More and faster broadband access is coming to Northwest Arkansas as its two primary providers are joined by a third and all work to ramp up their connection speeds.
Ozarks Electric Cooperative plans this week to begin building the first phase of its plan to bring high-speed, fiber-optic connections to the cooperative's entire service area through a subsidiary called OzarksGo. Tenants, schools and other members of the cooperative in sections of Fayetteville, Farmington and western Springdale will be able to hook up to speeds between four and 40 times as fast as the state's average Internet connection by the end of the year, company officials said.
By the numbers
Northwest Arkansas broadband access, 2014
• Residents with two or fewer internet providers: 98 percent
• Residents with three providers: 2 percent (36.9 percent nationally)
• Median home connection speed: About 9 megabits per second
• Residents with access to fiber connections: 7.3 percent
Source: Staff report
"We don't plan on leaving anybody out," Randy Klindt, OzarksGo's general manager, said of the cooperative's more than 70,000 members. "Cities across the country are desperately trying to get networks like this, so it is a big deal."
OzarksGo's initiative is part of a broader push for more and better access for homes, schools and businesses across the state as Internet commerce, education and other services become so ubiquitous the Federal Communications Commission now considers broadband an essential utility. Cox Communications and AT&T, the largest service providers in this corner of the state, also are enhancing their available connection speeds, mostly in urban areas, their representatives said.
Arkansas regularly ranks near the bottom of the country in terms of average speed, connection price and overall connectedness. About half of the state's population has access to broadband with data flow speeds of at least 25 megabits per second, putting Arkansas 48th in the country, according to the Internet access tracking group Broadband Now.
Northwest Arkansas fares better, with more than 80 percent of its residents having access to such speeds, according to the Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Map. But more providers and more speed could be a boon for small businesses and the broader community, said Jeff Amerine, founder of the nonprofit Startup Junkie Consulting.
"Generally speaking, more competition is always better. Higher speeds are needed and are better," he said. "And if you don't have it, from a metropolitan area and a community standpoint, it puts you at a disadvantage."
OzarksGo also represents an effort to bring today's speeds to rural areas, which struggle with slower connections throughout the state. The cooperative's power network sprawls across all of Washington County and into parts of Benton, Madison and other counties.
As the region is cabled together more tightly, the Northwest Arkansas Council and the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission have begun an assessment of all of the region's infrastructure, including broadband, said Elizabeth Bowen, project manager with the commission. The assessment will give an inventory of what broadband exists -- and which places are lacking. Its findings should be ready by the end of the year and point the way to what the region should do next, she said.
Gaining speed
OzarksGo plans to offer two connection speeds: 100 megabits per second for about $50 a month, or 1,000 megabits, also called a gigabit, for about $80. For comparison, a high-definition video streaming over Netflix requires about 7 Mbps, according to the company's website. BroadbandNow clocks Arkansas' average connection at 27 Mbps.
The first phase includes the University of Arkansas campus, several public schools and downtown Fayetteville, which Startup Junkie and other groups are molding into a hub of small business and startups. Higher speeds could be a boon for companies that rely on Internet access for online shopping, product databases and otherwise reaching customers, Amerine said.
Competition could help lower connection prices and keep them low, he said, adding OzarksGo's prices might be attractive for his group, which preaches frugality and controlling costs to the budding companies it helps.
"If we can figure out how to get better service from our service providers for less money, we're going to do it," he said. "When you have a limited number of players, you get what you get."
Cox last year launched its Gigablast service at The Trails apartments in Bentonville, offering up to 1 gigabit per second for $99 a month. The company had offered similar connections for businesses for a decade. The program now includes Bentonville's Grammercy Park subdivision and will spread to other parts of Arkansas by year's end spokeswoman Whitney Yoder said, though she declined to identify those places or how many customers are using it.
Cox also is boosting its top tiers of connection speeds by 50 percent, going from 100 Mbps to 150 and from 200 Mbps to 300, with no change in price, she said.
"Our goal is to have all of our residential customers on gig (gigabit service), but as you know, that takes time," Yoder said. "We're going to continue to invest in our network and our capabilities."
Meanwhile, AT&T late last year announced its GigaPower program would soon be coming to Little Rock and Northwest Arkansas. An online map of the program shows 21 locations in Northwest Arkansas have access, including parts of The Links at Fayetteville, with prices starting at $90 a month, spokeswoman Anita Smith wrote in an email.
More are on the way, she added, with downtown Fayetteville, sections of Joyce Boulevard and College Avenue and other parts certified "fiber ready" in June.
"While excited about introducing AT&T GigaPower to Arkansas, we will continue to invest heavily in fiber and broadband networks throughout the state," Ed Drilling, president of AT&T Arkansas, wrote. "Our residential customers and small businesses have asked for the latest technologies, and AT&T is delivering."
Pushing forward
OzarksGo's project's six phases should take about a year each, laying 7,000 miles of fiber to reach all of the cooperative's, no matter how far-flung, at a cost of roughly $50 million.
Klindt said Ozarks Electric is the first cooperative in the state to undertake such a project. The fiber, which uses super-fast pulses of light to transmit information instead of electricity, will allow OzarksGo to boost the speed by 10 times in the near future as well, he said.
Earlier this year, Joe Molinaro, director of the Arkansas Cable Telecommunications Association, said Ozarks Electric's plan put other providers at an unfair disadvantage because many of them pay the company for access to power poles. Cox is a member of the industry group.
"Some electric cooperatives are now not only our landlords, but our competitors," he said in April. He didn't return a call requesting comment last week. "We're quite certain lawmakers and regulators will agree that everyone needs to play by the same set of rules."
But OzarksGo spokeswoman Penny Storms said she didn't expect any regulatory or legal problems with the project, adding other providers' higher prices are unfair to customers. The broadband network also serves as a way for the cooperative to monitor its system for outages or other problems as well.
"Our goal is really to serve people who don't have adequate service and some who don't have any service at all," Storms said. "That's truly what we're going for."
NW News on 07/11/2016