On Tuesday at Fiber Connect 2021, the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) presented a Gig City Award to Huntsville Utilities, the City of Huntsville, the Huntsville Madison County Chamber, and The Broadband Group and Google Fiber™. The FBA recognized these groups for their outstanding collaborative initiative that leveraged fiber to increase connectivity across communities in Huntsville, AL, and improve economic development and quality of life.
The city of Huntsville, aka “Rocket City,” supported the launch of the Space Race with the establishment of NASA, the Marshall Space Flight Center and the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. The area also features Cummings Research Park, which is the second largest research park in the nation and home to world-class Genome research and a global epicenter for cyber security. The citation stated Huntsville is devoted to science and technology, and ensuring its businesses and residents have access to high-performance internet connectivity is an important city objective.
The award cited the city as “recognizing the need for additional fiber infrastructure for its own internal communication and operational needs, Huntsville Utilities took matters into its own hands. Working with The Broadband Group, a leading telecommunications consulting and business advisory firm, Huntsville Utilities pioneered a Utility Lease Model where the utility aligns interests with private industry to expand fiber citywide.”
The citation stated the Lease Model enabled Huntsville to build or expand fiber optic networks and include excess fiber capacity to be used by third party tenants, like ISPs or 4G/5G mobile operators.
For Huntsville Utilities’ fiber network, according to the citation, Google Fiber was the first tenant to deploy multigigabit broadband services to residential and small business customers in Huntsville and surrounding areas. As a result, an analysis by HighSpeedInternet.com showed that Huntsville led the country for the biggest jump in internet speeds from February 2020 to February 2021. According to the study that was conducted in May 2021, Huntsville ranked 12th for the fastest internet speeds in the nation.
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