New collaborations are taking shape that could increase the chances of Cook County getting wired with fiber optics.
Information Systems Director Danna MacKenzie reported to the county board Tuesday, March 16, 2010 that the Northeast Service Cooperative of Mt. Iron approached the Cook County Fiber Optic Commission about collaborating in order to increase the changes of being awarded a federal stimulus grant. Entities that can show they are collaborating with others earn more points, and those who earn the most points get the grants.
The nonprofit cooperative has proposed bringing a fiber optic line up the North Shore to Canada. The project would include hookups for the Cook County Schools complex and North Shore Hospital and would provide a redundant line that would prevent the kind of area-wide outage experienced from here to Duluth on January 26.
The Fiber Optic Commission suggested that the Northeast Service Cooperative collaborate with Arrowhead Electric Cooperative Inc (AECI) and Pulse Broadband, which are working together to apply for a stimulus grant to bring fiber optic to homes and businesses throughout Cook County.
The county did not get the stimulus grant it applied for last year. The system the county’s broadband consultant recommended for the grant application would have cost over $50,000,000, but the one AECI and Pulse are proposing would cost as little as $16,000,000. What is the difference?
“There are strengths and weaknesses to both designs,” MacKenzie said. Pulse owns the patent for its system and proposes to broker the services of large-scale service providers. Its system would cost less because it uses fewer fiber optic strands and does not include some equipment it would expect individual service providers to provide.
The system the county proposed would have more capacity than the one Pulse proposes, but according to MacKenzie, that would make no difference to the average user.
MacKenzie said the Broadband Committee working on the project last fall was not aware of Pulse’s technology, which is new and has not been installed in the U.S., although Pulse has installed it in dozens of European locations.
Arrowhead Electric continues to research the technology and has not made a long-term commitment to partner with Pulse, MacKenzie said.
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