The city announced Wednesday that it will study the feasibility of building a municipal fiber network. Five companies - one of them Beaverton's Fibersphere - submitted bids on a request for proposals for the study that went out in December. The city hopes to choose a proposal this week and complete the study sometime this summer.
City officials feel that high-speed Internet access has become as essential as basic utilities like electricity, and they say a municipal network would offer the equity that profit-seeking corporations are reluctant to provide. They also wish to support the Hillsboro School District's efforts to connect more students with education-enhancing technology.
"It's so important to have access, especially on the equity issue," said Hillsboro City Manager Michael Brown.
It's unclear how Google - which has included Hillsboro in its potential expansion to Oregon - will react to the study. The company has said it would only offer fiber service in neighborhoods with a critical mass of customers, meaning the high-speed network wouldn't be available in some areas. Hillsboro leaders say they want to serve the entire city.
"What role do we have to try to level the playing field?" Brown asked.
Hillsboro Information Services Director Greg Mont said that if the city does decide to offer fiber service - and figure out how to pay for it - the buildout could take anywhere between two and five years. The study would produce a business plan, financial evaluation and market analysis for the project.
Mont said the city might be able to offer a 50 megabyte-per-second connection for $40 a month, but those numbers are only rough estimates. Hillsboro is already building its own internal fiber loop for its public facilities, budgeting $750,000 from its Strategic Investment Program fund this fiscal year for that project.
Portland made a similar effort to evaluate a municipal fiber network in 2006 and 2007, backing off the effort when its study projected the network cost at $500 million or more.
"In technology terms, that was ages ago," Mont said, indicating that Hillsboro would hopefully be able to build the service at a lesser price.
Municipal broadband networks are fiercely contentious politically. Telecom companies argue they represent unfair and financially irresponsible competition. Some states have laws that explicitly forbid local jurisdictions from building their own networks, though the Federal Communications Commission is contemplating action that would nullify those laws.
Certainly there have been some notable failures. The city-backed Ashland Fiber Network lost money for years after its launch and was saddled with debt, unable to compete effectively with Charter Communications. The network still operates, but it spun off its cable TV operation.
Sherwood also tried to build a fiber-optic network in the mid-2000s, and it was losing significant money for the city five years later.
Others have fared better. Hillsboro officials pointed to a fiber network in Sandy as a particularly good example, and say their inclination is to forgo a cable TV option like the one that overwhelmed Ashland's effort.
Brown and other Hillsboro leaders were clear that the city has not yet committed to anything besides the feasibility study. They say they have the support of the Hillsboro schools' leadership and would look for other partnerships in the area.
Hillsboro, home to Intel and many of the region's tech companies, isn't the only city considering this option. West Linn Mayor John Kovash said during a recent speech that his city was looking at a fiber network, too.
©2015 The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.)
