Ambitious Dutch Company Proposes $70 Billion Broadband Network For Los Angeles, Whole Country

(Louis Abate)

The city of Los Angeles last year started taking proposals for a plan to build out a gigabit fiber broadband network for every business and residence in the city. Only one company publicly shared their full proposal publicly, and it doesn’t exactly make the future of L.A. fiber look bright.

Reporting on the proposal, Ars Technica calls the company’s claims “overly optimistic,” which looks like an understatement.

The Dutch firm, Angie Communications, says they can run fiber through the entire city in five years for an initial cost of $2.5 billion. (L.A.’s original estimate was that the project would cost $3 – $5 billion.) But that’s just to get started with fiber in the city, they say. Their projected full cost, in the end, will be $70 billion.

That’s not $70 billion just for one California city; that’s for the nation. As in, the entire United States. Angie Communications wants to build out connections to the whole country. In addition to fiber for Los Angeles, their proposal also included a plan to build out a robust 4G mobile network covering 95% of the country, and a 100 Mbps wifi network covering 90% of the country.

Angie, apparently of the “go big or go home” school of thought, also expressed a desire to build out wired and wireless networks in the UK, Germany, France, and the Netherlands, in addition to their American plan.

Building out a fiber network isn’t an easy undertaking, though, and it requires expertise. That’s what sank Seattle’s plans earlier this year with a company called Gigabit Squared.

At the moment, Angie isn’t exactly in the best position to follow through with their plan to cover the U.S. coast-to-coast. The company has about $68 million around from investors… about $2.4 billion short of what they say they need to get going in Los Angeles. Their current funding, they say, will be used to go out and raise more money, and also to cover basic operations expenses like making payroll.

Angie Communications is not the only company that responded to L.A.’s call for input; 33 other entities, both public and private, also submitted responses. However, the contents of the others are not public at this time.

Startup claims it will build fiber network in LA and wireless throughout US [Ars Technica]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist