Joint Partnership for a Community Owned Fiber Network

The City of Hillsboro and Hillsboro School District envisioned a joint partnership for a community owned fiber network to support schools’ connectivity needs and enable a platform for world-class broadband. In 2017, the City and School district signed an agreement to co-build the network. The next step was to identify a partner that understood municipal fiber projects and could manage the complex engineering process at hand, creating two networks from one.

The City of Hillsboro hired Magellan in 2017 to develop a citywide fiber backbone and fiber to the home broadband network. Magellan approached the design by working with School District staff to determine their most important needs – high bandwidth, reliability and redundancy across all schools. Through the planning process, Magellan designed a highly redundant, multi-ring fiber backbone to connect 34 schools with dark fiber.

Concurrently, Magellan engineered an optimal fiber to the home architecture using the backbone network as a launchpad for broadband. Our design furnished the City with a blueprint for broadband across 44,000 homes and businesses. We provided detailed fielding, utility assessment, permitting, make-ready, prints, costing and as-builts for each phase of construction. The design delivers 1 and 10 gigabit capabilities natively in the network. To enable seamless deployment of the network, the City also selected Magellan to manage construction, given our deep experience constructing municipal fiber and our collaborative approach with the City’s internal departments

Today, 34 schools are connected to the network, providing nearly unlimited bandwidth to support their current and future needs, while reducing its operating budgets by $200,000 annually. The fiber backbone and the first phase of fiber to the home construction have been completed to enable the City to launch its gigabit internet services to the first homes in Hillsboro.