Middle mile networks are the unsung heroes of Internet connectivity – the workhorses that carry large amounts of data over long distances.
Think of the Internet as pipes: The plumbing that serves a skyscraper with hundreds or thousands of people is much bigger than the pipe that comes into a single-family home. If you used that little pipe for the skyscraper, you couldn't possibly meet the needs of all residents.
Middle mile is that larger pipe that feeds all of the smaller pipes that connect homes and businesses in a community. Different communities have different needs for middle mile networks. Some have grown in population and need more capacity to serve new residents. Other communities simply didn’t exist during the early days of the Internet. Others still have been entirely unserved by modern high-speed networks.
NTIA’s Enabling Middle Mile Broadband Infrastructure Program funds projects to build regional networks across the country. NTIA has just awarded $930 millionin grants to projects across 35 states and Puerto Rico. Each project is unique, but many share similar goals, including supporting military bases, connecting Tribal lands, increasing affordability of a home’s Internet service, and beefing up the bandwidth of existing services.
Serving national security
Several of the awardees’ projects will increase Internet access around military facilities.
For example, the State of Nevada’s proposed 431-mile open access middle-mile fiber optic network will deliver a public Internet connection to the Nellis Air Force Base and Department of Defense network through the Nevada Test and Training Range and Nevada National Security Site. The new network will run along US Route 93 where no middle mile network currently exists, enabling new last-mile connections to unserved and underserved households.
In North Carolina, two fiber routes totaling 209 miles will provide network services and resources to four military installations in the state: Fort Liberty, Pope Army Airfield, Camp Lejeune, and Marine Corps Air Station New River. The High-speed Economies for Rural Opportunity, or HERO, project will also support affordable, high-performance broadband for almost 5,000 fully unserved locations and nearly 4,300 additional underserved locations within just 5 miles of the planned routes.
Connecting Tribal lands
The digital divide is exponentially larger in Indian Country, but new middle mile projects will help change that.
In Washington state, the Point Roberts Middle Mile Infrastructure Project will provide middle mile broadband resources to the Lummi Nation. The project includes 47.6 miles of new terrestrial underground fiber and 63.1 miles of undersea fiber. This project will involve extensive environmental activities to protect fisheries and other sensitive marine environments.
The Omaha Tribe of Nebraska has created two Tribally owned last-mile broadband companies that will offer retail broadband to approximately 13,000 households who are currently unserved or underserved. The Tribe, along with Quick Current LLC, have proposed a project to deploy a fiber-based middle mile network to cover unserved and underserved Tribal and adjacent rural areas in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa.
Making the Internet affordable
A connection doesn’t mean much if a family can’t afford the price of service. Middle mile networks help reduce the cost of delivering Internet to households. Bringing new fat pipes gives more people access, which drives down the cost of delivering the service for providers, and ultimately brings down the cost of a household’s Internet bill. Several projects receiving funding focus on improving affordability in low-income communities.
The Southeast West Virginia Middle Mile Connect project will build 579 miles of fiber routes and use 127 miles of existing fiber. The provider, Appalachian Power Company, will offer middle mile broadband to ISPs within its network service area. Expanding access to this infrastructure will help encourage competition, improve service, and lower costs for households. The proposed network is located within 1,000 feet of 181 anchor institutions. This will ensure that last-mile Internet service providers can affordably serve vulnerable communities at lower costs.
In Alabama, C Spire’s Connect Alabama Network will consist of nearly 700 miles of new middle-mile fiber construction to help connect 37 unserved towns. The proposed service area has households that are at a 25% greater poverty level than that of the state level.
Beefing up bandwidth
Another key benefit of improved middle mile infrastructure is increased bandwidth – think of it as adding lanes to a highway to help improve congestion.
The ENMR Telephone Cooperative’s project will complete a fiber ring linking Kermit, Texas to Jal, New Mexico in the southern edge of the middle mile network. The project will increase the bandwidth of the network from up to 800 Gbps to up to 16 Tbps. This increase will allow home Internet service providers to improve upload speeds for end-users. The project will also provide upgraded equipment resulting in capacity 20 times greater than current equipment.
Most of the service area of the West Idaho – Canyon, Owyhee and Ada County project has little to no fiber-based middle mile infrastructure. That means communities in the area are paying higher prices for slow Internet service on legacy facilities. The 76-mile project will be the first dedicated fiber middle mile route to interconnect each of the communities on the route. It has been intentionally designed to follow the state highway system to place fiber through the heart of main street corridors. More than 330 anchor institutions and businesses within 1,000 feet of the planned route will benefit from this project.
These Middle Mile projects span the U.S., but all share the common goal of deploying reliable, affordable, high-speed Internet service in a cost-efficient way.