A proponent of broadband answers our questions

By Dave Beers

Norfolk resident Kim Maxwell is president of the board of directors of Northwest ConneCT, a regional nonprofit formed to bring fast fiber-optic Internet to a 25-town region that extends from Salisbury to Hartland to Burlington to New Fairfield. Northwest ConneCT is leading the effort to make Norfolk the first town in our region, and in the entire state, to have fiber-optic Internet service available to every home in town. Norfolk also has its own broadband committee, whose members are Bill Brown, Libby Borden and Julie Scharnberg. Below is a question and answer session Norfolk Now had with Kim Maxwell, speaking on behalf of the Norfolk broadband committee.

Norfolk Now: What are the advantages of fiber optics?

Kim Maxwell: —Only network capable of serving current and future needs for work at home, remote education and telemedicine.

—Speed to burn in both directions. 

—Network reliability. 

—Network is future-proof. 

—Home prices go up and ability to sell home will go up.

—Best preparation for telemedicine. 

—Superior telephone service, with special features such as automatic transfer to a mobile phone option.

—If switching out telephone service and cutting the cord, savings over existing up to $80 per month.

NN: How can installing fiber optics benefit Norfolk?

KM:—Economic development. A new network will enable a campaign to market Norfolk as the place for working at home, schooling at home and telemedicine, as well as for any small office-based business that depends on the Internet. If we move soon enough, this will allow us to capitalize on the urban flight that has accompanied the pandemic.

—Attracting young people here. This follows the first; most people moving here for the network will be young, and we need many more younger people living in Norfolk.

—Increase school population. Also follows from the above. Young people still have children, and we desperately need more school-age children.

—Increase municipal revenues. A growing population will put pressure on housing prices and encourage new homes to grow out of the soil, each of which increases municipal tax revenues.

—Sense of community life and quality of life. Hard to calibrate of course, but equally hard to deny should the above benefits materialize. 

—Pride of being first in Connecticut with a fiber-to-home network.

NN: What do you see as the hurdles to getting this done?

KM: The town agreeing to pay for it. Increase in mill rate likely no more than 2.4 percent for plan proposed (from current 25.98 to 26.6, which is less than the mill rate was last year at 26.98). It is a small fraction of what we pay for schools and road maintenance.

NN: How much will installation cost for those that live a significant distance from public roads? With an estimated cost of $50,000 per mile, would a quarter mile long driveway (1320’) cost $12,500?

KM: Depends a lot on how a new line would be installed. Undergrounding costs $1500 for the first 250 feet, $10 per lineal foot thereafter. Aerial on new poles is also an option under some circumstances. Under the business plan we are proposing the Internet service provider will build total drop-wire costs into a common fee so that those with long runs will not be penalized (just like telephone wiring, where all paid the same fee even though the cost for connecting someone five miles away was enormous compared to someone next to a central office).

NN: What other towns in the state could beat us to be first? 

KM: From what we know, if we move by the next budget meeting next spring, we would be first in Connecticut with a universal reliable gigabit network at affordable rates with the latest technology. I know that no town in our region is close. I only know of one other town that has a deal with a supplier, but they are not promising universal service, and that deal, made three years ago, has so far gone nowhere. Other communities are building out fiber for municipal buildings, but no other municipality I know has plans soon for a town-wide universal network.

NN: With 9 miles of poles to reach 376 homes (half of the town’s population), why not first install the fiber to the sewer/water district customers at an 82 percent lower cost per household with an associated additional sewer tax to fund it? Nine miles of poles at $50,000 per mile plus the $200,000 switching house is $650,000 total cost vs $3,700,000 for the entire town.

KM: We considered this but rejected it. Fiber will be a telecommunications utility. It should be available to all. It must be available to all. We hope to attract young people here. Do we tell them they can only live in one of those 376 homes? One of the calling cards is that any home in Norfolk will have gigabit service, with 10 gigabit symmetric access available without changing wire or home electronics. Some people in software development, video development, virtual reality development, or telemedicine will need the top figure sooner rather than later. If we promise the package for any home, people will come. We are talking about adding 2.4 percent to the mill rate to change our town’s prospects in important ways. It is not the place to save a bit of money.

NN: What about 5G making this obsolete?

KM: No. 5G will not make fiber to the home obsolete anywhere. 5G in its current state cannot support gigabit access to the home on a reliable basis, whereas fiber today can deliver 10 gbps at relatively low cost. 5G at 10 gigabit speeds is almost unthinkable in Norfolk in the next fifteen to twenty years unless we supply the underlying fiber optic cabling to connect all the small cell antennas needed.

NN: What about Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network or Jeff Bezos’s Kuiper satellite network, with thousands of low-orbit satellites providing broadband Internet, making this obsolete in the near future?

KM: Their numbers do not run. The speeds are too slow, and the satellites are heavily shared, They are closer than geocentric satellites (800 miles compared to 23,000 miles) but they still must cover a great deal of real estate as they whirl around the earth. There is no real reason to believe they won’t be just as sensitive to rain as geocentric and line-of-sight radio is (but I don’t know). But there is certainly not enough bandwidth to support a number of simultaneous 10 gbps connections from the center of Norfolk, and if we cannot promise that level of reliability we should stop now. Fiber technology now is amazing. Once the wire is in, residential speeds over time will go up to 25 gbps without changing the wire. It is the network that will last and last and last.

NN: What are the next steps in making fiber optics a reality in Norfolk?

KM: We have a full business plan in draft stage, which has been discussed with local officials. That business plan addressed most of the questions you raise here, as well as some you do not (like what about people who cannot afford it). It is too early to lay out an exact time scale, but over the next two months things will gel, and we (meaning now the town of Norfolk) will be able to spell out the process to be undertaken to realize a network in Norfolk, first in Connecticut.

After the writing of this article, the selectmen approved the formation of a town committee of five to seven people, charged with presenting a fiber optic plan and budget to the town’s Board of Finance in January, with a potential vote on whether to fund it at the May 2021 town meeting.