Idaho Falls expands fiber optic network to include residential

Idaho Falls, which has provided so-called “dark fiber” to government organizations and businesses in the city for decades, plans to offer high-speed fiber optic connections to all city residents in the next four years.

“People were constantly coming to us for residential,” said Bear Prairie, general manager. “’We love your service, can you build to my home?’ So we thought, well, why not.”

Electrical partnership

Idaho Falls Fiber is part of Idaho Falls Power, the city-operated electric utility, which offers electric rates half those of competitors such as Rocky Mountain Power, Prairie said. Residents hoped the city could do the same for municipal broadband.

The city started building the fiber-optic network in 1998 and began leasing out “dark fiber,” or fiber-optic access that wasn’t being used, to commercial providers in 2002. Subscribers included schools, Idaho National Laboratory, hospitals, government buildings, county buildings, the jail and some 500 businesses, Prairie said.

Then the residents started coming.

Having a nationally recognized municipally operated fiber-optic network next door in Ammon was also an incentive, Prairie admitted.

“People were frustrated,” he said. “’Ammon’s doing it, why can’t you guys?’ We wanted to do it right and do it on scale.”

Also, the city had hoped a company would come in and provide the service so it wouldn’t have to, he said.

The city has been looking at running its own residential network since 2015, Prairie said. It was going to have to expand the network anyway because it was out of additional dark fiber to lease, so it decided to build a “lit” network to provide residential service — if it could be done economically.

“People want better internet, but they won’t pay $130 or $140,” Prairie said. “$10 or $20, sure.”

Working with the electric utility helps Idaho Falls Fiber save money because it can use Idaho Falls Power infrastructure, such as conduits, to run the fiber optic cabling, Prairie said.

The city started with a pilot project a year ago to prove its construction techniques, see whether it could provide connections for $70-$80 per month and gauge the response.

“We passed by 1,500 homes,” Prairie said. “We were confident that if we built it out city-wide, we could be competitive.”

Within four months, the neighborhoods in the pilot had 40% of their residents on the network, he said.

At that point, the Idaho Falls City Council stepped in.

“The city council looked at the economics and decided to build it out citywide,” Prairie said. “It’s going to be to every home and every doorstep in the next three to four years.”

Open access

Like a number of other cities, Idaho Falls plans to offer just the fiber-optic network connection to residences. Getting connected costs $25, a reduction from the previous $30 price. Residents don’t have to pay for the connection unless they sign up for service.

Each house gets its own single fiber connection, as opposed to the daisy chains that many networks use, Prairie said. In addition, that method provides bidirectional speeds, meaning the upload speed is as fast as the download speed when it’s usually much slower, he said.

“For $59.99, you can get 250 megabits per second up and down,” he said. “Ours is true bidirectional.” This is important for applications such as videoconferencing, education and telemedicine, he said.

Residents who want the service would then need to contract with one of four internet service providers that would provide the actual service. Customers can also change providers as they wish.

“We build the road, and customers get to choose whether it’s UPS or FedEx who delivers their packages,” Prairie explained.

Municipally operated broadband networks came under scrutiny this year by the Idaho Legislature, which considered two bills that would have imposed limitations on the ability of cities to be able to offer such services. However, no bill has yet been passed.