The city has public rights of way that allow them to do construction along sidewalks and streets, but must repair any damage done to property.
(Lucinda Larnach / WFIU-WTIU)
Meridiam — through Hoosier Fiber networks — is contributing approximately $50M to build a network that will provide high-speed, affordable and accessible internet access for the city. After a year and a half of construction, approximately a quarter of the city has access to GigabitNow internet.
“Digital access for all shouldn’t be a stretch goal anymore,” Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson said. “It’s targeted at really diversifying our internet providers and ensuring that we have a single physical infrastructure that can that many different providers can access.”
This graph shows how many feet of fiber Meridiam has installed since April. 22,859 homes in Bloomington have access to GigabitNow internet. (GigabitNow)
Rick Dietz, director of technology and services department for the City of Bloomington, said one of the main goals of the project is to allow all customers to access the same high-speed, affordable internet. The City’s Digital Equity Plan for income-qualifying households brings the cost of GigabitNow service to no more than $30 a month. Low-income residents can receive the service for free if eligible for President Biden’s $30 Affordable Connectivity Program.
The city chose to partner with Meridiam over other local companies, such as Comcast, AT&T and Smithville, because they were willing to meet the city’s equity goals.
Rick Dietz, director of technology and services department for the City of Bloomington, said Meridiam is funding the entire project. (Max Rebolledo/WTIU)
“They wanted to build out in our community and build out in a way that didn't leave residents behind,” he said. “They wouldn't cherry pick areas of our community that they really wanted to go. They wanted to cover the entirety of the community.”
AT&T, Smithville and Comcast tend to be more selective in where they install internet fiber, and would not agree to providing all of Bloomington with their services, Dietz said. Because of this disparity, depending on where you live, you may only have access to Comcast internet and not AT&T.
“It's simply a return on investment, that if you're putting your fiber in a certain location, the density of customers and their likelihood to take up the service, which is often proportional to income,” he said. “We wanted to have fast Internet access to be everywhere in our community, not simply in dense and more wealthy neighborhoods.”
Dietz said Comcast did not even think the project was necessary, and Smithville did not have much of a presence during the initial meetings. Both Comcast and Smithville denied requests to comment. AT&T did not respond to request for comment by the time of publication.
This map shows where Smithville has installed their own internet service; there is almost no Smithville internet available in Bloomington and it is more common in the surrounding towns. Areas highlighted in blue have fiber internet available to them, areas highlighted in green are undergoing construction to install fiber, areas highlighted in red will be under construction in the next few months and those in yellow have digital subscriber line internet available. (Smithville)
As an infrastructure developer, Meridiam is building a network that other internet service providers in the area can eventually lease, connect to and use. But for the first five years, GigabitNow will be the only provider that can use Meridiam’s fiber.
“They [Meridiam] wanted to give a new provider an opportunity to reach out and expand and have a presence in the marketplace before open competition was introduced,” he said. “This gives GigabitNow an opportunity to secure a foothold within Bloomington, provide these high-quality services, make their case for why they're a good competitive provider in the marketplace.”
The city has public rights of way that allow them to do construction along sidewalks and streets, Dietz said. The city needs to approve providers’ plans in order to get a permit and begin working. The Board of Public Works usually reviews these plans. There are also permitting fees in place to account for the city monitoring the work done.
“Installation is going to happen in public rights of way, and legally, it’s not their yard,” Dietz said. “If there's some discrepancy there, then we want to address it, but these providers, specifically telecom providers the state of Indiana has given a lot of leeway to promote the development of an expansion of broadband. They [providers] have a lot of ability to use those rights of way relatively unencumbered.”
Thomson recently issued a stop-work order on construction because she had been getting many complaints from citizens on damage to their yards. Meridiam had also hit a main underground line.
Bloomington Mayor Kerry Thomson said one of the city's priorities is to make internet more accessible and affordable. (Screenshot via Zoom)
“We issued a stop-work order until we could have a meeting with them and really come to an agreement on how we can respectfully put things back together and steps that needed to be taken to make sure that future lines don't get hit, and that safety, but also service of the other utilities, is a priority,” she said.
Since removing the stop-work order, there have been significantly fewer complaints filed, Thomson said. Providers are responsible for flagging where construction will take place and repairing any damage done.
“We really value the residents of Bloomington and we want to honor the fact that there are inconveniences when construction is going on and make those as few as possible,” Thomson said.
If you notice a lot of internet-connectivity construction going on around town, Dietz says it’s because companies like Smithville and Comcast are also doing their own construction in addition to Meridiam. There are very few limits to how much construction can occur, but the city tries to keep the public interest in mind.
“There are limits to how much our engineering staff and the Board of Public Works can handle in terms of permitting process, and they also don't want the companies to get too far ahead of themselves,” Dietz said. “So do some work, finish that, before embarking on a lot of new locations. So there's some practical limits to that, but again, the companies are entitled to access the rights of way to install this infrastructure.”
Construction for the Meridiam project should be complete by the end of 2025.
