Boulder hires consultant to explore municipal broadband buildout

BOULDER — The city of Boulder announced on Thursday that it has hired a consultant to conduct a broadband feasibility study, which will assess the technical aspects of building out municipal broadband services, as well as engage community members about what services they might like to see the city provide.

The goal is to have the study completed by May or June of 2016 so that, if the city council does decide to move forward with providing certain services, there would be time to place an initiative on the November ballot, if needed, to ask voters to fund such efforts.

But Don Ingle, information-technology director for the city, stressed Thursday that there is a lot to learn before the city gets to that point.

“There are a lot of variables that go into this,” Ingle said. “That’s why we’re doing the feasibility study.”

The city owns about 100 miles of conduit and dark fiber that it could use as a backbone to deliver fiber-optic Internet service to every home and business in town. And voters last year unshackled the city from state regulations that prohibit municipalities from providing broadband services without voter approval, opening the door for the city to explore such efforts. Voters in Fort Collins and Loveland did the same this week.

In addition to the feasibility study, Ingle said the city plans to issue a request for information in the first quarter of next year to private companies that might be able to partner with the city in building out broadband services.

The city of Longmont is in the middle of building out a city-owned and run municipal broadband utility. Ingle said Boulder city council members have indicated that they would prefer to look into some sort of public-private partnership.

Such partnerships could take various forms. One option would be for the city to fund construction of the citywide broadband network and then contract with a private company to run the service side. Another would be for a private company to both fund construction and run the utility. But Ingle said other ideas could come about through the request for information.

CTC Technology and Energy is the company that has been hired to conduct the feasibility study, at a cost of $150,000 to the city. The study will entail an engineering analysis of the city’s existing fiber and conduit network to see what a buildout to the rest of the city would entail, both from a cost and technical standpoint.

CTC is also hosting a pair of community meetings on Monday to talk with residents and businesses about their current and future needs related to the Internet. The two sessions will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. at the East Boulder Community Center, and will cover the same information. The city is also seeking to have community members complete an online survey about their broadband needs by Dec. 31.

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