Broadband Feasibility Report

Brazos County, TX
Finley Engineering and CCG Consulting
June 20, 2023

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 Purpose of the Study
• The primary scope of the project was to determine the homes and
businesses in the county that don’t have good broadband and to quantify
the cost of bringing a broadband solution to those locations.
• There is a lot of grant funding coming to the state. Texas looks to be eligible
for several billion in grant funding from the federal BEAD grant program – a
number that will be solidified at the end of June 2023. The Texas
Legislature also approved $1.5 billion in grant funding that now must be
approved by voters. All of this funding will be processed and awarded by
the Texas Broadband Development Office (BDO).
• We see three major uses of this report: inform elected officials and the
public about broadband issues, provide a framework for deciding how to
move forward, and to provide the facts that are needed for ISPs interested
in serving the county.
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 Study Area
• The analysis was done based upon our determination of the
places where customers don’t have access to at least 100/20
Mbps broadband.

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 Existing ISPs
• Brightspeed, Frontier, and Windstream are the incumbent telephone
companies in the county.
• Optimum is the incumbent cable company, serving only in towns and
cities.
• There are three fiber overbuilders in the study area, NET FAST, Ezee
Fiber, and MidSouth Fiber.
• Fixed wireless broadband is provided by Brazos WiFi, CEO
Technologies, Rise Broadband, Nextlink, and Zochnet. These ISPs all
use unlicensed spectrum.
• Residents also use satellite broadband and cellular broadband for
home broadband.
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 Market Outreach
• We reached out to the public to ask about current
broadband usage:
• Separate online surveys for residents and businesses.
• Interviews with key stakeholders.

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 Online Residential Survey Results
• 7% of households don’t have a home broadband. 65% of them said they
have no good broadband option at their home.
• 28% of respondents lack workable cell coverage at home.
• Average price being paid for broadband is $89, which is one of the highest
we’ve seen. 67% of residents would consider changing to a new ISP that
brought lower prices.
• 33% of households have a student at home and 43% said that home
broadband was not good enough to support doing homework.
• 74% of residents support building a fiber network. Another 24% might
support the idea but need more facts.
• 49% said they would buy from a new fiber network. 16% said they would
probably buy.

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 Business Surveys and Interviews
• The most common problems we heard were slow broadband in
daytime, occasional multi-day outages, regular shorter outages.
• About half of the businesses interviewed/surveyed were unable to
send employees home to work who live in areas with poor
broadband.
• We heard that it is difficult to sell rural homes that don’t have good
broadband.
• Many businesses complained about having inadequate cellular
coverage around the county.

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 Speed Tests

Technology Download (Mbps) Upload (Mbps) Number of Tests

Average Cable 239 34 46,391

Average DSL 26 4 1,508

Average Fiber 375 342 9,149

Average Fixed Wireless 35 12 4,248

Average Satellite 52 6 764

Average Fixed Cellular 122 16 2,750

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 Passings

Per FCC Our Study

Unserved 9 6,328
Underserved 1,023 0
Served 69,557 64,261
Total 70,589 70,589
Passings are homes and businesses that are potential
broadband customers.

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•

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CCGcomm.com FinleyUSA.com
•

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 RDOF in the County
• Four companies have been awarded FCC funding to bring fast
broadband to rural areas.
• Nextlink won $318,948 to serve 789 locations and claims it can bring
gigabit speeds with licensed wireless technology.
• Resound Networks won $16,228 to serve 25 locations with fixed
wireless broadband.
• MidSouth Fiber won $135,063 to serve 339 locations with fiber.
• North Texas Fiber won $30,934 to serve 213 locations with fiber.

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CCGcomm.com FinleyUSA.com
 Network Design: Key Considerations
Design Considerations
• Largest Investment
• Longest Estimated Life
• Look Forward – Not What is
• Uses
• Work From Home
• Content Creation
• Definition of Broadband
• 2019 – 10/1
• 2020 – 25/3
• 2021 – NTIA & USDA 100/20

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 Technology
• The RFP asked us to consider what technologies might be used to close the
broadband gaps. Finley Engineering considered both wireless and fiber
technologies.
• We could not find a wireless solution that made sense due the housing
density, trees, and topology.
• We considered several fiber technologies and determined that passive optical
network fiber technology is the best fit for the County.
• Network designed with XGS-PON technology capable of delivering 10-gigabit
broadband.
• Required fiber: 7,616 passings for the whole study area over 642.76 miles.

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 Network Design: Key Considerations
Fiber Access
Point
Fiber Access
Point

Data Center Local Convergence

Cabinet
COT
OLT

Fiber Access
Point

Local Convergence
Cabinet

Fiber Access
Point

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 Network Design: Key Considerations
Key Design Points
• Where: Fiber Network follows existing utilities for aerial / buried
construction.
• Active vs Passive: Cost Model used an ODN capable of supporting
both
• Where is the research and development dollars going
• Capacity: 10Gbps today across the entire network, the upper limits
are a limitation of electronics, not the ODN
• One Data Center: Redundant interconnect routes to one or more ISPs
• Extra fiber provided for future growth / expansion.

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 North

North
Central

Network Design Bryan

West
Methodology College Station

South

Navasota

Design Areas
Somerville
Brazos County Boundary

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Tier_DISTRIBUTION

CCGcomm.com FinleyUSA.com
 Cost of a New Network – 100% Buried
Market Prevailing
Wages Wages
Fiber $ 62,300,571 $ 67,441,181
Drops $ 4,348,263 $ 4,668,413
Electronics $ 1,023,429 $ 1,095,329
Huts $ 130,000 $ 130,000
Operational Assets $ 1,667,469 $ 1,667,469
Total $ 69,469,732 $ 75,002,392

Passings 6,328 6,328

Cost per Passing $10,978 $11,852

CCGcomm.com FinleyUSA.com
 Cost of a New Network - Aerial
Market Prevailing
Wages Wages
Buried Fiber $ 40,495,371 $ 43,836,768
Aerial Fiber $ 23,346,035 $ 26,849,397
Drops $ 3,715,643 $ 3,956,785
Electronics $ 1,023,429 $ 1,095,329
Huts $ 130,000 $ 130,000
Operational Assets $ 1,667,469 $ 1,667,469
Total $ 70,377,947 $ 77,535,748

Passings 6,328 6,328

Cost per Passing $11,222 $12,253

CCGcomm.com FinleyUSA.com
 Grant Funding
• Congress passed infrastructure bill with over $42.5 billion for
broadband funding – will mostly be aimed at rural areas, but state will
have a say in who gets funding. Texas looks to be eligible for several
billion in grant funding.
• The Texas Legislature also approved $1.5 billion in grant funding that
now must be approved by voters. All of this funding will be processed
and awarded by the Texas Broadband Development Office (BDO).
• The State of Texas will have several rounds of state broadband grants.
• There is also funding available for digital literacy and getting
computers into homes.

CCGcomm.com FinleyUSA.com
 Strategic Questions
• Is the County Willing to Help Fund a Solution? If so, how much and in
what manner?
• What is the County’s Best Role in Finding a Solution? As a partner in
grants or a supporter? Digital equity grants on top of infrastructure?
• Rural Cellular Coverage Issues. We learned through interviews that
cellular coverage in the area is as poor as the broadband coverage. In
2020 the FCC voted to create a $9 billion fund to bring better 4G and
5G coverage to rural America.

CCGcomm.com FinleyUSA.com
 Cellular Coverage – Rural Brazos County

Review of FCC ASR Towers, BDC, crowdsourced and Ookla speed tests. Radius = 3 miles. College Station and
Bryan not included in review given stronger coverage is present.

CCGcomm.com FinleyUSA.com
 Next Steps
• Identify Staffing Resources. Who will tackle the next steps?
• Reach out to ISPs. We recommend talking to potential ISPs as an early
step. Informal discussions, RFI, or RFP?
• Community Outreach. How to involve the public in the process.
• Review Local Fiber Policies. Are there any barriers for ISPs that want
to build a fiber solution?
• Cellular Speed Tests. Consider effort to populate the FCC’s cellular
speed tests to make sure they identify the area as needing better
cellular coverage.

CCGcomm.com FinleyUSA.com
 Contacts
Tim Arbeiter, Director, Consulting Services
Finley Engineering
t.arbeiter@finleyusa.com
(816) 944-9113

Doug Dawson, President, CCG Consulting

blackbean2@ccgcomm.com
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