Bloomington's new fiber network being installed, first hookups available soon

Construction crews are installing new high-speed fiber lines on Bloomington’s northeast and eastern sides, and the first customers will be able to get service by the end of January, a GigabitNow official said.

“Construction has been underway for several weeks in and around the Eastern Heights and Hoosier Acres neighborhoods, with the areas around the College Mall entering the permitting stages,” Chief Operating Officer Dan Sivils said via email.

Workers recently dug trenches on Glenwood Avenue in Bloomington's Park Ridge neighborhood before laying down a thick orange cable they had brought on a giant spool.

How fast will GigabitNow speeds be in Bloomington?

GigabitNow will provide download and upload speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second. Prices in Monroe County were still unclear, though Sivils has said they will be competitive. The company is offering 1 Gbps speeds for $60 a month in Southern California, though Sivils previously said those networks were created by a different developer, meaning Bloomington residents may not get the same price.

Sivils said this week that construction teams are finalizing a publicly accessible map that will detail the construction process. He said he hopes to have the map posted to the company’s website “soon.”

GigabitNow’s website advertises its service will not require long-term contracts, will have 24/7 live customer service and “no hidden fees.” Potential customers can preregister now to get more information when the service becomes available. Sivils said those who pre-register will receive “an exclusive email invitation with additional information and will be the first able to place their orders via a pre-launch special offer.”

Previously:Bloomington's new gig-speed internet provider revealed, first hookups in January

“We expect to have more information available on the GigabitNow website this month, so make sure to go there and signup to be kept in the loop," Sivils said.

In a news release, GigabitNow had said it is a division of IsoFusion, "one of Washington state’s largest privately held full-service ISP and colocation providers founded in 1991."

The city this summer agreed to provide a $10 million tax break to France-based infrastructure company Meridiam, which agreed to invest $50 million to lay and hang fiber optic cables that within the next three years are required to reach at least 85% of the city’s population.

Why did Bloomington give Meridiam a tax break to build the fiber network?

Bloomington wants most of the city to have access to internet connection speeds of 1 gigabit per second. Low-income earners will be able to get a fast — but not quite as fast — service for free.

The administration of Mayor John Hamilton envisions a future-proof internet service that provides Bloomington residents and businesses with blazing download and upload speeds at costs comparable to existing providers.

A speed of 1 Gbps is 40 times as fast as the 25 Mbps that, according to Consumer Reports, consumers need to stream a movie in ultra high-definition. However, if two parents in a household want to watch different movies at the same time, they'll need 50 Mbps. And if one of the children wants to talk to grandma on Zoom at the same time and another child is playing an MMORPG, they'll need even more bandwidth.

Sivils has said both residential and business customers will have access to even higher speeds, including 2 Gbps and 5 Gbps. Those speeds also are guaranteed and will be symmetrical, meaning customers will have the same download and upload speeds. Sivils said Gigabit now also will offer an “up to 10 Gbps” connection, the speeds of which usually hover near 8.5 Gbps. Eventually, speeds will go even higher, he said.

Leaders in communities across the country have said the pandemic demonstrated high speed internet service is nearly as important as other utilities — water, sewer, electric — in enabling people to partake in modern society, especially if they want to work and/or learn from home.

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Representatives for existing internet service providers such as Comcast said the Bloomington community already has broad high-speed internet coverage and existing providers were investing all the time to improve their services and speeds. In addition, they said the tax break for Meridiam was providing a competitor an unfair advantage.

However, Rick Dietz, the city of Bloomington's IT director, has said in public meetings that the incumbents typically say they provide speeds of “up to” something, which can mean anything below that number, or that they’re “working towards” a goal — usually a stubbornly elusive one — or are “planning” to do something that rarely or never happens. He said that’s especially true in low-income neighborhoods where infrastructure investments are deemed cost prohibitive because not enough people sign up for the service to produce a return on the initial investment.

Dietz has said the city wants some community control over the fiber network because it does not want to continue to be left to the “whims of the marketplace,” which haven’t served the city as well as its leaders had hoped.

Boris Ladwig can be reached at bladwig@heraldt.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Crews begin installing fiber on Bloomington's eastside