Not every musing I pull together is prompted by conversations with residents, but a fair number of them are. Yesterday, while buying a cup of coffee at Backyard Beans, a community member and I started discussing the community and how much he appreciated the forward-thinking nature of Lansdale, and specifically, our Electric Department. We discussed everything from solar energy projects to EV car chargers and everything in-between.
Throughout that conversation I shared that the reason Lansdale can quickly adapt to these needs and expectations of our community is, specifically, because of the bold step taken in the 1900s to develop a municipal electric system. The investment in electric infrastructure helped Lansdale become more flexible to future changes in our world. This model is one I think we should, maybe even need, to replicate with municipal 5G.
Municipal 5G internet is a topic that has been explored in prior columns. However, the latest budget discussions have re-invigorated the need to, in-detail, figure out how to bring this option to fruition. As noted in my prior column, we cannot continue to expect tax increases to unilaterally sustain growth in our borough. This was true in 1900 and it is equally true today. To ensure longevity and financial stability we must build a service offering that is equally critical to daily life in Lansdale as electric, and internet is that natural next choice.
Additionally, the moment is right to make this expansion now. Wired fiber optic internet is being surpassed and supplanted by at home 5G wireless. Consumers main pain-point when it comes to internet service is how much they are paying for speeds that do not meet their consumption needs. As of October, J.D. Power says “More than half — 58% — of a customer’s satisfaction is driven by the quality and consistency of the internet connection, and how the customer perceives the value of that connection.” If there is one thing Lansdale Electric has proven, it is that local municipal services can be run in a high-quality consistent way that exceeds expectations for residents.
Added to the consumer’s desire for better service at a better price is the lack of 5G providers at this time. 5G is being rolled out slowly by Verizon, T-Mobile, and Starry. Only Starry is currently providing true near equal upload/download at gigabit speed. This is due to many factors, but one of the major contributors to it is the scale of the area they are trying to service. Lansdale, being a three-square-mile area, could easily be serviced at true one-gig upload/download speeds on a 5G system that would meet the needs of any home in our community while providing reliable and affordable internet to everyone in Lansdale.
So, how do we build it? We would need to build the infrastructure or partner with someone who would be willing to build it for us. Working backward, every customer in Lansdale, like our electric system, would need to be outfitted with a 5G receiver that would allow them to access our network. In addition, we would need to buy and deploy the antennas that would be needed on every third telephone pole across the community to send the signal throughout every corner of our town.
Finally, and most expensively, we would need to run “glass” to Lansdale directly. “Glass” is the backbone of all non-wired connections. When you bring up the internet on your phone, it sends a signal to a local antenna that then connects to a vacuum tube glass highway that sends your data request to the providers. Once data hits the glass, it moves at the speed of light. The “lag” you experience is the connection between your phone and the local antenna or the between the antenna and the glass. 5G is a better connection point between glass and your phone, increasing the speed and capacity of both. This data-super highway currently stops a few miles from Lansdale. We may need a glass connection point to deliver on a comprehensive 5G service. However, the investment in building local infrastructure that processes data at lightspeed would be another example of infrastructure that would, long-term, provide our community flexibility long into the future.
As a growing community, we need to find ways of providing, and building, the services that residents are going to need for their daily life going forward. The internet is already the primary access point for most business operations and for daily work for most residents. It is a crucial service that we can and should provide to our residents. Fortunately, we have some of the necessary infrastructure in place to move toward a municipal 5G model. However, the build out of the rest of the infrastructure would require taking on debt to build out a service that, if successful, could be paid back in 10 to 20 years which is normal for large scale investment projects. Consider the math:
Perhaps an adoption rate of 55% is aggressive, but most of the apartments in Lansdale are rented by younger generations that would prefer 5G speeds to FiOS and they are not even considered in the math above. After the 11 years of debt service, we would be able to use the funds to help manage our budget and, as I discussed with my fellow resident at the coffee shop, continue moving forward together.
(Mayoral Musings is a weekly op-ed column submitted to North Penn Now, courtesy of Lansdale Borough Mayor Garry Herbert. The views expressed are his own.)
See also:
Mayoral Musings: 2023 Budget Discussion
Mayoral Musings: Remember to Vote on Nov. 8
Mayoral Musings: Commercialized EV Charging
Mayoral Musings: Lansdale Ballot Drop Box Opens This Weekend
Mayoral Musings: North Penn Cuts Ribbon on Renovated Knapp Elementary
