...Title
Accelerating Digital Equity by Deploying High-Speed Fiber to All Households at No Cost to Taxpayers. (Mayor, Carrasco, Cohen, and Foley)
...Recommendations
Direct the City Manager to:
1. Explore developing a Request for Information (RFI) or other appropriate open solicitation for respondents to provide approaches to a citywide open access fiber network that:
a. Encompasses all or nearly all premises (households and businesses) in the City for 1 Gbps baseline symmetrical internet speeds - undoing decades of “digital redlining” by providing ubiquitous high-quality coverage that will be essential for educational and economic opportunity.
b. Relies wholly on private-sector financing for construction, operations, and maintenance, at no cost to the City and our taxpayers.
c. Maximizes public benefit to the community, including but not limited to such elements as:
● provision of free or low-cost broadband service to low-income residents;
● support for critical City functions, such as traffic signal management;
● co-location of public fiber in the same trench (“dig once”); and
● provision of free access for schools, community centers, libraries, medical facilities, and other public locations.
d. Ensures compatibility of the fiber technology (deployment, maintenance, etc.) with existing City infrastructure and processes, considering power availability, disaster resilience, and minimizing surface-level disruption.
e. Prioritizes speed of deployment in neighborhoods most historically impacted by digital inequity, while addressing last-mile barriers to access.
2. Identify and bring forward for Council consideration changes the City can make to expedite permitting process for rapid deployment of fiber at scale, including options for effective micro-trenching/fiber trenching that minimize impact on City streets, and including opportunities to offset staffing costs associated with permitting.
3. Explore opportunities to leverage historical levels of state and federal funding for next-generation connectivity infrastructure to deliver the wide-ranging benefits outlined in Recommendation #1.