The Village of Mahomet Board of Trustees are expected to vote on a four-year agreement which would permit the Central Illinois Regional Broadband Network (CIRBN) to lease fiber optic lines from the Mahomet-Seymour School District and the Village at Tuesday’s Village Board Meeting.
CIRBN currently provides high speed internet service to the Village and school district through the infrastructure the district and Village own.
The Mahomet-Seymour School District tapped into the Illinois Century Network (ICN) network of dark fiber that runs along I-74 in 2013. By running fiber optic lines from the existing ICN network along Crowley Road to Mahomet-Seymour High School and down State Street to Mahomet-Seymour Junior High School, the District increased the bandwidth district-wide from 20-mbps to 250-mbps by accessing CIRBN as an internet provider as opposed to Mediacom who previously serviced the schools.
With changes in curriculum, security needs and standardized testing structure, the Mahomet-Seymour School District needed the increased bandwidth, reliability and relative lower-cost that CIRBN could provide.
The Village of Mahomet then continued the fiber optic run from the junior high to the Village of Mahomet and to Sangamon Elementary School along main street. With the addition of Middletown Prairie Elementary in 2014, the Village also extended the fiber optic lines down Prairieview Road and IL 150 to Churchill Road and out to the new elementary school.
To date, the Village has spent nearly $300,000 on the fiber optic network project.
The Mahomet Public Library also extended its own fiber optic line from the main line on IL-150 to enable them to utilize CIRBN to provide high speed internet service to staff and patrons last spring.
Both the Village and school district want to see the fiber network continue down 150 to meet back with the Main Street line at some point in order to provide additional network redundancy.
While the Village and school district own fiber optic lines throughout the Village, neither entity is interested in servicing the infrastructure. Instead, CIRBN, a non-profit organization, will lease the lines for $1 per year for four years. Within the proposed agreement, all three entities, including CIRBN can get out of the agreement with a 120 day notice.
CIRBN will be required to service, bill and maintain lines for any other business or organization that opts into purchasing service from the lines the Village and school district own.
Village Administrator Patrick Brown said CIRBN has the right to exclusively provide service through the publicly-owned fiber optic cables or they also have the option to lease lines out to other entities wanting to provide service to the Mahomet area.
Within the four year agreement, the Village does has the right to charge a one-time infrastructure access fee to businesses who connect to the fiber optic lines. Village Administrator Patrick Brown told Village Trustees this fee would not be used to recoup money the Village has already invested, but it will be used to re-invest in expanding or improving the infrastructure in the future.
The fiber optic network has not only provided the Mahomet-Seymour School District, the Village of Mahomet and the Mahomet Public Library with increased bandwidth, but the school district and the Village also believe this network is also necessary to bring commercial and industrial businesses and tax dollars into the Village.
Many small communities throughout Illinois took advantage of a federal grant, which sought to deploy broadband into underserved and unserved areas of Illinois, in 2010. The Village and the Mahomet-Seymour School District did not take advantage of this opportunity.
In 2013 the Village tried to build out the fiber optic loop throughout Mahomet by charging local businesses a $10,975 connection fee that would help the Village recoup costs. Local business owners expressed interest in access to increased bandwidth in the Mahomet area, but they did not opt-in at the time because of the connection fee and monthly service charge associated with the service.
During this time, other internet providers, including Mediacom, slashed prices to make their service more affordable to local businesses.
Over the last year, the Village and school district have turned to the Mahomet Chamber of Commerce and the Mahomet Economic Development Commission in search of support for the project from local businesses. With two legs of the loop on the east and west side of town built out, the Village is now turning to local businesses to build out the infrastructure through the middle of town.
A connected “loop” of fiber optics throughout Mahomet gives businesses and local governments the possibility of redundancy should something go wrong at either end of the main connection(at Crowley Rd and Prarieview Rd), but businesses will also have to pay additional service fees for that redundancy.
If a business wishes to join the network owned by the Village and the school district they will have to pay for the line to be extended down the right-of-way and then to their office building. The line laid in the right-of-way will be the property and responsibility of the Village, and the line from the right-of-way to the business will be its responsibility. The Village hopes businesses along IL-150 pool together to extend the service down the right-of-way helping to complete a large stretch of ground towards connecting the two ends.
Recently, Farm Credit Services extended the line east down IL-150 from Prairieview Road. They are also using CIRBN as their internet provider. Other businesses have still not made the switch to be on the fiber optic network.
In order to get on the network the Village and school district own, the business must run fiber optic lines from the nearest access point or ‘handhole’ back to their business. Depending on that distance and terrain factors, businesses could pay over $10,000 to have a line run to their business from an existing main line. Even after a year of talks, many businesses are still hesitant to buy into the local fiber optic network the Village and school district has offered.
To save costs in the future, the Village has laid and will continue to lay conduit when roadways are open for construction or when ground is open as a subdivision is being developed. At this time, the Village and the school district do not plan to run fiber optic lines for residential use.
CIRBN currently provides high speed internet service to 20 communities in Central Illinois. While CIRBN requires businesses to fund the construction to extend the fiber optic lines, their month service rate appears to be cheaper per megabyte per second than competitors in nearby communities at this time.
Mediacom already has fiber optic cables running down IL-47 from Gibson City, throughout Mahomet and down IL-47 to I-72 and will work with local business to run fiber directly to their address for dedicated connectivity. Metro Communications also has fiber optic lines in Mahomet, and planned to extend their network presence in the area this summer.
Other organizations, such as Volo and ITV-3, which have focused more on providing high speed internet to residential customers, have extended their network in Thomasboro, Urbana and Champaign and mentioned interest in coming to Mahomet. They also have provided direct fiber service to businesses in their current service areas.
ITV-3 has also worked with communities, like Dunlap, to build out their fiber optic infrastructure under a residential driven project. ITV-3 has required each community meet residential service level commitments before ITV-3 will begin construction on infrastructure. The service agreements help ITV-3 recoup this investment, time and resources.
