Category: Consortium

Ice Storm Damage Image

Ice Storm February 2023

Broadband, Consortium, News

Hopefully, everyone survived the ice storm. From speaking with some members, members experienced internet and power outages for many hours. According to news reports, in Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and New York, high winds and freezing rains left some 900,000 homes and businesses without power on Thursday morning, according to Poweroutage.us. ComEd worked to restore power for over 23,000 households, mainly in our northern suburbs, after the storm hit.

There isn’t any information from the major news outlets about how the outage impacted many Internet customers, but the fact that there was an outage is unacceptable. Many communities with community-owned fiber-optic networks experience no downtime in similar weather because the fiber-optic lines were underground.

We checked with McHenry County officials to inquire if they had experienced any Internet issues. They experienced no downtime because back in 2015, they built their own community-owned co-op fiber-optic network, McHenry County Broadband Fiber Network Consortium (“Consortium”); now, their marketing name is 1447 Network, and put all of it underground.

If we had a free market in McHenry County, we would have experienced fewer or no outages with our Internet connectivity. The Consortium’s business model needs to be changed to provide a real viable alternative to our cable and telecom Internet providers in McHenry County. However, it has yet to, and thus our situation does not improve.

We can do better.

Contact your local elected officials. Make your story heard. Demand better infrastructure!

Woodstock Fire/Rescue District not hooked up to the Consortium’s Fiber Network

Consortium, Local Agencies

Our Public Interest Director, David Gutowsky, spoke with the Chief Michael Hill of the Woodstock Fire/Rescue District at the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chamber Mixer on Wednesday, February 20th, 2019. Chief Hill delivered a presentation on the need for the upcoming referendum. At the end of the Mixer, David had asked Chief Hill if the District had been hooked up to the Consortium’s Network because the one branch of fiber network on Raffel Road goes right past Station 3 at 2900 N. Raffel Road to Woodstock North High School. Chief Hill said that the District had not been hooked up to the Consortium’s fiber network. Chief Hill explained while that the fiber network does go by Station 3, the fiber network does not go near Station 1 on Judd Street and Station 2 on Dean Street.

Chief Hill said “It is one of our long term goals to connect all the stations together. The telephone bills have been going up over the years. I would like to see all the stations hooked up, which would improve public safety and help with reducing our costs by eliminating expensive leased lines.”

When asked if Chief Hill had recalled why the District was not hooked up to the Consortium’s Network, he said “Discussions about hooking up the District to the Consortium’s network occurred before I became Chief. Best to ask the City Manager of Woodstock, Roscoe Stelford for some historical information.” When asked for comment, Mr. Stelford replied “The District participated when the project was in the exploratory phase. After the costs were determined for the public partners, the District was unable to move forward due to the upfront costs to build the fiber network laterals to both Stations 1 and 2. However, Station 3 is ready when the District is able to build laterals to connect either of the remaining stations. The Consortium supports the District’s future participation, when they are able to fund these associated costs.”

Woodstock Police Department and the McHenry County Emergency Telephone Board were connected to the Consortium’s fiber network back in 2015.

McHenry Consortium partners with small ISPs to provide service to large and medium-sized businesses in Woodstock, IL

Consortium
Back in 2013, five government agencies, including City of Woodstock, Woodstock Community Unit School District #200, McHenry County, and McHenry County College, agreed to work together to form the McHenry County Broadband Fiber Network Consortium, which took on a $2.1 million project to build 15 miles of high-speed fiber-optic communication network mostly in Woodstock to 21 sites (Figure 1).
Figure 1 – Map of the current network
On Tuesday, November 27, 2018, the Consortium held a Launch Party with the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce and Industry, NIU/iFiber, and Stratus Networks to share the great news with businesses that they can now be hooked into to the Consortium’s network. The idea is that any large or medium-sized businesses could call up one of the partnered Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to obtain enterprise level fiber-optic services. These services would include constructing a fiber-optic line, which the ISP would own, to that said business and offer various levels of enterprise services like Dedicated Internet Service, VoIP/SIP Trunking, collocation services, and more. It’s an real alternative to AT&T’s or Comcast’s enterprise-level offerings. The Consortium and one of the four of the partnered ISPs, Stratus Networks, said that this is not for residential, and therefore will not be available to them. When IFMC’s David Gutowsky, spoke to iFiber or Stratus Networks about the details, David was given ballpark numbers for services starting at $750 a month for 100 Mbps symmetrical speeds and 1000 Mbps or 1 Gbps symmetrical speeds was $1200 a month. David said “This is a decent deal for larger businesses in Woodstock that are looking for reliable enterprise services, but it seems unlikely this is a solution is something that our small businesses can afford. ” Roscoe Stelford, City Manager of Woodstock, said “…other service providers maybe be less expensive, so check with the other partners.” Businesses interested in the service should contact the Consortium’s partner, iFiber, to talk one of the various providers to obtain service and start the discussion. We are excited to share this news, because it is real measurable progress in our county towards offering everyone service. This new offering gives the Consortium an ability to recuperate some of the expenses from running the network, and the capital costs that were endured during construction. When David Gutowsky spoke with iFiber, David was told that cost for 100 Mbps symmetrical fiber-optic service is cheaper than what AT&T and Comcast are offering with their fiber-optic networks; but far as we know, this new offering from the consortium is the first time fiber-optic internet service has been available in Woodstock. This seems to be a real win for businesses in our community. If no other progress is made in broadband development, this is a positive win for our large and medium-sized businesses to get enterprise level of connectivity. We think this is a real measurable progress in the right direction, but this solution falls short as a means to ensure cheaper, faster Internet for all. Any progress made is something for us to be proud of, but this solution that has been put together by the Consortium does not help small businesses nor the residents of Woodstock. We suspect there are not many businesses within Woodstock that cannot afford the high construction costs and/or the $750 monthly costs that such a service requires. For entities a half mile or more away from the fiber-optic lines, there are additional cost prohibitive factors to businesses. As we said, this is real progress, but in our opinion, this offering leaves much room for improvement to provide high quality, reliable, cost-effective broadband for everyone in the county. If Rock Falls, Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, or the 100 other cities, including #1 rated City of Longmont, CO, can offer 1 Gigabit speeds at $70.00 a month for residents, and offer 1 Gigabit speeds at $375 for businesses, Woodstock, Harvard, Crystal Lake, and/or others in McHenry County can offer the same. Let’s get together and let’s discuss how we can make this idea of cheaper, faster Internet for all, a reality by discussing the creation and expansion of a community-fiber network. Please sign up for our newsletter or join us at one of our events. We look forward to having you join us in the discussion.
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McHenry County Broadband Fiber Network Consortium

Consortium

In 2013, McHenry County along with the Emergency Telephone Systems Board, City of Woodstock, Woodstock Community Unit School District #200, and McHenry County College agreed to work together to form the McHenry County Broadband Fiber Network Consortium, which took on a $2.1 million project to build a high-speed fiber-optic communication network. Their project was to lay 15 miles of fiber-optic cables along Route 14, Route 47, and adjacent streets to connect up MCC, McHenry ETSB, City of Woodstock sites, and D200 sites (Figure 1).

Figure 1 – Map of the current network

On Tuesday, November 27, 2018, the Consortium held a “Launch Party” with the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce and Industry, NIU/iFiber, and Stratus Networks to share the great news to businesses can now be hooked into to the Consortium’s network; before this, they were not able to do. The idea is that any large or medium-sized businesses could call up one of the partnered Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to obtain fiber-optic enterprise-level services. These services would include constructing a fiber-optic line to that said business and offer various levels of enterprise Internet connectivity, VoIP/SIP Trunking, collocation services, and more. It’s an real alternative to AT&T’s or Comcast’s enterprise-level offerings. The Consortium and one of the partnered ISPs, Stratus Networks, said that this is not intended for residential, and therefore will not be available to them. Businesses should be expected to obtain service starting at $750 for 100 Mbps symmetrical speeds and going up from there. Businesses interested in the service should contact the Consortium’s partner, iFiber, to talk one of the various providers to obtain service.