The city of Nixa has the green light to get into the Internet infrastructure business.
Nixa City Council approved a resolution on Feb. 19 authorizing the reimbursement of the city if it chooses to use bonds to pay for the costs associated with engineering, marketing analysis or feasibility studies it may incur in any quest to deliver high-performing Internet access to residents and businesses.
Nixa City Administrator Brian Bingle said a desire to upgrade computer-related infrastructure tied to city services such as sewer and water led to a broader community discussion of Nixa becoming a city that offers high-speed Internet access for economic development purposes.
He said the city could become an Internet service provider or it could do what cities such as Seattle already are doing – and a goal Carl Junction is working toward – to find vendors to provide Internet services via the city’s constructed network, for a fee.
Bingle said he and three city officials recently visited Carthage and Carl Junction to review their citywide efforts to become “gigabit cities.”
The term refers to cities that can offer broadband connectivity at around 1 gigabit per second, roughly 100 times faster than the average broadband service, according to Fiber.Google.com. Bingle said officials also have reviewed information on efforts under way in Bristol and Chattanooga, Tenn., as well as Lafayette, La.
“We have also prepared two surveys. One is for our commercial-industrial property owners, and the other is for our residents,” Bingle said. He said the commercial survey was mailed in late February. The residential survey began to go out with utility bills on March 15.
“We hope to have those returned and compiled prior to council’s retreat around April 24.”
Nixa Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Marc Truby said the city is considering following in the footsteps of other municipalities as a way to spur business development in Nixa.
“We’re looking to become a gigabit city,” Truby said. “We have to get the cost of fiber down, so that we can bring in some tech companies, bring in some high-scale retailers where the first thing they look at when they look at a city is the fiber output.”
He said on the coasts, he understands the monthly megabit-per-second charge can be $5 to $10, but locally it costs $175 to $225 per Mbps.
“Our [commercial] vacancy rate in Nixa is a little more than 20 percent. Our industrial park is pretty vacant right now, and this has a lot to do with it,” Truby said.
According to the resolution council passed in February, the city would not seek a bond issuance of more than $5 million. The exact costs have yet to be determined, according to Bingle.
“I don’t know if we understand if we can afford this yet,” Bingle said.[[In-content Ad]]
