Residents in some portions of the City of Aledo will soon have access to a higher speed internet connection than is now available.
The internet data running to many homes and businesses in the city travels over copper wires. To achieve the speed needed to meet higher data demands, fiber connections are needed. But getting fiber to existing structures is very expensive.
The city council voted in November to commission a study with VantagePoint, a broadband and engineering consulting firm, to determine its options.
“They have completed their portion of the project and have provided the city with an overview of what is needed to provide fiber optics to the city,” Interim Aledo City Manager Sharon Hayes told the council in a memo. “This information will be helpful going forward when grant funds are available or when other providers are interested in this market. The fiber was always the longer-range plan and will take time to fund, design, and install.”
Wireless technology, however, can offer a short-term solution, and the city council voted at its April meeting to enter a contract with Nextlink to “install directional antennas, connecting cables and appurtenances that will provide LTE service to citizens with downloads of up to 500 MBPs.”
Under the agreement, Nextlink will provide free internet service to the city at three locations. Hayes said this arrangement will benefit the city as its SCADA system grows. (SCADA is a computerized control process used, for example, in city water systems).
The system should be in place within four months, according to the contract. In the meantime, the city will look for grants and other sources of funding to provide fiber connections to current residents and businesses.
“What we’re trying to do as a city is get an allocation to build out fiber to the residents that don’t have access to fiber,” said Todd Covington, who administers information technology and security for the city.
Once the fiber is in place, he said, “we would then make a long-term relationship to an Internet service provider to provide or deliver content, and then service that fiber and, in exchange, the city would get a small fee for allowing the ISP to use that fiber.”
Covington estimated that the cost of running fiber to the local area would be $5-6 million. He said current internet carriers won’t make the investment to bring fiber to existing structures.
“I get it that they’re not gonna get the return on investment to run fiber to existing construction,” Covington said. “It’s very expensive. Their focus is new construction where there you dig a trench, drop fiber and they’re done”
The LTE service Aledo contracted for is on a private spectrum that does not require the line-of-sight connection used by current wireless internet providers.
Once in place, it is estimated that residents can get a high-speed wireless connection for about $75 per month and up, depending on speed.
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