San Francisco appears to be closer than ever to building a citywide municipal Internet network — an ambitious project that’s proved elusive for more than a decade.

City officials are poring over the findings of a comprehensive 200-page report that will serve as San Francisco’s lodestar as it moves toward creating a proposed $1.5 billion city-owned fiber-optic network that can connect every home and business in the city to a blazingly fast 1-gigabit Internet service.

It’s an initiative that, if successful, would make San Francisco by far the largest city in the country to operate a municipal fiber network. Linking every home in the city to a fast Internet connection — and providing subsidies to households that currently can’t afford one — is also critical, officials say, if the city is to bridge its so-called digital divide. At present, 12 percent of the city’s residents, or about 100,000 people, don’t have an Internet connection at home, according to city data.

“Bridging the digital divide is right for our residents and right for the future of our city,” Mayor Ed Lee said in a statement. “With this report, we are one step closer to bringing fast and affordable Internet to every San Francisco business and resident, regardless of where they live or their economic status, through municipal broadband.”

While there’s no firm date about when the planned network would be up and running, the city is hoping to put out a request for proposals sometime next year.

The new report, compiled by the consulting firm CTC Technology & Energy, was commissioned by the city last year and paid for out of a $2.5 million pot of money in Lee’s 2016-2017 budget allocated to create a more detailed vision of what such a service would look like in San Francisco. Those funds will also be put toward hiring a project manager to oversee the rollout and management of the network and for specialized legal counsel.

But the report is more than a purely academic analysis when it comes to making a municipal fiber network a reality, said Supervisor Mark Farrell, who has been spearheading the initiative in conjunction with the mayor’s office. Rather, it represents the blueprint that the city will utilize as it begins reaching out to potential private-sector partners and contractors who will be hired by the city to build the network

“This is not just another report,” Farrell said. “This is the seminal report on the issue for the city of San Francisco. This is a clear road map for moving forward, and we’re going to march down that road. This is going to become a reality.”

In November, the city will embark on what officials are calling an “industry sounding day,” when telecommunications experts will hear about the city’s plans and talk about ways to make the project as efficient and cost-effective as possible.

City officials also will hold public hearings on the project, looking for suggestions from San Francisco residents. Taken together, that input will help the city narrow its options and decide what it needs to do to move ahead with the project.

As the report lays out in detail, the easiest and cheapest way for the city to operate an Internet network providing universal access to all city residents would be through a public-private partnership. Going it alone, the report said, would mean the city would have to bear all the costs and risks involved with building and maintaining a brand-new utility, including tasks like customer service and bill processing.

The purely public option also would require the city to sign up between 45 and 53 percent of the city population to break even on the project financially. “Few municipal networks have managed to reach this level of penetration,” the report said.

With a public-private partnership, the city must then work out the details of how to work with the private companies that would deliver the actual Internet service to homes and businesses.

But the city will be able to have a level of control over how much the service costs, as well as key provisions on consumer privacy.

“This is the city’s asset, and the city can presumably put requirements on it when it leases it to independent” Internet service providers, CTC President Joanne Hovis said. “That’s a call the city can and presumably will make.”

Eric Brooks, a community organizer in San Francisco and a member of a citizens’ advisory panel on the fiber plan convened by Farrell’s office, has watched one citywide Internet proposal after another sputter and fail. In 2003, then-Supervisors Tom Ammiano and Chris Daly commissioned a $300,000 study — also performed by CTC — into a city-run Internet service, but a concrete plan never materialized. The next year, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom laid the groundwork for an ill-fated effort to beam free Wi-Fi services across the city. That project was dead by 2007.

But this time, Brooks said he’s optimistic the municipal fiber project will succeed where its predecessors have fallen short.

“What Ammiano first started in the early 2000s, we were just starting to understand how big the Internet would become,” Brooks said. “It’s pretty obvious now.”

Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @dominicfracassa