State-Of-The-Art Fiber Optic Network in Lakewood to Increase Speeds, Attract Businesses

The Internet is about to get faster for city business in Lakewood.

A new agreement with Everstream — unanimously approved by Lakewood City Council on Sept. 21 — will also improve the city’s economic development opportunities and provide free WiFi access at five of the city’s largest public parks.

“This is a big deal,” said Mayor Mike Summers. “We live in a world where more means better and faster means more effective. The speeds of the Internet will be critical for the productivity of our personnel.”

A portion of the network will be used for public institutions — including the schools, public library and 16 city of Lakewood facilities — and the other portion will run along Madison and Detroit avenues with the capability to service local businesses.

At rates as high as 10 gigabits per second, connectivity speeds are expected to be more than 1,000 times faster than traditional Internet speeds — a huge incentive for businesses looking to launch or move to Lakewood.

“Right now, this type of technology is seen as innovative,” said Summers. “But we need to look ahead in order to remain competitive when this becomes expected in the marketplace. Existing businesses will benefit mightily from this technology, but we also feel this could be another valuable tool to attract business as part of our forward-thinking economic development strategy.”

The new and soon-to-be-built Lakewood Public Network is a state-of-the-art fiber optic network that is the result of a public/private partnership between the city of Lakewood and Everstream.

Under a 20-year agreement, Everstream will install 144 strands of fiber optic cabling throughout the city, mostly along the main business corridors.  48 of those strands of fiber will be used to connect the sixteen City of Lakewood government facilities with special accommodations made to allow the Lakewood City Schools and Lakewood Public Library to optionally join to connect their facilities at a time convenient for those institutions.

The remaining 96 strands will be used by Everstream to offer high-speed Internet (up to 10 Gbps) and dark fiber services to current and prospective business customers in Lakewood.  The typical cost barriers to bringing extremely high-speed networking and Internet access to businesses will be reduced or even eliminated because of the close proximity of the fiber network path with respect to those businesses, according to the agreement.

Under the agreement, the city of Lakewood will fund the build-out of the network. In return, Everstream will be responsible for the maintenance of the network.  Furthermore, Everstream has agreed to provide the City of Lakewood government, 1 Gpbs Internet service at no additional charge for the length of the agreement.

“I am very excited for the city of Lakewood,” said Michael Coletta , the manager of the city’s Information Technology department.  “The city’s public institutions will have access to a robust and state-of-the-art, extremely high-speed network in order to help deliver essential services to the community.”

“In addition, the economic development opportunities are enormous,” he added. “Businesses in Lakewood will have a greater choice of high speed internet offerings and access to speeds which were much more difficult to obtain in the past. Lakewood will truly be a magnet for high-tech companies and businesses that need and demand bandwidth.”