Lexington, Kentucky, the second biggest city in the state with the second slowest broadband speeds in the nation, has announced plans to issue a request for information for a gigabit network within the next six months. The idea is to gauge interest from private providers in forming a public private partnership and get at least a rough estimate of the costs and benefits of a city-wide fiber optic network.
The Lexington area currently has average download speeds of 16.2 Mbps, which puts it 38th among cities in Kentucky alone. While many in Lexington have been unhappy with slow speeds, poor reliability, and high prices provided by the incumbent Time Warner for years, the local government appeared divided last spring over the potential Comcast-Time Warner merger. Some felt, inexplicably, that service would improve after the second most hated company in America was acquired by the most hated. But others realized the need for competition, and during the course of renegotiating Time Warner’s expiring cable franchise over the last year, city staff have been meeting with private providers to determine how to improve access.
Mayor Jim Gray said he would like Lexington to become a gigabit city, though he stopped short of endorsing a fully public network along the lines of EPB in Chattanooga:
“We’re going to be looking for partners who can create competition and who are willing to serve neighborhoods throughout Lexington,” Gray said. “Increasing our Internet speed is crucial, but so is tackling the digital divide.”
Whether or not private providers will answer the mayor’s call with a deal that works for both the city and their bottom line remains to be seen, but Gray does at least seem to grasp the need for competition to break up the local monopoly. Step 1 is admitting you have a problem – the next steps take some real (political) will. Others have given this deeper thought:
Roy Cornett, who attended Tuesday’s meeting and has been passionate about improving Lexington’s Internet speed and expanding access, said Lexington trails not only Louisville and Russellville, but Glasgow and other Kentucky cities. Cornett, an appraiser, said that some estimates show that it could cost as much as $200 million to provide the fiber-optic infrastructure to make Lexington a “gigacity.”
That might sound like a lot, but it really isn’t, Cornett said.
“We were going to spend $350 million on a new Rupp Arena,” Cornett said. “This is the most important infrastructure investment we can make.”