Private Buy May Save Muni Fiber Network Set for Disconnection Due to NC Laws, Suddenlink Overbuild

Wilson adopted a city resolution Thursday about the offer. The city would retain ownership of all fiber between Wilson and Pinetops and the resolution sets up an upset bid process for the Pinetops fiber plant, a Wilson spokesperson said. That occurs after a negotiated agreement to sell city property and gives another company 10 days to make a higher bid, with each new bid extending it another 10 days. “North Carolina leaders have long advocated for rural broadband access achieved through public-private partnerships,” said Greenlight General Manager Will Aycock. “We are pleased to be a party to providing a rural community the broadband access needed in today’s economy while executing the direction of our state’s leaders.” National Network Holdings didn’t comment.

Pinetops got a municipal FTTH network from Wilson Greenlight during the vacuum between then-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s commission pre-empting a North Carolina ban on muni broadband expansion and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the state law. Last year, North Carolina enacted a law allowing Greenlight to stay in Pinetops on the condition that the muni broadband provider disconnect within 30 days of a private provider building a FTTP network (see 1706290030). Suddenlink deployed FTTP to Pinetops and June 13 sent notice to Wilson Mayor Bruce Rose to say the city must terminate Greenlight in the town by July 13. The network is “available to all residents and businesses of the Town,” and Altice made residents aware through a direct-to-consumer marketing campaign, the notice said.

The situation requiring Wilson to disconnect Greenlight in Pinetops is “unfortunate,” though Suddenlink is legally within its rights, Aycock said in an interview before the bid was announced. “The service that [Pinetops people] wanted was already present.” Greenlight “will follow the state law as is written,” he said. Wilson knew it might soon have to disconnect because it understood last year’s law and observed Suddenlink building a network, the Greenlight official said. The muni fiber network would still be available for smart grid and public entities in Pinetops, he said.

Suddenlink won’t provide symmetrical speeds like Greenlight, and the company made a bad first impression by breaking water mains and digging up yards as it deployed in Pinetops, said Town Commissioner Brent Wooten and ex-commissioner Suzanne Coker-Craig in interviews. One Suddenlink technician incorrectly told Coker-Craig that Greenlight was illegally serving Pinetops, and claimed Greenlight had inferior service, she said. North Carolina’s ban on muni broadband expansion led to the situation, with uncertainty about broadband in Pinetops delaying potential economic benefits from the town’s fiber, they said.

Suddenlink's 'Hatred'

“It was the hatred they have for what Greenlight offers” that brought Suddenlink to town, after previously showing no interest due to a tough business case, said Wooten. “The infrastructure Greenlight put in here cost a lot of money, and for Suddenlink to run all the way from Rocky Mount ... is millions of dollars’ worth of time and labor.”

Suddenlink won’t make money in Pinetops but has come “to get rid of Greenlight” and keep the muni network from expanding deeper into the state, said Coker-Craig. Nearly 33 percent of the 1,157 people living in Pinetops are below the poverty line, say Census data.

Suddenlink will provide up to 1 Gbps download and 50 Mbps upload speeds on the Pinetops FTTP network, an Altice spokeswoman said. It will offer an introductory triple-play including 100/10 Mbps internet, 200 TV channels and unlimited calling for $69.99 per month for one year with no annual contract and free equipment for two years, she said. The company worked with Pinetops to minimize disruption and isn’t aware of any current disruptions and is happy to work with local officials to address any issues, the spokeswoman said. Suddenlink chose to expand now because of Altice setting infrastructure investment as a priority when it acquired the company in 2016, she said.

Suddenlink and other big ISPs lobbied hard on the language in last year’s bill to save Greenlight service in Pinetops, said Wooten. “It was almost like a football team in a huddle” at a hearing last year at the state capital, he said. Soon after, Suddenlink told Pinetops officials about its intentions to expand, he said.

Changed Tack

Before Greenlight, Pinetops “begged” Suddenlink to come, because Pinetops long had slow and unreliable service from CenturyLink, the town officials said. CenturyLink advertises 100 Mbps download speeds, but Coker-Craig said the actual speed varies by address and she never could buy more than a 25 Mbps plan. For many years, she had 6 Mbps and service sometimes dropped when it rained, she said. With fast, reliable broadband critical to her small screen-printing business, Greenlight was a big improvement, with better customer service, she said.

Wilson “would have been better off spending those dollars to build network in unserved portions of Wilson County versus overbuilding a town already served by a private provider,” a CenturyLink spokesman emailed. The telco will continue serving DSL with speeds up to 100 Mbps to Pinetops and continues “to look at opportunities to increase speeds to meet customer demands,” he said. CenturyLink isn’t aware of any damages to its facilities from the Suddenlink deployment, he said.

Many other rural North Carolina towns have no broadband, defined as 25/3 Mbps, said Christopher Mitchell, Institute for Local Self-Reliance director-Community Broadband Networks Initiative. Without the state ban on muni broadband expansion, “most of the small towns around Wilson -- some that are much smaller than Pinetops -- would have gigabit fiber,” he emailed. Two fiber networks in a town as small as Pinetops “may not be an efficient use of money, but the amount is negligible when compared to the significant investment needed in rural North Carolina,” Mitchell said. Some North Carolina lawmakers may see two networks in Pinetops as “vindication of their policy, but they should be more focused on the many more thousands of people around Wilson that have been denied broadband access.”

"The law requiring private provision if it's feasible makes sense," said Doug Brake, director-telecom policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. "It's just unfortunate it resulted in duplication of networks here. This is why the original state-level law [upheld by the 6th Circuit] made sense in the first place." Wilson's investing in Pinetops before the 6th Circuit ruled on the appeal of the Wheeler FCC order was a "very bad idea," emailed George Ford, chief economist at the Phoenix Center.

Broadband could be a 2018 election issue as North Carolina votes for state legislators because rural areas are falling behind, said Coker-Craig, saying she would like a change in leadership. Pinetops legislators are Democrats and thus in the minority without great influence, she said. Coker-Craig reached out to them, but they haven’t responded, she said. “There’s no peep about our situation.”