Citizen Broadband Advisory Committee

In recent months, there has been informal conversations around the community concerning the availability of broadband service in Auburn.  The conversations made their way to the Board of Selectmen’s meetings, with the Board agreeing to involve the community by appointing a citizen’s advisory committee to assist the Board in looking at this issue.

This is a topic the New Hampshire Legislature has also grappled with in recent years, and which lead to significant modifications to RSA 33:3-g, III in 2020 that addresses the potential of municipal financing of broadband deployment.

One of the first steps a community would need to take is determining whether the community is currently underserved, in whole or in part, by broadband service. 

The statute requires a municipality to first send a request for information to all broadband providers that may be currently serving the community seeking information identifying locations in that community that are served by broadband. 

After receiving responses to that information request, a decision would need to be made whether the community or sections of the community is unserved in terms of broadband.  Should the decision be the whole community or parts of the community are unserved,  a municipality may then issue Requests for Proposals (RFP) to engage in private-public partnerships to deploy broadband infrastructure in those areas determined to be underserved. 

Should the municipality determine that no current broadband provider has met the criteria in the RFP, the municipality may consider issuing bonds for the purposes of constructing a broadband service, including open networks.

To fully consider the potential of this issue, the Board of Selectmen in April appointed six residents who volunteered to serve on an Auburn Broadband Advisory Committee to assist the Board of Selectmen in carefully looking at this issue and developing a recommendation for what direction might be best for Auburn.

Should the Advisory Committee recommend the Town consider issuing bonds for this purpose, it is an issue which would be presented to the voters potentially as early as March 2022 for a vote.