The Hoosier state is getting another option for statewide fiber connectivity, as a group of 21 electric and telephone cooperatives came together to form the Accord Telecommunications Collaborative.
Today, Accord’s members collectively own 20,000 miles of fiber infrastructure and 40,000 miles of electric lines, serving around 300,000 homes and businesses across the state and about 75% of its land mass. By combining their individual networks, Accord’s members are looking to expand beyond residential services to enterprise offerings, Accord Chairman and SCI REMC CEO James Tanneberger told Fierce.
Tanneberger said discussions about forming a statewide fiber network began around four years ago, when REMC and other co-ops in the state began construction of fiber-to-the-home networks using money from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. At the time, the companies figured if they were spending millions building these networks, it would make sense to drop another few hundred thousand dollars to tie them together.
But only about half of its members’ systems are connected today, meaning there’s plenty of work left for Accord to do. While it’s still sorting out its exact technological needs ahead of an RFP, Accord is planning to build DWDM connections offering at least 100G links and potentially Ethernet over the next year or so. Given the RFP process takes some time, it’ll likely be 2023 before those deployments start.
“The great thing about Accord is that our members for the most part are contiguous in that our electric systems border each other, which means that you have a very short distance to travel to connect our fiber system to our neighbors,” Tanneberger said. “So it’s a very low-cost way to prop up a statewide network when you’re already leveraging over $1 billion in assets that were built and financed for other reasons.”
Given many Accord members already have their own FTTH offerings, Tanneberger said the real opportunity for them in joining Accord is the ability to offer statewide enterprise services and reach businesses they otherwise might not have been able to. That includes organizations with multiple branch locations, such as banks and hospitals, as well as other companies that require high-speed transport.
In terms of how the financials will work, Tanneberger noted Accord will charge a price for transport across the state while member companies will individually reap revenue from traffic that veers off into their local networks. Any surplus revenue generated by members will go back into their businesses to support their core services, he added.
Accord’s members aren’t the first co-ops to tackle such an undertaking, nor even the first group of co-ops in Indiana to do so. Earlier this month, a group of 17 internet service providers and co-ops formed Hoosier Net, aiming to combine their assets and offer middle mile fiber services.
Tanneberger said three of Accord’s members are actually also part of Hoosier Net. However, he said Accord is unique in that it offers a different footprint from Hoosier Net.
“What you have with Hoosier Net and Accord is two physically different networks with the same end goal,” he said. Hinting at the potential for a tie up between the two statewide networks, Tanneberger said “there are lots of conversations happening around the state and Hoosier Net would represent one of those companies that we would like to work with.”