Holland Fiber

[Daniel Morrison]

Hi all,

A handful of us have been working to get Holland to do gigabit broadband (think Google Fiber) and we need your help:

http://www.hollandfiber.org

I’d love your businesses to support with a logo and if you have a quote you’d like to add, send that to me too.

We have a good opportunity to make things happen. Let’s do it!

-Daniel


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Daniel Morrison
[i] Collective Idea
dan...@collectiveidea.com
http://collectiveidea.com
44 East 8th Street, Suite 410
Holland, MI 49423
+1-616-990-0155

[Matthew Seeley]

I personally spoke to Holland BPW multiple times over many months in late 2013 about bringing gigabit fiber to Holland using the BPW fiber. At that time, they were asking roughly $500 per month per location, just to connect a single customer to the network. And they'd only let us deliver a max of 50mb or 100mb (they wouldn't let us offer gigabit in any fashion, full stop). 

That's why "getting a 10mb connection from a third party ISP costs $600/month" -- BPW has historically been the biggest roadblock. I can't speak for the other ISP's, but I strongly suspect BPW's fees alone might account for 50 - 90% of that monthly cost, if other ISPs are paying the BPW line fees we were quoted.

Holland BPW doesn't actually need to become an ISP. If BPW just lowered the line fees to something reasonable, multiple providers would rush to provide fiber internet to Holland, and there wouldn't be any legal challenges or problems at all.  Utah has a good example of this working in practice : https://www.utopianet.org/pricelist/ 

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Holland BPW has been the largest roadblock preventing internet from happening in Holland. Have you spoken to them about this? Have they changed their stance in some way?

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[Daniel Morrison]

Hi Matt, 

Yep, I’m well aware of the cost, as we’ve tried to get something for our office. They lowered prices a little last year, but they still aren’t competetive. 

They’re currently talking about this, and the City is too. They are talking about all options (becoming an ISP or not). I met with them 2 weeks ago and they know what’s up.

Our goal with this site is to keep the pressure on. They were close to doing this in 2011, but it never came to a vote. We want to show there’s public support. The City is talking of discussing a plan in the next 12 months. I want to speed that up and have them actually DO something!

-Daniel

[Aaron Schaap]

nice work Dan - sending my stuff over.

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Aaron Schaap
tweet: @schaapy