Town of Bristol’s broadband project spurs a county-wide expansion plan
Crews from Aucoin Telecom string fiber optic cable at a local farm in Bristol as part of its Bristol Broadband Now project funded by Northern Border Regional Commission, CARES Act and town appropriation.
Electricity began lighting wealthy neighborhoods around the United States in the 1880s. By 1930, nine of 10 city dwellers were wired, while nine of 10 rural residents remained without. It took an act of Congress — the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 — and another decade to wire rural America.
This history is familiar to Bristol Town Administrator Nik Coates of Bristol Broadband Now, who chairs the Grafton County Broadband Committee. Like private electric companies in the past, he said that private wireless companies could not project a sufficient return to justify the investment required to design and construct the fiber network to support high-speed internet access.
“We couldn’t wait for Concord to figure it out,” Coates said, adding that the legacy telecom and cable operators were unwilling or unsuitable partners. One wireless operator declined to enable a competitor and another offered only to rent space on their lines. “To get that high-speed internet, we realized that we would have to build the fiber network ourselves.”
In choosing to build its own fiber-to-the-premises network, the town’s Economic Development Committee aimed to improve cellular coverage and provide broadband to residents, businesses, schools and town offices. Reliable cellular and internet services, Coates said, would position the town to attract new residents and businesses.
At the same time, by taking on the project itself, the town would enjoy a measure of control, without being beholden or making concessions to partners. “We were able to design and build our network the way we wanted it,” Coates said, “and it took me four years to figure it out.” Nevertheless, Bristol was at the front of the pack with a plan when funding began to flow.
The project was undertaken in two phases. The first, completed last year, consists of a 24-mile fiber route from Bristol to Plymouth, where it connects to the NetworkNH system at Plymouth State University, which will initially connect some 400 residences. The second phase, recently completed, provides the fiber backbone that connects the municipal buildings, educational institutions and commercial enterprises in the town.
Coates stressed the connection to PSU, which provides a gateway to the campuses of both the University System of New Hampshire and the Community College System of New Hampshire as well as other schools in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, including Dartmouth College and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The network, he said, would open the research and development community to Bristol’s schools and businesses.
Coates envisions the link between education and business will foster a workforce and offer programs needed to attract and sustain technology companies. As an example he referred to Freudenburg-NOK Sealing Technologies in Bristol, a manufacturer of components for the automotive industry faced with transitioning from gasoline to electric engines. The network, he said, will contribute to preparing the workforce and enabling the firm to retool.
Stepped-up timetable
In August 2020, the town issued a request for proposals to design, engineer and construct the network. eX2 Technology LLC of Omaha, Neb., was chosen to do the work, in part Coates said because it was not affiliated with any other provider that could compromise the town’s control of the project.
The first phase was funded by a Connecting New Hampshire Emergency Broadband Expansion grant of $1.59 million, drawn from the $50 million allocated to the state by the federal CARES Act. Bristol was the only municipality awarded such a grant. In addition, the town received $5,000 from Grafton County, which was matched by the Northern Community Investment Corp., along with a $25,000 Community Development Block Grant from the NH Community Development Finance Authority for pre-development work.
Funding for the second phase consisted of a $264,315 grant from the Northern Border Regional Commission, which included $98,500 in matching funds appropriated by the town.
“We’ve built a $1.8 million network,” Coates said, “and it cost our taxpayers $98,500.”
Since the CARES Act required funds to be expended by the close of the year, eX2 Technology found itself with a 90-day window to build 24 miles of fiber when foul weather posed a challenge. Earlier, Coates had secured access to utility poles, often a lengthy process and an issue that had dogged the project for several years.
Coates explained that the town’s insurance carrier would not provide coverage because the rates were too high and the utilities would not change their policies to serve a competitor. He reached out to the NH Electric Cooperative, which owned most of the poles in Bristol, reminding them of their mission to electrify rural areas and asking why not approach broadband the same way. NHEC agreed and worked with eX2 Technology to enable the network to be built within the tight time frame.
Meanwhile, Bristol chose Hub66 of Acton, Mass., a relatively small, woman-owned, startup firm, as its internet service provider to undertake the second phase of the project.
The company takes its mission as providing high “underserved, hard-to-reach” rural communities, according to CEO Andrea Vient, who said the company operates in Massachusetts and Vermont but has its largest presence in New Hampshire, where it serves islands in Lake Winnipesaukee.
Technicians from Aucoin Telecom splice fiber optic cable in preparation for placing the lines on the poles as part of the Bristol Broadband Now project. (Courtesy photo)
Vient said Hub66 will splice into the backbone then build out the fiber-to-home service, reaching residences and businesses throughout the town during the next five years. “We will build it, operate it and maintain it and have an operations office in Bristol,” she said. Vient said that Hub66 has worked successfully with a number of towns across the state and is in conversations with many more.
However, Vient is disappointed that after shunning small towns in rural areas, the “big players” have entered the market as the flow of public funds has increased. “It’s becoming very competitive,” she said.
County-wide effort
In August 2020, when Bristol sought proposals to build its network, conversations underway since March led to the formation of the Grafton County Broadband Committee. “I guess we were the catalyst and served as a model,” said Coates, who chaired the committee.
In March, the county’s executive committee designated $3.8 million of its ARPA allocation for the final engineering of a broadband network serving all 39 towns in the county. Scheduled to be completed in November, the final engineering will provide the project design, permitting requirements and cost estimates to prepare the project for construction. Coates expects completion of the final engineering will position the county to secure grants to fund construction.
The county applied for $26.2 million from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Broadband Infrastructure Program, but was turned down. The legacy ISPs challenged the application, claiming the county has adequate services, which would be duplicated by the proposed network. The ISPs also lobbied in Concord against Senate Bill 247, authorizing municipalities to borrow to construct broadband infrastructure, which the Senate recommended be referred to interim study.
The Grafton County executive committee has designated $3.8 million of its ARPA allocation for the final engineering of a broadband network serving all 39 towns in the county.
Coates, in an opinion piece for NHBR, described the service of the legacy providers as “spotty or slow.” He noted that their objection rested on data compiled by the Federal Communications Commission, based on the 4,000 census blocks in the county, which presumes if one household is served by broadband, the entire block has access. Surveys by county officials found that not only are many areas without broadband service but also where there is service, speeds are well short of the FCC’s definition of broadband.
From the outset, Bristol saw its initiative as the start of a high-tech corridor tracking Interstate 93 through the North Country. And with broadband committees convened in Coos and Carroll counties and participation from the North Country Council, Northern Community Investment Corp. and Center on Rural Innovation, it appears the project is underway.
Reliable cellular and internet services would position Bristol to attract new residents and businesses
