Broadband Committee Minutes 10.04.2023

CCI produced the most comprehensive plan which they will present at the Selectboard meeting.  They are asking for a $1m grant and will put in $340k in addition to buildout all the unserved/underserved areas of town.  To do this, the fiber passes by 400 additional homes to get the service to the unserved, making it available to over 500 homes just from the grant portion.  In addition, they will put in another $370k on their own to cover the rest of their service area in town, effectively rendering every household in town with fiber to the home availability, including those with long driveways at no charge to customers.  Buildout will start early 2025 if they win the grant.

CCI already has licensed pole space in the areas they will build out which they can lash their fiber to. The pole space is owned by Eversource.

Over the past 3 years-CCI has been developing relationships with multiple towns throughout the State of NH and has partnered with 23 towns (not including the 36 that will be built through the NH grant and CCI funds).

Consolidated has invested over $190M in NH since 2021 and has built 8,190 miles of fiber to 243,000 locations in NH.

Hub66 is another fiber to the home solution and is price competitive with CCI for the unserved/underserved area.  We are still waiting on numbers for the rest of town.  They do have presence in a few towns in NH and are growing but are a much smaller company.  We do like them and would not hesitate to recommend them if they were the only fiber provider interested in applying.

HUB66 estimates construction to be completed withing 12 months of winning the grant.  They would have to immediately apply for space on Eversource’s poles for their buildout area.

Both CCI and HUB66 will go into residents’ homes if needed and help with their WIFI setups which can be challenging in old homes and will also give them mesh nodes if needed.

Comcast’s proposal is to expand with their standard cable product that is in town today promising to upgrade upload speeds in stages.  First to 100/100, then eventually when they upgrade their software to DOCSYS 4.0 higher symmetrical speeds in years to come.  Originally in the spring they had told us they would do fiber to the home for new unserved installations, but they backtracked on that.  In addition, they seem to be attempting to reduce the number of unserved by considering about 35 addresses as “active builds” which would disqualify them from grant money.  Only 15 of these addresses impact the unserved areas, so they may have miscalculated.  The address list for unserved/underserved is also suspect as there are many addresses missing from their proposed coverage.  We are not recommending them on as an option.

Note that in the rules for the application process, there is a requirement of x number of dollars the providers must have up front, and CCI has the capital, where HUB66 must work with a bank to get this funding.

CCI and HUB66 are competitive pricewise up to 1gbps, but CCI’s 2gb prices is the same as their 1gb price once the introductory period is over.

Bringing in competition is usually a good thing for consumers!