A man gathers his neighbors to build his own fiber optic network | Daily News Byte

A group of Los Altos Hills, California residents are taking on Internet giants Comcast and AT&T.

The tech-rich but Internet-poor residents of the Silicon Valley neighborhood are fed up with slow broadband speeds of less than 25 megabits per second (Mbps) for downloads and 3 Mbps for uploads — the federal definition of a home not served by adequate Internet.

Frustrated with the take-it-or-leave-it attitude of internet providers, they created their own solution – and now this tony enclave has one of the fastest residential speeds in the country.

Scott Vanderlip, a software engineer, said Comcast gave him a $17,000 estimate to connect his home to a neighbor’s faster Internet service.

“You’ve got to be kidding me — I can see it on the utility pole from my driveway,” Vanderlip said, recalling his reaction to Comcast’s quote.

So the self-described “urban rebel” took the opportunity to partner with a startup Internet service provider called Next Level Networks. If Vanderlip could gather a few neighbors willing to invest a few thousand dollars, Next Level would provide them with very high-speed Internet.

That was in 2017. Now Vanderlip is president of the Los Altos Hills Community Fiber Association, which provides super-fast speeds — up to 10 gigabits per second for uploads and downloads — to its 40-plus association members, allowing them to transfer huge files and upload web pages with a single click of a computer mouse, Vanderlip said. That’s 125 times faster than the average download speed in Santa Clara County.

The status quo of broadband communications — transmitting large amounts of data from one place to another at the same time — uses telephone wires or copper coaxial cables owned by big companies like Comcast, Spectrum and AT&T.

This copper-based Internet is all that’s available in nearly 60% of homes in the United States, according to the Broadband Association. Four in 10 adults earning less than $30,000 a year did not have broadband Internet access at home in 2021, according to Pew polls. And many Americans have no internet at all.

“We can’t keep begging the Comcasts and AT&Ts of the world to build a network that makes sure everyone in our community has (internet) that’s reliable and affordable,” said Sean Gonsalves, who works on community broadband at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

Experts say superfast fiber optic cables are the future of broadband. Instead of using electricity, tiny beams of light are bounced down a core of glass or plastic fiber optic cables, each as thick as a stack of two sheets of printer paper.

Because it transmits data via light, fiber-optic Internet has nearly unlimited capacity, Gonsalves said, and its infrastructure is cheaper to maintain than copper cables. Most importantly, fiber delivers the same internet download and upload speeds, meaning your Zoom video meeting is as fast as streaming a movie on Netflix.

The big players don’t plan on being left behind. In September, Comcast announced successful tests of the last piece of technology necessary to bring multi-Gbps speeds to existing cable networks to its customers over the next few years, according to a statement.

Many cities are dealing with the idea of ​​building fiber optic infrastructure. Vanderlip and Next Level founder Darrell Gentry first discussed the prospect of a pilot program on Vanderlip Street when they met at a city committee on the topic in 2017. The committee disbanded, but the partnership between the neighborhood and the startup continued.

Los Altos Hills had the right ingredients: eager, tech-savvy residents with slow internet and plenty of money to invest in their homes. Vanderlip’s home was also located near a local school with a backup fiber optic Internet connection.

Gentry’s company handled infrastructure procurement, contracting, logistics and retail — essentially providing residents with turnkey Internet service — while Vanderlip and two of his neighbors, who chipped in with a $5,000 investment each, bought the fiber optic infrastructure. gathered new members and mapped out the initial route to their homes.

Now, community-owned fiber optic cables span five miles of Los Altos Hills, with another two miles under construction.

Their Internet meanders from a data center in Santa Clara, along medium-mile fiber optic cables attached to telephone poles, to a utility closet behind Vanderlip’s house. From there, the fibers travel inside orange plastic pipes that are buried under roads by excavation crews hired by Next Level. After weaving between gas pipes and sewer lines, individual cables run to a community member’s home. Home connections vary by distance and construction fees — the most expensive in Los Altos Hills was $12,000. But other next-level users in denser areas connect for less—about $2,500.

Despite the technical background of many members of the Los Altos Hills Association, Gentry argues that it is essential to have a partner with the infrastructure knowledge and experience necessary to build an Internet service. But some communities have been able to build Internet service from scratch without a private company, Gonsalves said. The city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, for example, offered 1 Gbps fiber-optic internet to residents back in 2010.

Any form of community ownership will introduce competition into the Internet market, Gonsalves said, allowing consumers to have a say in pricing and Internet specifications. For example, Next Level users can choose between 1 and 10 Gbps of Internet. If desired, residents can try to switch to a regional provider, such as Sonic, at the end of their contract, although most providers prefer to work with their own broadband infrastructure.

But that may change when $42 billion in federal funding allocated for broadband infrastructure from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act becomes available. Gov. Gavin Newsom also approved a $3 billion plan to build a 10,000-mile statewide medium-mile network.

Meanwhile, the Los Altos Hills neighbors are trying to lower their $155 monthly fees by recruiting more members. And Vanderlip has a tactic called bragging rights.

“You can go to your next fancy party in Silicon Valley and mention you have 10 (Gbps) service,” he said. “Hardly anyone in the world offers 10 gigs.” We are one of the fastest residential broadband providers in the world.”