Surf Internet attends Coloma City Council meeting to discuss bringing fiber internet connection to

Representatives from Surf Internet attended the Coloma City Council meeting on Monday night, Nov. 27, 2023, where they discussed providing the city of Coloma and its residents with fiber connection internet services, versus broadband connection services, which is what most communities in the area currently offer.

According to Surf Internet’s Director of Business Development, Scott Franko, Serf Internet has been providing services to communities for more than 25 years and the company, whose headquarters is in Elkhart, IN, has expanded into working with many communities in Michigan in recent years including Cassopolis, Dowagiac, South Haven, Edwardsburg, and Niles Township. They are also in talks about working with Coloma Charter Township and the City of Watervliet. Additionally, they also have offices in Byron Center and are getting ready to invest $17M in grant money to build out rural areas in Livingston County.

Fiber connection vs. broadband connection

The difference between traditional broadband and fiber optics comes down to speed. When compared to broadband connection capabilities, a fiber connection is much faster and has a bigger bandwidth than most other broadband options.

“Fiber is about as big around as a human hair, but its capacity and speed—you can’t even fit it on a piece of paper. When fiber is brought in, the fiber that runs into your household is your fiber. It’s your speed and your bandwidth, you’re not sharing it with anyone else,” Franko said.

During the discussion, Franko went on to stress the relevance of technological developments, how they are affected by fiber connections and how fiber connections influence economic development.

“Companies are creating new technology every day that may require more bandwidth and speed. The average home today might have 10 to 20 different devices that are grabbing the same bandwidth, needing that speed, and unlike cable with copper wire technology–where every device gets you a piece of the pie, fiber doesn’t do that. With fiber, you have your speed and unlimited bandwidth… business owners aren’t even asking anymore if you have broadband, they’re asking if you have fiber because that influences where they want to set up their business.”

Franko added that another benefit of having fiber over broadband is that fiber is the only medium that offers symmetrical speed, which means your upload speed is the same speed as your download speed.

“That’s important because if you’re doing school, gaming, entertainment, or working online, you’re requiring as much upload as you are download and that fiber gives you the availability to do that,” he said.

Costs to residents

According to Franko, residents would have the option to leave their current internet provider for theirs if the agreement with the city takes place. An average plan would cost someone under $85 per month. This would include giving residents the option of a 100 speed, 500 speed, or 1G plan. Additionally, there are no contracts, hookup fees, connection fees, and they offer a life-long price lock should someone choose to work with them.

“There’s no additional fees so if your charge is 70 bucks, it’s 70 bucks,” Franko said.

Franko also addressed what were to happen if their services were to go down and how they would work with emergency services to have priority access.

“We have our own equipment, we have 210 employees, we have outsourced companies we work with as well. We know things are down before you even have to tell us,” he said. Once our network is in place here… if we get those services addresses we can look at how we can incorporate those into our services so we can make sure the services you use to manage your town are served.”

The MEC grant

Despite Franko’s points, there was hesitation to move forward with Surf Internet’s services from some of the commissioners. Surf Internet is a friendly-partner of Midwest Energy & Communications (MEC) internet services, whom was just received the Realizing Opportunity with Broadband Infrastructure Networks (ROBIN) Grant, earlier this month. According to Berrien County’s website, the ROBIN grant is worth $26M and will help provide access to high-speed internet in unserved areas, most of which are rural. However, this grant will only cover broadband connection services. The grant money will be supplemented by $15.5 million from MEC who will install the underground lines, along with $4.5 million from Berrien County and $2.9 million from local municipalities to fund the roughly $50 million project.

“The county just received a significant grant and from the documents I’ve seen, we’re on that list as a city that could receive money. I just want to see where the two bow together and what’s going on at the county level before making a decision,” said Commissioner Jamie Balkin.

Ultimately the decision to move forward with Surf Internet has been tabled until the next council meeting on December 13; however, Franko said that Surf is ready to move forward if the city agrees.

“We’re ready to present and move forward with the permit process. To offer fiber to the residents would be a great thing and we’re ready to go.”

Other Council matters

Coloma Public Library Director Mary Harrison announced that the public library has started a romance book readers club, which will take place at the library on every second Tuesday of the month at 5:30 p.m.

Contractor from Great Lakes Drone Rescue, Matt Quinn, announced that Great Lakes Drone Company will be working with the village of Lawrence to organize a Christmas theme drone light show on December 9 during the village tree lighting ceremony.

There will be one more leaf pickup day either this week or next week if the weather permits.