Justin Murphy

@citizenmurphy

Gigacity plan would give all city homes and businesses access to high speed internet.

Plan being pushed by RCSD, would cost around $70 million of mostly public money.

Most basic level of user access would be free, probably with some advertising.

Internet access now classified as utility along with power and water.

Even for a city that bills itself as a hub of smart technology, the proposal is ambitious: spend $70 million in mostly public money to connect every home and business in Rochester with publicly-owned, state-of-the-art fiber-optic cable, propelling the city to the national forefront among communities seeking to improve internet access for businesses and residents.

The most basic level of service would cost nothing at all, giving poor children and adults access to a resource most other people take for granted. The average family could see its service improved and its bill slashed.

Here is how the proposal might work, if funding and political support lined up:

The school district would physically connect every home and business in the city to the fiber network. Some of the money for that project, possibly as much as half, would come from the private operator — possibly either Greenlight or Frontier.

The most basic level of service, five megabits per second (mbps), would be free and would also likely include some advertising.

Households or businesses could pay about $50 for better service (100 mbps), or more for up to 1,000 mbps, known as a gigabit.

A consultant concluded the project would be profitable within four years if at least 20 percent of current internet subscribers sign up for the 100 mbps level.

City of Rochester Chief Information Officer Lisa Bobo said that fast internet connectivity has become a utility as important as water, gas or electricity, and that local government has a clear obligation to ensure all residents have access. The Federal Communications Commission has affirmed this as well, and courts have upheld that premise in the face of industry opposition.

"We need to get in front of this," she said. "It’s as big as when we were first providing electricity to homes. Everything we’re doing, when we look at cars, streetlights, everything is connected, and it’s just getting started. That’s only going to continue at a fast pace."

For now, that goal is far off. Financing is a major obstacle; the state has dedicated broadband internet money, but thus far has targeted only rural communities with no internet access at all.

More generally, the role of government in the provision of internet connectivity is likely to change. Carving out a large public role in what has been a privately-controlled industry has, across the country, been unpopular among current providers who stand to lose a major chunk of their customer base.

Access now essential for students

It is the Rochester school district, not the city, that has spearheaded the push for city-wide fiber. That's because of students like Kaysha Reed, a 12th-grader at World of Inquiry School 58.

She was taking Advanced Placement Calculus online in an attempt to accumulate credits before she begins college in the fall. Her internet access at home, though, is spotty at best. When it's not working, she has to scramble to find a connection somewhere else.

If she can't find one, it often leads to missed assignments, or points being deducted. For her AP class, it meant having to drop out; now her college application will be that much less attractive, and her college education that much more expensive.

People who have been out of school for even 10 years might not recognize K-12 education today due to the rapid expansion of technology. In a growing number of schools, the days of backpacks overstuffed with paper are history.

Teachers post projects or homework online, and students email it back when they're finished. Lessons come from online textbooks or other resources on the internet. New York state requires the use of technology in classrooms and has provided hundreds of millions of dollars to implement it.

For students with reliable internet at home, the new paradigm opens up incredible educational possibilities. But for those who can't afford a connection, it threatens to exacerbate the already stark achievement gap between rich and poor children.

Reed and her classmates reported using smartphones with limited data plans to tap out essays for school when there was no internet-connected computer available.

Their experience is not unique: the U.S. Census Bureau estimated in 2015 that only 68 percent of city households have both a computer and broadband internet. In the suburbs, it is 83 percent.

Those numbers likely understate the need because they include households with no children. Annmarie Lehner, the district's chief technology officer, estimated that between 40 and 50 percent of children in the district lack internet at home.

While there are many students in suburban school districts who also lack internet access at home, the initial proposal includes only the city because both the highest need and the existing fiber cable are concentrated there.

In Rochester — as in a growing number of communities — the school district is providing the computer. Within a few years, every Rochester student in grades 3-12 will have a tablet or laptop computer for their personal use. For internet access, though, they're on their own.

Libraries are a good resource, but they're closed evenings and weekends. Students can stay after school, but sports or other extracurriculars get in the way. They can go to Starbucks or McDonald's, but that requires a purchase.

"A lot of our work is on Google (software)," 12th-grader Ja'Colby Chapman said. "If I don’t have a computer at home, how am I supposed to finish it?

"It’s just a lot of road bumps. There’s no way to do it except trying, trying, trying. But that’s just time being wasted when I could be getting it done more consistently."

City fiber internet plans Q&A

Business benefits

Scott Bass doesn't need the internet for homework. He's trying to run a business.

Bass is managing director of ALT Translations, a small satellite company in the Cascade District that translates websites, software and other documents for corporate clients. It works with thousands of translators around the world who are constantly passing large bundles of data back and forth.

"Our whole business model is predicated on a fast, reliable internet connection," he said. "It's a standard requirement of a 21st-century office."

The company now pays about $800 a month for an upload and download speed of 20 megabits per second. That's adequate for its current requirements but poses a check on growth because it limits the number of people who can be working simultaneously.

"For the level of service we get in the United States, we pay exorbitant prices, and I would say the Rochester market is not unique," Bass said.

"It’s getting more and more common to have two employees here and two employees there, where everyone’s working on a shared drive and you need changes to be reflected essentially instantaneously," said Dan Keeley, director of startup community development at High Tech Rochester. "If you want to attract companies to come downtown and lease space, they have to know they have fast internet."

Lessons from other cities

Many other mostly small communities across the country — though none in New York — have experimented with publicly-supported fiber-optic internet. Their experience helps show how Rochester might proceed, and also demonstrates the opposition the project is likely to face.

Google paid to install fiber in the Kansas City area in 2010 and since has expanded to several other cities. It owns the fiber and serves as the provider.

In Chattanooga, Tennessee, the city built its own fiber network with revenue bonds and federal stimulus money, and operates it as a public utility. A one-gigabit per second connection costs $68 a month.

Madison, Wisconsin is the city closest to what Rochester is considering, said Christopher Mitchell, director of community broadband networks at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

That city is looking for a partner to operate its citywide fiber network for it. Four neighborhoods are wired now as a pilot; the cheapest, most basic level of service would cost $10.

Rochester settled on the current framework — a publicly-funded and owned physical network, operated through a contract with a private company — after the school district commissioned a feasibility study weighing a number of alternatives, including citywide wireless and broadband through satellites or cell phones. It also considered providing vouchers for low-income families but dismissed it as too costly.

"I think this model Rochester is considering will (eventually) become the most popular," Mitchell said. "It's not unprecedented, but it's new-ish, and it's exciting to be considering it."

The rub, of course, is how to pay for it. While operating a fiber network is not particularly expensive, building one can be.

The school district estimates it would cost $55.2 million to extend the fiber network to every neighborhood, then $8.7 million to connect each house and $1.8 million for other equipment, for a total between $65 and $70 million. That sum could be reduced by more than half, though, depending on how existing public infrastructure could be incorporated.

The school district has several million dollars of state technology money at its disposal thanks to a successful 2014 bond initiative, and it would expect some sort of match from a private operator. That still leaves the project tens of millions of dollars short.

"It always costs more than you think it does, both to build it and to maintain it," Greenlight Networks President Mark Murphy said. "(But) If we’re going to do this, let’s do something better than what people already have."

RCSD rolling out new parent smartphone app, tech plan

One logical funding source would be the New York State Broadband Program Office, which exists to "increase economic and social opportunities through universal broadband deployment."

The funding guidelines and the underlying legislation, though, direct that money only to communities that are "unserved" or "underserved" — that is, those where internet service of 25 mbps or 100 mbps are not available at all.

High-speed internet in Rochester is available, but many people can't afford it. The school district applied for $54 million of broadband funding in the spring but was denied. It's not optimistic about its future chances.

The good news is that a great deal of fiber cable is already lying in the ground. Several private companies have some for lease, and Monroe County has for several years been laying it as a matter of course when it does work underground.

Unfortunately, the county does not have a useful map of all its fiber cable, and is currently paying a consultant to take an inventory.

Christopher Mitchell, the national expert, said Rochester might find it difficult to turn a profit while also providing free access to a significant portion of the population.

"The network can either pay for itself or work for low-income folks; it’s very difficult to make it do both," he said.

Coaxial cable would be the loser

The company with the most to lose to a publicly-backed operation is Charter (Time Warner Cable), the dominant provider in Rochester and owner of a vast network of coaxial cable.

A company spokeswoman declined to address the municipal project specifically, but said the company will have 100 mbps service available throughout upstate New York within the next few months. It also offers discounted high-speed service for low-income users. Those were both concessions in negotiations over the merger between Charter and Time Warner Cable.

The two companies currently providing fiber internet in Rochester are Greenlight and Frontier. If the municipal network comes to be, they would stand either to gain, through a lucrative operating contract, or lose, as their customers are siphoned off. Both said they've spoken with school district and city representatives and are interested in how a potential partnership might take shape.

Greenlight is in its fifth year of operation and has been building neighborhood-by-neighborhood, waiting until a critical mass signs up in a given area before beginning to build. Company President Mark Murphy says it has several thousand customers in several towns and city neighborhoods.

"I would love to target a couple of areas that the district and city thinks could use the help the most, start there and see what the outcomes are," he said. "But right now, more than anything else, what’s going to be the best for the city and taxpayers of the city is promote competition among more companies."

Frontier spokesman Andy Malinoski said in a statement that the company "look(s) forward to additional discussions about how we can play a role in supporting the Board’s effort to expand and improve connectivity for students in the Greater Rochester market."

On the national level, Charter and other telecommunications giants have spent millions on lobbying and lawsuits to prevent what one industry coalition calls "wasteful duplication of existing or planned Internet service." They instead want state investment in areas with no high-speed internet at all, not in cities where service exists but may be inadequate or under-utilized.

They won a significant victory in August, when a federal appeals court ruled the Federal Communications Commission could not override state laws prohibiting expansion of municipal internet service.

Time Warner Cable has given more than $3.3 million to New York politicians since 2010, according to state records.

"The reality is, the incumbents in this market aren’t just going to sit by and let public money fund their competitors," Greenlight's Murphy said.

Charter and other large providers see the debate over municipal fiber as a question of the proper role of government in the marketplace. Businesses like ALT Translations see it as economic development. Thousands of people spend their evenings watching movies on Netflix or Hulu, and they don't want to see them skip. Students like Reed and Chapman just want to finish their homework.

Whatever the outcome, it seems clear Rochester and other communities across the country will soon see significant changes to the way they get online.

"Even if you’re thinking you have enough speed today, we’re going to need a lot more bandwidth tomorrow," Christopher Mitchell said. "And there's no real prospect of anything that will be faster than fiber."

JMURPHY7@Gannett.com