a basic crossing request and getting everything right on the first pass. Multiple passes translate to multiple cycles at four to eight weeks per cycle trying to get things correct. 

“When we’re doing a build, if there’s a railroad to cross, we’re planning on six months to a year to get where we need to go,” stated Timmerman. “All these processes of back and forth are a nightmare to deal with.”

Compounding matters are a variable and somewhat arbitrary fee schedule for permitting and having to conduct the same process on all railway designed land, even those that haven’t seen a train in decades or don’t have tracks on them. “Cost wise we’re facing one [build] in Montana where they want to charge us $130,000 for a permit,” said Timmerman. “It’s a footage-based [fee] structure that makes things difficult. At this point, the money is an actual obstacle. We’re trying to redesign it somewhere else just to go into a more reasonable fee structure.” 

Could federal regulation fix the programs with the current situation? Timmerman is doubtful. “You’re hearing more people talk about this than you ever have before,” he said. “The frustration of the general public with how the need for broadband is not being met, gives the opportunity for legislators to step up. But you have the Association of American Railroads taking a defensive position that, ‘We’re not the problem, we’re great, we’re wonderful.’”

Global asset managers are using ESG frameworks to evaluate the environmental impact of companies as one of several factors in the companies they invest in, enabling them to evaluate how resilient they are to climate events and how well they are developing and implementing practices for increased efficiency. At the end of the day, such things as more power efficient equipment and reductions in packaging are not only good for the environment, but also improve the corporate bottom line.

Fiber broadband is and will play a significant role in reducing carbon emissions in the years to come. A prime example: transitioning legacy copper and coax networks to fiber directly reduces carbon emissions by tens of thousands of tons annually by enabling work from home (WFA) and thereby eliminating commuting time, according to a 2023 estimate by RVA Market Research and Associates.

The glass core capable of carrying hundreds of terabits of data per second today is created out of silicon dioxide, an abundant and easily accessible material that makes up 10% of the earth’s crust. In comparison, copper must be mined and processed into a pure form that requires lots of effort and energy, with deep mines, big trucks, and lots of digging.

Between production and operation over its lifecycle, copper wiring has a carbon footprint that is 85,000 times higher than fiber. Shutting down legacy copper networks and migrating to all-fiber solutions has become a priority for service providers, since it enables them to reduce cost and drastically lower yearly carbon emissions. In 2023, altafiber stated that its legacy copper network made up 36% of its greenhouse gas emissions, making it a prime target for replacement, while the company’s fiber network only produced 6% of its emissions.

Copper’s value as a metal makes it a target for theft, a common problem for service provider legacy networks. On the other hand, fiber has demonstrated its durability over time, with the first cables put into service over 50 years ago continuing to be used today. Electronics upgrades have continued to increase the data carrying capacity of fiber while at the same time becoming smaller and more power-efficient with each generation.

For example, the first commercial 400 Mbps optical circuit from Ciena deployed in the mid-1990s took 10 full racks of equipment in a central office with its associated power and cooling requirements. Ciena today delivers 800 Gbps across a single fiber using a fraction of the power and space of a single 1U shelf, with terabyte speeds available in the future using the same physical footprint without having to replace or augment the existing media.

Additional carbon reduction benefits come from fiber’s durability. Fewer interruptions and service calls mean less truck rolls for repairs and less emissions from fossil fuel maintenance vehicles.

Hardware manufacturers in the fiber broadband ecosystem have a relatively clear path for environmentally friendly practices, even though they differ on how they implement and present those policies to their customers and stakeholders as it provides differentiators against their competitors.

“Calix Chief Sustainability Officer Martha Galley’s job is to align a comprehensive sustainability strategy across all company business units. Source: Calix.”

“The approach we have decided to take to sustainability is a collaborative one,” said Martha Galley, Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO), Calix. “My job is to align and make sense of our comprehensive strategy based upon the current market and the regulatory demands across the business units, all of which participate in various projects around sustainability. Some of those are outward facing, like our product pillar. Some of them are inward facing. Being a sustainable company has to do with our infrastructure, our use of power, etc. Second is to amplify, making sure that our story is thoroughly told well and accurately. When you put something in a regulatory report, it has to stand up to the audit.”

The third part of Galley’s job is augmentation of existing sustainability policies and practices. As a part of Calix’s executive leadership team, the CSO can find additional opportunities within and across the company that are appropriate to incorporate into the company’s own five pillars of sustainability: technology innovation, cultural and social impact, supply chain, enterprise, and partnership. Each pillar contributes to the vision and practices of sustainability.

“First and foremost, technology innovation,” said Galley. “Our entire product portfolio has responsibility for improving along three dimensions, including durability, efficiency, and recyclability. If something is thrown away, it’s obviously not very environmentally friendly. Is the technology durable for the environment? Are our outdoor devices [and] systems going to stand up to the weather conditions, for example? But the most important aspect of durability for us is our software-enabled network. Every 91 days, our customers get more capability, more value, because upgrades to the operating system are released three times a year. The bottom line about all of it is that we believe that our fundamental architecture is durable because value gets added and you’re not throwing those systems away.”

Calix’s efficiency work leverages iterative improvements on hardware to build more density into its access systems while lowering power consumption. More cards per rack footprint and lower power helps customers save money through lower operational costs for data center space and electric bills as well as impacting the environment.

“We’re assessing right now the recyclable content of our systems and we’ll set targets for increasing and improving it by working with our upstream supply chain partners we manufacture with,” said Galley. “We’re also interested in ensuring that our customers have an opportunity to keep their communities healthy by ensuring that electronic systems don’t end up in landfills. We’re starting with a referral program around electronics recyclability, but we’ve been thinking about a program that Calix would drive. That’s in its very early stages.

Cultural and social impact starts at home with making Calix a great place to work through creating and maintaining a great corporate culture. The company is sharing its best practices with its customers to help them retain their employees and better engage with the communities they serve.

Nobody is taking supply chains for granted in the post-pandemic era. “This is about reducing risks,” said Galley. “We’ve done a tremendous amount to lower the risk and make sure we’re compliant with [Build America] requirements and to provide a sustainable product and service for our customers. We’re working with our supply chain partners, many of whom are quite adept. They’re larger organizations, they’ve been in [overseas] markets where the sustainability requirements are even higher than they are in the United States. We’ve learned things from them in terms of reducing our carbon footprint.”

Under Calix’s sustainable enterprise pillar are things many organizations look at, such as moving the IT organization into LEED-certified buildings for lower power and water utilization, converting to electric vehicles in India, as well as other projects that will reduce carbon footprint.

“The last piece, I think, is the most intriguing and the one that differentiates us the most, and that’s sustainable partnership,” said Galley. “It’s table stakes to be a responsible company. But what we like to think of is that we’ve got a purpose in conjunction with our customers. And that purpose is to help them make their communities better places to live and work.”

A part of its sustainable partnership philosophy is providing value-added services for their customers to sell. Calix was among the first to champion value-added services as a logical complement to fiber broadband connectivity. “Our customers make a little bit of money on providing those services to their subscribers,” said Galley. “It’s an ‘all boats rise’ model, and from my standpoint, that’s just about the most sustainable type of a business model that you can have. We believe that that sustainable partnership is good for subscribers, for BSP customers, and Calix, and in the cases where we provide branded services for those partners in our value chain as well.”

Other equipment manufacturers have their own approaches based upon their business lines and historic involvements in different markets. Harmonic’s methodology comes from 25 years of operation that started in the cable and broadcast world and now includes video, broadband, and media solutions. The company’s Corporate Social Responsibly (CSR) 2022 report highlights include 100% of electronic waste recycled, nearly 23% of its electricity obtained from renewable sources, and 22% reduction of corporate energy consumption at its three main sites between 2019 and 2021.

To broadband customers, Harmonic’s eco-friendly message is founded on its virtualized core software in its broadband portfolio, keeping heavy network lifting within the central office data center on COTS hardware, with relatively light hardware at the subscriber premise.

“Harmonic’s approach to sustainability encompasses a virtual network core and being able to integrate with legacy systems, according to Senior Vice President Dan Gledhill (Source: Harmonic)”

“The fundamental benefit of the virtualized core is that you’re pulling complicated network functions out of purpose-built devices in the field,” said Dan Gledhill, Senior Vice President of Broadband Business Operations at Harmonic. “You’re centralizing them on incredibly cost-efficient and power efficient servers that get the benefit from standard processor curves that you see from Intel and the other leading enterprise silicon manufacturers. The result is that we end up with an architecture that has low power consumption devices at the edge of the network, because again, they’ve been simplified with this virtualized core. All the actual heavy lifting is done by an incredibly efficient, virtualized core technology that the operator deployed.”

Last year, Vodafone and Intel published a paper on the power savings found using Harmonic’s approach in the service provider’s legacy cable plant, with an initial 28% reduction in power consumption by shifting functions to a virtualized headend and another 10% or more savings coming from adopting a cloud approach. Successive generations of architecture would also increase throughput substantially from 100 Gbps downstream using older models of cable tech to over 500 Gbps with cloud-based network architectures.

Why mention cable if the focus is on fiber? The world is full of legacy devices and media. Wholescale rip-and-replace is impractical for many operators, so there will have to be coexistence between fiber and older devices. The cable industry already uses fiber in most of its network and is increasingly using more for greenfield and competitive builds.

“One of the strategies we take is this really wide breadth of edge devices that have extended range such that you’re both able to deploy them in more remote locations and you’re able to fully utilize the capacity of those devices to get more power efficiency,” said Gledhill. “If you’re using a single operational core and basically just mixing and matching these edge devices however you see fit to design a network that doesn’t have a bunch of unutilized capacity, doesn’t require a bunch of extra devices within the network, and also ensuring that the operators have the flexibility to reutilize whatever existing infrastructure may be available.”

Gledhill said that the Vodafone/Intel findings were the “basis” of a reduction in power consumption of its technologies, with other opportunities available for more reductions as more tools are brought to bear. “What we layer on top of that goes much further than what they actually wrote about,” he said. “They’re using a subset and focused on specific use cases that they see in their ecosystem, not necessarily what we focus on generally. We get to talk about use cases that will find the long-term operational efficiency, things like availability and reliability. We are very, very proud of the fact that our architecture and our solution have five nines availability and additionally, it leverages really intelligent analytics to achieve that level of performance.”

Intelligent analytics enable service providers to process all the data from the network and direct an operator to areas of improvement. Field service teams can be deployed with precision instead of a “shotgun blast” of truck rolls to pinpoint an issue, leading to fewer and more efficient use of teams and vehicles.

Working with existing service providers such as Vodafone that have legacy cable plant and can’t simply rip-and-replace existing infrastructure to migrate to fiber is a reality Harmonic and others have to work with in terms of capital costs and service providers being able to optimize their networks as budgets and schedules permit. It also means implementing an open ecosystem approach that can work seamlessly with existing DOCSIS varieties and other residential fiber equipment.

“One of the major advantages that we enable and promote is an open ONU concept,” said Gledhill. “Very frequently when you’re talking to a fiber home vendor, there’s an ecosystem mandate to have the infrastructure on the network side dictate the in-home devices. We break that, we allow operators to utilize third party ONUs, which facilitate the hardware best-in-class, whether that means the lowest cost, the best Wi-Fi, the lowest power consumption, we give [service providers] the option and the flexibility to leverage whatever they may have in their footprint today, so that they’re not ripping and replacing and creating additional new waste. Plus going forward, they get to select their preference based on considerations like how green a solution might be. It’s a story about flexibility both on the network side and in the actual consumer front.”

Large service providers approach sustainability from a less hardware-centric view and emphasize a more holistic method. They’re looking for reductions in carbon emissions and waste and increasing resilience against climate change events that impact their operations. Such firms also tend to be more precise in terms of how they measure their overall carbon emissions, defining them as Scope 1 and Scope 2. Scope 1 emissions include direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by the company, such as its vehicle fleet. Scope 2 emissions include indirect emissions that result from the generation of purchased energy.

For example, AT&T’s 2022 Sustainability Summary repeats the company’s goal to be carbon neutral by the end of 2035 and actively working with its suppliers and customers to help reduce their environmental impact as well. By the end of 2022, AT&T had reduced its carbon emissions by more than 41% when compared to a 2015 baseline.

Beyond its own greenhouse gas emissions, AT&T has gotten 50% of its suppliers to set their own reduction targets and continues to support a gigaton of customer emission reductions through its own innovations and those of its partners, such as integration of AT&T IoT solutions into Salesforce Net Zero Cloud to make it easier for customers to monitor assets in real time and identify emissions reduction opportunities.

Waste management, through reduction and recycling, is another AT&T goal. AT&T’s Sustainability Summary calls for a move to a circular economy, embedding sustainability throughout the lifecycle of a product or service. The company is seeking a 30% reduction in waste it sends to landfills by 2030, based on a 2019 baseline. It has identified many materials that it works with that can be reused or repurposed. For instance, fiber optic cable scrap can be shredded and milled to serve as components for roofing materials.

More moves toward a circular economy by AT&T include recovering and reusing electronic devices, such as mobile phones, internet gateways, and television set top boxes. For devices that can’t be reused in their entirety, individual parts may be extracted for reuse and the remaining plastics and metal are recycled.

Lumen Technologies’ 2022 ESG report documents similar effort, with the company reducing its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 25% since it started third-party verification documentation in 2018, with savings coming from companywide efforts including energy-efficiency initiatives, renewable energy procurement, and real estate consolidation.

“Reducing packaging, as Lumen Technologies has done for its latest CPE, provides benefits beyond less trash, including lower shipping costs and less warehouse space. The box on the left holds six devices while the redesigned packaging on the right contains ten. Source: Doug Mohney.”

Larger service providers, including altafiber, AT&T, and Lumen, conduct regular or ongoing physical climate change risk assessments to identify threats and mitigation opportunities from events such as flooding, storms, hurricanes, and wildfires.

Source: alta fiber Fiber For Breakfast 2023 presentation

Altafiber has seen the results of its assessments firsthand. Its climate assessment mapping of Hawaii using publicly available data showed the highest fire risk around Lahaina prior to the 2023 wildfire. “It was fascinating to see how accurately that risk map correlated with where this terrible wildfire event occurred,” said Nadja Turek, Sustainability Director, altafiber, during an August 2023 Fiber for Breakfast podcast. “The data that’s out there is very good and really informative.”

Land O’Lakes CTO Teddy Bekele (R) with FBA President and CEO Gary Bolton. Source: FBA.

Doing business in all 50 states and more than 60 countries today, Land O’Lakes operates some of the most respected brands in agribusiness and food production, counting 2,709 total co-op members along with 9,000 employees on payroll. The founding members would be further amazed by the astonishing productivity of the American farmer after a century of experience and applications of the latest technologies.

The founders would understand and appreciate some values haven’t changed over a century, such as giving back to the community and helping neighbors, as illustrated by the citations of product donations and employee volunteer hours in Land O’Lakes’ 2023 annual report. But they would need a tutorial on other statistics like metric tons of carbon sequestered, grant funding secured for broadband infrastructure and expansion, and American Connection Corps fellows.

America’s farmers have been data-driven since the first fields were plowed, but today’s world of precision agriculture requires refined accuracy in measurement and operations for assessing fields, planting crops in the most productive manner, monitoring their growth, protecting them, and knowing when to harvest them. To enable it requires reliable high-speed broadband.

“Most people don’t know how advanced agriculture is at the moment,” said Land O’Lakes Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Teddy Bekele. “It’s still one of the least digitized industries and we still have a long way to go to catch up, but there has been no shortage of innovation in agriculture. Back in the 1920s, 1930s, 30% to 35% of Americans were directly involved in farming. Today, it’s less than 1%, yet we have substantially more people in North America and around the world. That is less than 1% responsible for feeding animals, feeding humans, and generating fuel while finding ways to farm in a very environmentally sustainable way.”

Broadband is an enabling technology for productivity today and a revolutionary one for the future as farms and the businesses that support them continually introduce innovations for increased productivity, efficiency, and environmental stewardship.

“We need fiber!” said Bekele. “All our businesses are developing sophisticated technologies, primarily created at our headquarters in Arden Hills, Minnesota. The process begins with data collection at the farm level, which requires reliable broadband. We analyze this data to develop models and recommendations that help our member owners make smarter decisions. However, for farmers to utilize these insights, internet connectivity is essential.”

Bekele and his team have been working for over a decade on this approach, being able to accurately model farming and all of its inputs and predict what the outcome of a particular crop would be in a particular field. Land O’Lakes has around 115 research plots around the country where it plants its seed varieties, applies its crop protection, uses different types of practices, and records the data on how different products perform in different soil types and environments.

“The limiting factor has always been broadband,” said Bekele. “Over the years, we developed a number of unique applications. We had some really neat modeling technology back in 2016 and we could predict the yield outcome of a field by analyzing farming practices, climate conditions, soil, and nutritional profiles. But we didn’t have the technology infrastructure to gather the right data from farmers and get the insights back out to them. That became a huge problem, and it was aggravated even more during COVID. It wasn’t just precision agriculture that was suffering due to a lack of broadband and fiber in these communities. Students were expected to attend school online, but broadband wasn’t available.”

Farming has always been data driven, as this slide outlines some of the many applications touching farm operations. Source: Land O’Lakes

Land O’Lakes did what it could during COVID to help, opening guest Wi-Fi at its locations, such as feed mills and dairy operations, so students could do their homework or people could get a telehealth visit. But the fundamental problem of connectivity remained, with the company recognizing it needed to take steps to proliferate broadband to all its offices and ultimately to the communities it serves.

“We always knew that broadband was critical infrastructure, and something had to be done to close the digital divide.” said Bekele. “With COVID, we realized broadband had to be one of the pillars of our work. I personally decided to get involved in the FCC-USDA Precision Ag Connectivity task force not only to ensure that our current tools delivered the expected value, but to ensure the infrastructure is ready for the future of ag productivity, including private networks and automation.”

Land O’Lakes works with a “cooperative system footprint” of 10,000 rural communities, as it highlighted in its 2023 annual report. “We know better internet connectivity is critical for education, economic competitiveness, accessible health care and food production,” the document states.

To foster increased rural broadband, Land O’Lakes launched and leads The American Connection Project. Its activities to date include providing free, public Wi-Fi access to over 3,000 locations in 49 states as a short-term solution for broadband access, building a coalition of 175 business partners to push for significant investment in broadband through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and launching the American Connection Corps in cooperation with twenty organizations, a long-term effort to train community leaders that will work to increase digital access and inclusion in their hometowns by coordinating with local partners to access federal and state resources for broadband access and delivering digital literacy to marginalized members of the community.

Started in 2021, the American Connection Corps supports fellows on a two-year, full-time paid fellowship to focus specifically on connectivity, with 155 fellows having gone through the program so far, they’ve expanded broadband infrastructure and accessibility in rural communities through their work.

“We are continuously assessing our own facilities and our network of approximately 800 or so independent retailers across the country,” Bekele said. “We’re exploring options to extend fiber to those locations, branches, and to grain silos. Additionally, we are considering establishing fixed wireless solutions. There is significant need for broadband across open lands where farmers grow corn and soybeans. Ensuring connectivity on these fields is crucial to collect data and provide farmers with key insights to optimize their yields.

Broadband connectivity plays a key role across all four Land O’Lakes business lines of Crop Inputs & Insights, Animal Nutrition, Dairy Foods, and Truterra. Farmer insight models for crop insights use a lot of different technological tools, including IoT sensors, remote sensing using satellite and drone data, and AI to sort through all the information. The generated insights make recommendations on what type of seeds to plant and when and how much crop protection needs to be applied, depending on the condition of the soil, crops, and presence of disease or insects.

The animal nutrition business buys crops like corn and soybean and then blends them into optimized feeds for farm animals such as chickens, cows, horses, goats, and pigs. “Our formulations of macro and micro ingredients are based on deep scientific research designed to optimize the performance and health of the animals.” Bekele said. “In addition to the research, we also have technology deployed in different operations to gather data back from sensors and quickly adjust recommendations to adapt to the needs of the animals.”

Lan O’Lakes insight models are build using real-world data collection from hundreds of test fields around the country. Source: Land O’Lakes

Many are familiar with Land O’Lakes Dairy Foods, with its butter and cheese available at supermarkets across the country. “Our dairy producers are part of our cooperative system, we buy all the milk they produce, and then turn it into the products you’ll find in the store,” said Bekele. “We have over 1,200 dairy producers in the network across the country.”

Truterra, the ag sustainability business of Land O’Lakes, works with farmers and their ag retailers to offer consultation, tools and solutions to help improve the environmental impact of agricultural production. They exists to create market opportunities for farmers and ag retailers, and they do that by helping them adopt practices that benefit their operation from an environmental standpoint, while also making good agronomic and economic decisions.

“As a cooperative, it’s our mission to ensure that the row crop farmers’ in our network are not only productive with the insights we deliver, but to also help them leave the soil in a better condition than when they started farming,” said Bekele. “We can advise them on the best products to purchase as well as the most relevant and sustainable practices to employ such as cover cropping and tilling methods to preserve more minerals in the ground and ensure the soil is healthier with less water runoff. At the end of the day, if they follow these recommendations, they will sequester carbon into the ground and get compensated for it in the form of carbon credits. They will also have access and control over their own data to better understand their fields and the health of their soil.”

Land O’Lakes’ “nirvana dream,” as Bekele described it, is to see all 10,000 rural communities in its service footprint fully connected to reliable broadband. “The primary advantage of fiber is that it offers the highest bandwidth available, making it optimal for delivering broadband to homes and communities. It’s proven technology. It’s high speed. And it can scale quickly.”

Bekele concedes that there are challenges in the distances involved in connecting rural farms with fiber, but other broadband alternatives are less capable in how they perform and what they deliver. “I know that there’s a lot of fixed wireless solutions being used,” Bekele said. “However, terrain, weather, and population density could all have an impact on the quality of broadband delivered, whereas fiber really doesn’t have those issues.

“Satellite is an effective solution in extremely remote areas. However, in communities with 4,000 to 5,000 residents using the same spectrum or bandwidth, it can lead to problems. Higher user density can cause latency issues, making it difficult to achieve the necessary connection or throughput.”

Having available bandwidth and the low-latency that fiber delivers are necessary for many of the solutions Land O’Lakes is deploying, especially data-rich applications when farmers are uploading data to complicated models for insights and downloading satellite imagery to assess the health of crops.

Truterra provides a data platform for farmers to monitor and monetize their sustainability practices. Source: Land O’Lakes

Bekele has seen firsthand how the best-designed precision agriculture software can come to a grinding halt for lack of a good connection. “In 2018, I remember traveling to see a farmer to showcase a ground-breaking crop-modeling application we had just developed using satellite imagery. I was so excited. I sat at the farmer’s kitchen table and tried to launch the tool. After the logo page, the application just kept spinning and spinning telling me it was loading. After a while, the gentleman smiled and said: ‘I guess it’s not working today.’ And I replied, ‘I know it works, it’s just not working here!’ I closed the device and then we had coffee and pie.”

High-speed connectivity and data-driven farming is especially important as today’s farmers and their customers are increasingly more concerned about environmental issues. “The ultimate goal is to have every field connected and data streaming from the field and the equipment,” Bekele stated. “As an input and recommendation provider, I want to process that data and deliver recommendations to help those farmers be more productive as well as environmentally sustainable with optimized water usage and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.”

Food manufacturers downstream from the farmer want to know how the grain is produced so they can meet the preferences of the grocery store shopper, such as organically produced or foods that have less gluten and or more protein. Bekele expects that food manufacturers will highlight products that use less carbon and water in their creation. Outside the supermarket, biofuel producers are also interested in the prospects of producing fuels from sustainably harvested crops. “Capturing accurate data in the field opens up numerous possibilities across the food, fuel, feed, and fiber value chains,” said Bekele, “If farmers can prove that they adhere to specific practices and meet manufacturers’ criteria, it unlocks exciting opportunities for them and enhances the entire value chain.”

As exciting as these opportunities are, they are just the beginning of improvements to food production in an area that has already made significant progress over the last decade. As more data is collected, analyzed, and understood, improvements will continue to increase. The introduction and use of automated equipment in the years to come is likely to provide further gains.

“Technology is crucial for modern farming, enabling the production of greater outputs with fewer inputs. It not only enhances farm productivity and financial stability but also promotes sustainable practices from both economic and environmental perspectives,” said Bekele. “Broadband is super critical for the food supply, the feed supply, the fiber supply, and the fuel supply. It is now a matter of national security.

“We’re at a point where we’re not only enabling a variety of technologies but also beginning to unlock numerous possibilities. This is evident in precision agriculture, which encompasses the areas we have already discussed but it also extends to pioneering advancements in precision medicine and nutrition. The potential to use food as medicine is especially exciting for me.”

Advances in better understanding of genetics combined with artificial intelligence will lead to the ability to look at a person’s DNA and provide precise nutritional recommendations, with precision agriculture providing the audit trail of how the food was grown and processed. Further precision in the supply chain will also help to reduce food waste, helping to feed more people better at less cost and in an environmentally sustainable fashion.

“These advances are like building a high-speed train,” Bekele said. “And we are just starting to put the railway into place. It’s going to take time, but I’m excited about the direction we are heading in. It’s where we are, and it is exactly what we need to do!”

Cassandra Graber mural titled “Inno-Vision” is her interpretation of
South Bend, Indiana innovation, including the region’s fiber optics
and a hydroelectric turbine under Seitz Park. Source: ChoiceLight.

Sitting at the crossroads of the Midwest, South Bend, Indiana, has been a major manufacturing and logistics hub due to its location along railroads and the interstates. Twenty years ago, community leaders, local businesses, and The University of Notre Dame found themselves bandwidth starved, without access to the high-speed fiber necessary for the continued operation and growth of themselves and the surrounding community. The solution was unique, an organization dedicated to deploying dark fiber infrastructure – just dark fiber, not a traditional internet service provider — for the economic benefit of the region. 

“ChoiceLight was formed in the early 2000s, with the construction of the network beginning in 2006,” said Regina Emberton, CEO, ChoiceLight, Inc. “There was no on-ramp to the internet, no one in our community was able to connect to it, no one was building out the market to provide that. Community, economic development, and business leaders got together and created a non-profit. The founding capital contributors each put in a significant amount of money to cover the cost of the initial build of the dark fiber and in exchange got 10 years of dark fiber access.”

Founding capital contributors in ChoiceLight included the University of Notre Dame, Everwise (formerly Teachers Credit Union), Beacon Health System, St. Joseph Health System, Robert Bosch Corp., Madison Center, and South Bend Medical Foundation. In addition, ChoiceLight negotiated reciprocal agreements for conduit access in South Bend, Mishawaka, and St. Joseph County in exchange for access to dedicated fiber for each municipality’s exclusive use. 

ChoiceLight paid for the cost of installing the fiber, expanding the network, and building the redundant ring structure. As a non-profit, it was limited to serving government agencies and tax-supported schools. A for-profit subsidiary, CLight, was created to provide services to commercial users, including banks, medical facilities, and other commercial and business subscribers. Dividends from CLight operations are channeled back into ChoiceLight to cover costs and enable it to expand operations over time.

“It started out as a small group in South Bend to service those initial users,” said Emberton. “Now ChoiceLight serves a three-county area, about a half million people in the region. Ten years into the process, we extended the network south to Marshall County. A couple of years ago, we built west to New Carlisle where a lot of economic development growth is happening. The attractiveness of that area is the land, the workforce, but also that there’s fiber available. They just announced a new EV battery plant.”

Today, ChoiceLight has a little over 300 dark fiber end users, many served through the numerous internet service providers in the region that use its services. Having these partners enables ChoiceLight to provide a turn-key solution beyond dark fiber when organizations require it.

“All of the subscription revenue is reinvested in the nonprofit organization,” said Emberton. “We work with the counties and cities and economic development professionals to identify areas of growth in the region and try to ensure that we’re proactive in extending the network. Another aspect of our mission is to support our partners in their efforts to expand services to underserved residential areas. Partnering to support our schools has been most interesting. Last year, we partnered with Notre Dame, enFocus, and the South Bend Community School Corporation, extending our fiber by several miles to three different sites in support of a private LTE network that enables Wi-Fi to reach students in their homes.”

Stealth Communications had to install its own manholes when
trenching fresh fiber to reach unserved Brooklyn. Source: Stealth
Communications.

With a population of over 8.4 million people living in its five boroughs, New York is one of the most vibrant cities in the world, home to Wall Street, Broadway, Fashion Week, Saturday Night Live, and a plethora of other cultural and business movements. The “City That Never Sleeps” was the anchor for $1.66 trillion dollars in economic activity in 2022, according to the New York City Economic Development Corporation. 

Deploying fiber in this most urban of urban cities is no trivial task, much less build an independent business that started life as an internet dial-up firm 28 years ago. 

“Stealth Communications started in 1995,” said Shrihari Pandit, President and CEO of Stealth Communications. “My wife and I started it entirely self-financed. We were originally a consumer ISP. It was a very difficult business because there was huge pricing pressure. We transitioned out of it and ended up focusing on businesses and business internet connectivity, selling fractional T-1s, T-1s, and ultimately T-3s.”

As Stealth grew through the late 90’s to 2010, buying circuits and dark fiber from other providers became increasingly problematic. “Your competitors want to sell to you, but they really don’t want to because you’re competing with them. They want the revenue, but they’re very picky when they want to do transactions, especially when it comes to fiber.” 

Stealth realized they needed their own infrastructure and independence, petitioning the City of New York to receive information and telecommunications franchises authorizing the company to install its own fiber throughout the city’s public right-of-way, obtaining them in 2013. That same year, the company started construction of its new fiber network, starting from midtown Manhattan towards the Financial District. 

“We now have our own system,” Pandit said. “We don’t contract with any other telephone company for service. We have our own in-house construction team that’s vertically integrated where we can excavate the roadways, put our own conduits in, put our own manholes in. Often, we’ll have to bring fiber into the buildings, and build risers to take them to the top floor. Having our own in-house staff allows us very quick mobilization for repairs and installation. We’re very unique in the city from that perspective.”

Stealth has deployed over 100 miles of fiber in its network, with its core in Manhattan and coverage in the Bronx and Brooklyn. The Brooklyn section was built as a part of a public-private partnership with the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) under the organization’s Connect IBZ program to build broadband infrastructure in the city’s unserved “digital deserts.” 

In Manhattan, Stealth uses the Empire City Subway Company, a Verizon subsidiary that holds a franchise dating back to 1891, to build and maintain the vendor-neutral conduit and manhole infrastructure under the streets. “In Brooklyn we had to build block by block and put in our own conduit,” said Pandit.

Being an independent fiber provider in NYC gives Stealth access to a wide range of very large institutions, including federal agencies and Fortune 500 companies, with hundreds of office buildings wired up. It also means meeting the expectations of customers who want high-speed unshared services, such as firms that want direct connections to the Nasdaq stock exchange. “We allocate a unique wavelength for each business,” said Pandit. “It’s a little bit higher cost, but this means there’s no loading or competition when compared to shared mediums such as XGS-PON. There’s no hardware between the customer and a core router.”

In January, the Fiber Broadband Association – LATAM Chapter released its annual “Panorama FTTH LATAM” market report. Published since 2013, the study conducted by consulting company SmC+ focused on the Latin America market, analyzing fiber deployment in the region, challenges, impacts, trends, and projections for the coming years. 

The 2023 report comes with a different look and new analysis of industry factors. “We are deepening the regional knowledge about the FTTH momentum the region is living nowadays,” said Sebastian Cabello, CEO of SmC+ Digital Public Affairs. “For this new 2023 edition, we added a couple of new indicators like number of sockets, network overlap, and competition levels that reflect different aspects of the growth we are seeing, that is reflected not only in coverage but also in quality levels.”  

Fiber to the home services passed 114 million households in Latin America with a total of 57 million FTTH subscribers in 2022 (51% of total broadband subscribers), at a rate of 22% year-over-year subscriber growth. Over 111 million households had a broadband subscription in Latin America while there are 69 million without any connectivity, making up 38% of total households in the region. Expansions in data traffic demand and government initiatives to close the digital divide are expected to drive growth of 20% annually over the next five years. As a result, FTTH is expected to make up 69% of all broadband subscriptions by 2027. 

“The Fiber Broadband Association is extremely encouraged by the results of this Latin America study, as the strong growth of fiber broadband deployment and adoption will elevate the quality of life in the LATAM region for generations to come,” said Gary Bolton, President & CEO, Fiber Broadband Association.

Among the countries with the strongest growth are Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, and Argentina. Data used to build the Panorama FTTH LATAM was collected from the main vendors in the region and from the regulatory agencies of the 18 countries that make up the region. Over the next five years FTTH and FTTB coverage combined is expected to grow from 62% to 77%, with FTTH/FTTB take rates going up from 50% to 66%. As deployments continue, users in urban areas are expected to have increased competition through multiple fiber choices available in the marketplace. 

The report also recognizes continued challenges and barriers to new service offerings even as growth continues. Challenges for service providers include sustainability, supply chain bottlenecks, expanding coverage to rural areas, and vandalism. Obstacles to deployment include a lack of qualified staff, existing and in-deployment 4G and 5G networks, economic uncertainty and ROI, and a desire by incumbent service providers to maximize their investment in legacy technologies. 

“The LATAM Panorama is recognized as a key tool to reflect the growth of the sector and understand barriers and opportunities around the Latin American industry,” stated Nelson Saito, president of the Fiber Broadband Association LATAM Chapter. An executive summary of the report is available on the FBA website at www.fiberbroadband.org, while the full report is available exclusively to members of the Fiber Broadband Association.

Fiber Day on the Hill

On April 11, 2024, FBA will host our second annual “Fiber Day on the Hill” in Washington, DC. Last year, this event brought over 200 bipartisan attendees from Congress and the Administration and was an incredible, interactive educational opportunity to learn about fiber broadband. This year’s Fiber Day on the Hill will bring exciting new demos, while maintaining a focus on the fundamentals of fiber and the opportunity to learn to splice fiber as part of the event. Fiber Day on the Hill provides an opportunity for participants to see demo stations presented by FBA members that explain what fiber is and how it improves U.S. households, communities, and the economy. We hope you will participate in this event. Please reach out to FBA to learn more about this opportunity.

Quarterly Overview

Broadband Equity, Access, and Development (BEAD) Grants 

On December 15, 2023, Louisiana became the first state to receive approval for its Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program proposal and this quarter brought additional approvals of proposals. With much anticipation, FBA is working to help our members navigate grant criteria and continues to advocate for ongoing BEAD priorities.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) BEAD timeline predicts that most funding distribution will start by late 2024 into early 2025. As a reminder, NTIA has a great BEAD proposal tracker on the Internet for All website: www.internetforall.gov.

Letter of Credit Requirement

An important issue that FBA advocated for on behalf of our membership was the irrevocable standby Letter of Credit (LOC) requirement for subgrantees receiving support under BEAD.

FBA supports assuring that all parties have the financial capabilities to complete projects, yet the initial proposal reached beyond what we believed necessary to achieve that goal. NTIA responded to stakeholder input by issuing a programmatic waiver on November 1, 2023, that will ensure more midsize and small providers, which have long supported underserved communities, have a fair opportunity to participate in the historic BEAD program and connect Americans to high-speed fiber broadband. The waiver modifies the LOC requirement for subgrantees of all Eligible Entities in the following ways: Allow Credit Unions to Issue LOCs; Allow Use of Performance Bonds; Allow Eligible Entities to Reduce the Obligation Upon Completion of Milestones; and Allow for an Alternative Initial LOC or Performance Bond Percentage.

Uniform Guidance

NTIA released a policy notice on December 26, 2023, providing “tailoring” on the application of the Uniform Guidance in the BEAD program. The Uniform Guidance is the federal government’s framework for grants management, providing rules and requirements for federal grant programs. NTIA guidance addresses program income; fixed amount subgrants, enables service providers to make network upgrades without prior approval; and establishes a ten-year Federal Interest period for broadband infrastructure projects after the network is constructed.

Availability of Advanced Telecommunications Capability to all Americans

FBA submitted comments on December 1, 2023, to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Section 706 Notice of Inquiry (“NOI”) “concerning the ‘availability of advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans.’” The FCC is required to conduct this inquiry on an annual basis to evaluate the state of broadband across the country and consider many characteristics of broadband deployment, including affordability, adoption, availability, and equitable access when determining whether broadband is being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion. FBA encourages the FCC to create a long-term gigabit symmetric, low latency benchmark in tandem with other federal agencies.

Open Internet Regulation

The FCC has proposed classifying broadband internet access services as a telecommunications service and imposing common carrier and “open internet” regulations on broadband service providers. FBA believes this is both unwarranted and will undermine broadband investment, particularly in fiber infrastructure and service innovation. In December, FBA filed comments in opposition to this proposal. Congress, not the FCC, should address this issue.

Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP)

In early January, Chairwoman Rosenworcel and the FCC communicated wind-down guidance for the ACP to industry and households subscribed to the program. With over 20 million households subscribed to this program, FBA encourages Congress to appropriate funding to continue this program, which has been integral in keeping Americans connected to the internet and allows them to participate in all aspects of the economy and society. We appreciate the bipartisan, bicameral leadership on this issue and support the legislation introduced in early January that would allocate $7 billion in additional funding for the ACP. The legislation was introduced by Senators Peter Welch (D-VT) and J.D. Vance (R-OH) and Representatives Yvette Clarke (D-NY) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and we appreciate their leadership. This is an issue that impacts every congressional district and while Congress looks for long-term reforms, the ACP should continue to be funded. 

Fiber Broadband Association Public Policy Leadership

FBA’s Public Policy Committee is led by co-chairs Chris Champion, Vice President, Government Affairs, C Spire; and Jordan Gross, Manager of Federal Government Affairs, Corning. Ariane Schaffer, Government & Public Policy, Google Fiber, is the FBA Board Liaison. If your company is interested in joining the public policy committee, please email mmitrovich@fiberbroadband.org to join.