City councilors take next step in plan to bring municipal broadband to Quincy

QUINCY – Connecting the city to the internet via a municipal broadband network is still years away, but city councilors took the first concrete step toward making it a reality by voting to establish a municipal light plant.

"This project is a direct result of resident requests," City Councilor Ian Cain, who has spearheaded the project, said. "The  No. 1 issue that I still hear about to this day, people are asking on a regular basis, where does the municipal broadband project stand? It's an exciting project with many implications to advance the city in a number of ways."

Cain said establishing a municipal broadband service would expand affordable access to internet to more residents, allow more people the opportunity to work from home and give service to low- and moderate-income families who currently go without.

Comcast is the only internet provider in Quincy, giving it a monopoly officials blame for high prices and spotty service. Cain has said Comcast “has a stranglehold on us and the city."

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By owning its own infrastructure, Comcast does not allow other providers to offer internet in the city. Under a proposal to offer municipal broadband, Quincy would maintain $75 million in infrastructure – such as fiber optic cables and telephone poles – that could be used by any number of providers to bring internet to the city.

"What we're doing here is providing choice for residents," Ward 5 Councilor Chuck Phelan said. "Any time somebody has a monopoly and you have two clear choices, it will drive down prices. I think this is a great step. All the people I've talked to are greatly in support of this."

Establishing a municipal internet service is a time-consuming and complicated process that Cain and members of the mayor's administration have been wading through for four years.

On the South Shore, communities that provide their own internet – as Braintree did until last year – also run their own electric utilities, and city councilors in Quincy last week took the first step toward establishing a municipal light plant for the city.

Chris Walker, chief of staff to Mayor Thomas Koch, said the city is still unclear on if they will need to have a light plant to provide municipal internet or if the city could just establish an enterprise fund to run the program.

"We're sort of looking at this as belt and suspenders," Walker said. "There has been no firm determination at this point whether we actually need to form this municipal light department and take that final step. There are some legal theories out there and some precedent that broadband may not require us going through this component of state law, so we're looking at that."

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The vote taken last week was the first of three steps that need to be completed before the city could actually move forward with the establishment of a plant. The city  council would have to vote in favor of the plant again next fiscal year, and then a special election would have to be held and voters would have to give the plan the OK at the ballot box.

"There are a number of options on the table," Walker said. "None of those options have been selected at this point, but when we get to that point where we are ready to come with a full plan and a buildout, we want to be ready to pull that second and third trigger when the time comes."

The establishment of a plant would not mean Quincy runs its own electricity service as the towns of Hingham and Braintree do. The municipal light plant would only be used to provide broadband internet.

In a perfect world, Cain said the first group of residents participating in a pilot program could have internet access by next year. From there, kinks would be worked out, infrastructure expanded to other areas and service rolled out to the rest of the city, a process that could take a few years.

"It does seem like rolling it out area by area and in phases seems like the best plan to ensure we're doing it in the way that makes the most sense for us," Cain said.

Weymouth and Milton are also exploring the potential of making broadband internet a public utility, lumping it in with the long-considered-essential public services of water, electricity and sewer. The federal government has started pouring billions of dollars into programs meant to bring broadband internet to underserved communities.

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Reach Mary Whitfill at mwhitfill@patriotledger.com. 

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Here's where the municipal broadband project stands in Quincy