Palo Alto’s high-speed, fiber-optic fantasy is about to become a reality for a select group of residents, two schools and a library.
Four years after Palo Alto became one of the first cities to install a fiber-optic ring for commercial businesses, the city will give 70 homes the option of Internet, video and telephone service via fiber.
“We’re hoping fiber will perform for us the way it performs for businesses and universities,” said Marvin Lee, a member of the Palo Alto Fiber Network, a grass-roots group of residents that has been lobbying the city council to bring fiber to Palo Alto homes.
The $600,000 one-year experiment is expected to begin this month. And residents in the Community Center neighborhood — north of Embarcadero Road — have visions of video conferencing, sending music CDs and watching their kids’ soccer games online.
Throughout the country, cities with their own utilities, such as Alameda and Tacoma, Wash., have built fiber-optic networks and started providing telecommunications services.
Alameda Power & Telecom began competing with AT&T last month, offering residents another cable television option, and the city-owned utility has plans to offer high-speed Internet service. But unlike Alameda, Palo Alto doesn’t plan on playing the role of service provider, according to utility department director John Ulrich. Instead, the city would lease the fiber to telecommunications companies as it already does for local businesses.
Residents are expected to pay about $50 a month, depending on the service they choose. The city has so far received proposals for service from Pacific Bell, Streaming 21 and HeyerTech.
Once the fiber is active, the city will evaluate the demand for the service and how much it costs to operate.
“The question is, will people use this incredible amount of broadband?” said Ulrich, whose department is overseeing the so-called fiber-to-the-home trial. “I don’t want to build something that costs a lot of money that can’t be paid back by usage fees.”
In 1997, Palo Alto spent $2 million to construct a 29-mile fiber-optic ring throughout the city. It has attracted high-tech businesses that want high-speed Internet access. By next month, the city expects to finish installing the necessary hardware to connect 70 homes, Walter Hays Elementary School, Castilleja School and Main Library.
Along the way, there have been some critics of the city’s plans. Former city council member Dick Rosenbaum has called the trial a waste of city money. Two years ago, before Pacific Bell was a potential service provider, the phone company sent letters to residents saying the trial was financially risky.
But members of the Palo Alto Fiber Network — a group of more than 100 residents, including a retired professor and several software engineers — are eagerly awaiting the trial. They say fiber-optic networks will have the same effect on cities as railroads and interstate highways.
In fiber-optic technology, information is sent with bursts of light through tiny glass fibers. Fiber-optic lines can carry 10 to 10,000 times more information than copper telephone wires, coaxial cable (CATV), or wireless systems, according to the Palo Alto Fiber Network. The city’s trial connection would be 10 times faster than competing digital subscriber lines (DSL) and cable modems and 200 times faster than a dial-up modem.
Peter Allen, a software engineer at Napster, is one member of the fiber network who can’t wait. He imagines one day soon connecting with his children’s school server and downloading their homework assignments before they’ve returned home.
“This is the sort of instant gratification America thrives on,” Allen said.
