Fiber Comes To Commons; More High-Speed Projects Underway

While Traverse City Light & Power (TCL&P) continues to study a possible community-wide project to deploy high-speed fiber Internet to the home, another private company has stepped forward to offer services to The Village at Grand Traverse Commons – with future expansion planned locally.

Michigan Broadband Services, a telecommunications provider that offers broadband and telephone services in more than 20 Michigan communities, recently located its headquarters from Carney in the Upper Peninsula to the Commons. While eyeing service expansion to various Traverse City locations, the company chose its own backyard as the first site to roll out high-speed fiber optic broadband, including up to 1 gigabit Internet.

“We wanted to live on our own network, and I wanted to be one of my own customers,” says President and General Manager Bruce Moore. “We were able to work it out with the Minervini Group (to deploy fiber at the Commons). We’re up and running now and have a number of customers, both commercial and residential units, who are subscribed and online. We feel like what we’re doing is something that’s been long-promised to the community of Traverse City, which is bringing direct fiber connections to these businesses and the home.”

Raymond Minervini of The Minervini Group says Michigan Broadband Services’ pricing structure is more competitive than that of other local fiber-optic providers he’s seen and provides better upload and download speeds needed by professional firms within the Commons, including Traverse Legal and North Coast Legal.

“It’s a higher performance guarantee than what (other competitors) are willing to provide,” Minervini says. “It seems like they felt they could justify the risk of their investment in infrastructure here by entering Building 50, where they immediately have access to a couple hundred end users. They stuck out their neck to bring fiber to the Village campus, so I hope they get a lot of business out of it.”

Brian Hammer of Empire Value Advisors, a consulting firm that provides financial advisory services for private equity funds, was one of the first Commons tenants to sign up for the new fiber service. “The speed difference is incredible for us,” he says. “We were getting 5 Mpbs upload before, and in our initial tests we’re now getting 200 Mpbs up. When you’re working remotely with folks, that upload speed is really important.”

Moore says Michigan Broadband Services is exploring other neighborhoods to expand service to in Traverse City. “We continue to find opportunity in clusters of commercial properties that are underserved,” he says. “Their bandwith demands are not being met today, and they’re trying to plan for the future. We’ve been approached by a number of those types of business parks that are looking for fiber optic-based service.”

Moore’s company is one of several telecommunications providers that have pole attachment license agreements with Traverse City Light & Power that could allow them to share space and run their fiber lines on the city utility’s poles. At a special meeting today (Tuesday), TCL&P board members will consider approving another such contract with Peninsula Fiber Network, which is looking to run fiber to a financial banking client in the Traverse City area. The agreement could allow Peninsula Fiber Network to expand to other customers in the future.

TCL&P Executive Director Tim Arends notes the pole attachment contracts specifically reserve space on the poles for the utility’s own fiber lines in the future. TCL&P board members amended the utility’s capital improvement plan in May to include a project to build 184 miles of fiber over a two-year period, bringing 1 gigabit Internet service capability to nearly 10,800 residential and commercial customers throughout the utility’s service area. Board members also voted to have TCL&P construct, own and operate the network, but contract with an outside Internet service provider (ISP) to provide services. The project is expected to cost TCL&P over $10 million upfront, though the utility is anticipated to recoup that investment through an ISP contract.

Arends notes an ad hoc committee of the board has met several times since May to “get into the weeds of the project,” analyzing various deployment options and timelines with the goal of bringing a recommendation for moving forward to the board in December. The next year would likely be spent on finalizing the business plan for the fiber project, moving into engineering and design work, then going out to bid for construction and ISP contracts. That timeline means fiber Internet deployment for TCL&P is “clearly a year away” or more, says Arends.

In the meantime, Arends and other local officials – along with members of the tech community – are keeping a close eye on Lansing after legislation was recently introduced that would ban municipalities from investing in their own fiber Internet networks. Michele Hoitenga (R-Manton) introduced House Bill 5099 in October to prevent communities from using local, state or federal funds to invest in Internet infrastructure, arguing that governments shouldn’t be competing against the private sector. Arends says TCL&P and representatives from four other communities pursuing fiber met with Hoitenga through the Michigan Municipal League to discourage her against pursuing the bill, which was ultimately put on hold.

“She decided not to move forward with it,” says Arends. “But that doesn’t mean the Senate couldn’t propose something as well. So we’re monitoring it very closely.”

On Monday, Traverse City commissioners passed a resolution regarding the issue, expressing their opposition to any legislation that would limit local control for government providing fiber to the premise.

Photo credit: The Village at Grand Traverse Commons