HOLLAND, MI (WHTC-AM/FM, Mar. 10, 2022) – City of Holland voters may have another issue to decide when the General Election comes on November 8th.
During Wednesday night’s work-study session, the Holland City Council discussed efforts to expand the Holland BPW broadband coverage for the entire Tulip City. After going over a proposal by the municipal utility, which included results of a Broadband Survey Executive Summary conducted by Hope College’s Frost Center for Data and Research that showed “strong” public support for such an expansion, the governing panel agreed to have city staff and the city attorney draft language for a ballot proposal.
Such a proposal would ask for approval of installing a city-wide fiber infrastructure that would allow any Internet service provider to offer up to 10 gig internet speeds, with work on a two-year-long project to begin in the fall of 2023.
“Similar to public ownership of city streets, the proposed publicly-owned broadband network would be Open Access, encouraging internet companies to offer fast internet for less,” Holland BPW General Manager Dave Koster said in a utility statement. “Given the success of our pilot project downtown, we are confident we can manage the infrastructure reliably and pass along the savings to our customer-owners.”
Council is expected to see the draft of this ballot proposal next month.
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