East Coast Capital Fiber

The City of Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. are rivals in sports but share a deep history along with a modern love of fiber. Philadelphia was the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and served as the first capital of the United States of America from 1790 until 1800, when construction of the new national capital was completed, and the government moved to what is now known as Washington, D.C. 

Back in colonial times, travel between the two cities would take several days by horse or carriage to travel the roughly 150 miles. Today’s 21st Century travelers can make the journey in roughly 2.5 hours on a good day in their horseless vehicles, but accidents, sporting events, and other activities can introduce delays on local roads in both major metropolitan areas. Fortunately, fiber provides city managers with the ability to monitor and manage traffic, along with providing numerous other services to their respective governments. 

Fiber Forward talked to city officials in Philly and D.C. about fiber in their respective metro networks, the value it brings to government operations, and how they plan to expand fiber in the future. 

The City of Brotherly Love

As one of the oldest cities in America and the sixth largest by population, Philadelphia has 17 four-year universities and colleges, and hosts five Fortune 500 corporate headquarters, according to Wikipedia, along with the Philadelphia stock exchange and numerous venture capital firms. The combination of economic success and history provides it with a wealth of physical connectivity.

“Philadelphia and a lot of other major older metropolitan regions are in a very similar boat,” said Juliet Fink-Yates, Broadband and Digital Equity Manager, City of Philadelphia. “We have numerous fiber providers. If you look at our broadband fabric, you’re going to find that there are no unserved areas. We have fiber everywhere. What I think is unique to urban municipalities, not just Philadelphia, is that it’s not known where all this fiber [physically] is, how the traffic is managed, and where it goes. It’s not something that we can see clearly, because there are a lot of private networks. Fink-Yates said there are only around 300 or so locations in the city that remain unserved or underserved. 

Affordability is at top of mind in closing the city’s digital divide, with the shutdown of the Affordability Connectivity Program (ACP) having a significant impact during its existence. “We had 183,000 resident households that had signed up for that benefit,” said Fink-Yates. “That’s a huge number. That’s slightly over half the number of residents  eligible for ACP, but in a little over a year, that uptake was extraordinary, and I think it’s because people knew that this was something valuable.”

The City of Philadelphia’s digital navigators have seen the impact of ACP’s removal, with some households moving to lower tiers of broadband access and others struggling to keep their subscriptions. “An area really important to understand is that people go in and out of service,” said Fink-Yates. “What we want to do, like any utility, is to think about how we can make sure that [broadband] service doesn’t get cut off, so vulnerable [households] can maintain service.”

At-risk households face a considerable challenge today if they fall behind on their bills. “What we see is if you have a limited number of providers, once you go into debt with one and your service gets cut off, it’s extremely difficult to get the service back,” said Fink-Yates. “You have trouble paying off that debt, and it really limits your affordability options.”

From an enterprise perspective, the city has a combination of fiber it owns and leases through service providers. It does not own any dark fiber, with the vast majority of the fiber network that the city owns  run through one department. “The Department of Streets runs the vast majority of the city’s fiber network,” said Fink-Yates. “It can only be used by that department because of federal funding for traffic needs.” 

The city is in the process of evaluating its fiber needs for the next 20 to 30 years and will be reviewing options to support the city’s current and future IT needs, including public safety management and connectivity for city buildings. Connectivity for the School District of Philadelphia and the city library system are separately managed and operated by those organizations, leaving it with a relatively simplified management structure compared to other municipalities who incorporate multiple organizations into their IT plans.

“As different use case scenarios arise, we are exploring ways to procure or install additional city-owned infrastructure while still being financially responsible compared to other options,” said Fink-Yates. “We’re looking at whether it still makes sense to purchase and own our own fiber in certain instances or whether the managed service lease model is, at the end of the day, what the city of Philadelphia needs to do. This is an ongoing conversation.” 

Philly has put out an RFP to explore what it would cost to build out and own its own fiber backbone and is currently reviewing consultants to evaluate various options. The existing availability of multiple enterprise fiber providers offering managed services in the city vs. the cost and disruption of building dedicated facilities from scratch make it a complex decision, especially since the city wants a future-proof solution for several decades. 

“We’re actively trying to explore the best-case scenario for Philadelphia,” said Fink-Yates. “We are trying to figure out what the right solution is to make sure that Philadelphia is a thriving city that can bring economic opportunity over the next 20 to 30 years. What is that going to look like and how do we prepare for that?”

Public-private partnerships may be a part of the plan to expand city fiber, having recently struck a deal with Verizon in the renewal of its franchise agreement to provide lit and dark fiber into the city’s 180 recreation centers. 

“The city is always interested in thinking through with both current ISPs that are in the city or new entities that are interested in working with the city about how we can connect our citizens and our businesses at high speeds and reasonable costs,” said Fink-Yates. “The end goal is fast service at reasonable prices that folks can afford, because if you don’t have that as part of a package, then your residents are at a disadvantage. We have constant conversations with our counterpoints at the ISPs about making the process easier, about lifting certain restrictions that make it difficult for folks to get access to internet in the home.”

The Nation’s Capital

Washington D.C.’s unique status relative to the rest of the country is best framed in the slogan prominently stamped on the city’s license plates, “Taxation Without Representation.” It doesn’t have voting representation in Congress while its residents pay federal taxes. The District government has the responsibilities of a state for the citizens that live there, including things like providing driver’s licenses and vehicle registration. 

“We have to support both local and federal government, as well as what we call D.C. community anchor institutions, which would include nonprofits, charter schools, health clinics,” said Henry Lofton Jr., Deputy Chief Technology Officer, Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO), Government of the District of Columbia. “Mayor Bowser has consistently invested in digital leadership and achieving equity when it comes to leveraging the public infrastructure with both federal and the District’s dollars. The good thing is we have DC-Net. It is the District’s ISP, owned and operated by the District to continually meet the needs of the District, as well some of the nonprofits and others that we support.”

DC-Net’s highly robust fiber infrastructure provides a full range of network and telecommunications services to the District of Columbia government, reaching over 600 locations across the city, including public safety, public schools, parks and community centers, Department of Motor Vehicle sites, public housing sites, District-owned hospitals and clinics, and government administrative offices. Some federal agencies also use the network for their needs. 

Composed of over 600 miles of fiber, almost all of which it owns, DC-Net offers community users speeds up to 10 Gbps at pricing that can be 30% below the cost of commercial options. Federal customers have the ability to purchase fractional and full wavelength services at speeds up to 100 Gbps, according to the agency’s website. OCTO uses a combination of in-house and contractors to support and repair the network, with most of its design work conducted in-house. 

“There’s a good number of federal agencies that we support, as well as local and those anchor institutions,” said Lofton. “We use it for public safety management, we’re working on projects as it relates to traffic control with the Department of Transportation and Metropolitan Police Department. And when I mentioned those 600 plus sites, that’s basic government connectivity. We also have some public Wi-Fi and community initiatives that we’ve launched.”

Traffic is a big deal in the District, with daily commuting between the city and the surrounding suburbs affected by numerous sporting events and concerts, local parades, political rallies and protests, and a Presidential inauguration every four years, not to mention the occasional winter wildcard to strike fear into the heart of every commuter: snow. 

“We’re working closely with the District’s Department of Transportation,” said Lofton. “They’re working on a modernization program to improve and in some cases automate the traffic light switching. We’re working with them to modernize that infrastructure, move it off the old twisted pair. They have fiber as well, but because we have so much fiber within the District that passes a lot of those intersections, it only makes sense that we partner together and get those things on the DC-Net fiber infrastructure that OCTO operates.”

DC-Net also supports some of the cameras that DoT, MPD, and Department of Public Works use to monitor intersections and neighborhoods, along with every CCTV camera the District uses to monitor its government facilities.

During the pandemic, the district launched the “Internet for All” program to ensure that families had low-cost residential services, initially leveraging the Affordable Connectivity Program then later transitioning into a partnership with DC-Net, the District of Columbia Housing Authority, and the DC Department of Human Services.

“There’s a lot going on [to close the digital divide],” said Lofton. “We’ve learned a lot. We’ve done a lot in schools, in Wards 4 and 6 when it comes to housing. Lastly, in 2023, the Bowser Administration created the District State Broadband Office of Digital Equity. We’ve been granted $100 million, so those funds will be used to help bridge the digital divide, focused on the unserved and underserved population and vulnerable population.”

D.C. is currently working through the NTIA’s challenge process under BEAD to verify broadband accessibility to the District’s addresses and making sure they are served, with a priority to community organizations providing social services. “The target for us is the anchor institutions, because that’s where folks tend to gather or get services,” Lofton said. “If we can do things there, some of the CDE community and the nonprofits can begin to support folks in addition to what we’re doing. That’s another collaborative effort.”

Making sure that all of the District’s residents can get access to and safely use the internet is vitally important to Mayor Bowser and her administration, given the move to a digital government and the ongoing going use of broadband to deliver services at both the local and federal levels. In D.C.’s BEAD Volume II proposal, the Bowser Administration wants to achieve 100% availability of 100 Mbps/20 Mbps in D.C. households, reach at least 95% equitable adoption of high speed internet, 95% adoption among target populations and high-priority Wards 5,7, and 8, as well as ensure that no D.C. resident most pay more than 2% of their gross income per month for high-speed internet.

“I think we’re between 65,000 to 67,000 residents that aren’t connected,” said Lofton. “That’s for various reasons, some for affordably and in other cases not enough infrastructure. The charter of the State Broadband and Digital Equity Office is to address those gaps and see how we can partner with public and private partners to address those issues.”

Meeting the challenge is not only making sure people have the connectivity and devices needed, but providing education on cybersecurity risks, especially to more vulnerable populations such as seniors who have little exposure or experience with technology. Leveraging the city’s fiber connectivity to provide more access to city residents is another area of work. 

“What we try to do at every fiber location is to deploy some level of wireless access,” Lofton said. “Without that core resilient fiber infrastructure, that higher capacity, we couldn’t expand wireless access and use various forms of distribution from the fiber. Wi-Fi has limitations. Most people will use the number of 300 feet, 500 feet range. But as you begin to expand, there are other things that can kind of interfere. You have other access points that you don’t control. You have the environment itself that becomes an issue, trees and rain.”

OCTO has used the combination of Wi-Fi and fiber to extend connectivity through some of the District’s multi-tenant buildings and created pilots to provide some level of connectivity at places where people gather, such as at parks and business districts. It has also used Wi-Fi to support a “living lab” for IoT applications such as trash cans and parking meters.

“Without a very resilient foundation of a robust fiber network, we wouldn’t be able to do the things that we’re able to do,” said Lofton.