Internet service in Palm Springs is much like the Charles Dudley Warner quote about the weather: Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it. That could change, but first, elected leaders would need to champion the cause.
To assist those leaders in realizing the importance of reliable, fast Internet and cell phone service in every section of Palm Springs – as well as increased competition — city staff and consultants have been gathering residents’ thoughts at a series of meetings and through polling conducted last year.
The result will be a feasibility study that assesses the city’s internet infrastructure and explores options for improving connectivity and increasing the number of providers.
The latest public meeting on the subject, held Wednesday evening at City Hall, drew a handful of residents eager to voice familiar concerns: there are limited service provider choices, they said, as well as reliability issues, especially in South Palm Springs.
Larry Klingaman, Palm Springs director of information technology, and Irena Stevens, project manager for the civil engineering firm HRGreen, led the discussion. They explained how and why two companies – Spectrum Cable and Frontier Internet – provide most of the Internet service in the city and what it would take to change that.
Klingaman explained that the city’s broadband infrastructure is fully private, making it market-driven. Through a series of mergers, Spectrum acquired the majority of market share in the area for cable. Frontier has the most extensive fiber optic coverage in the area, making it the most dominant DSL provider.
While some local wireless Internet service providers are emerging, they have not been able to claim much market share due to the high cost of building the necessary infrastructure.
The study’s goals are to identify gaps in service and potential solutions that would encourage additional providers, such as public-private partnerships and municipal broadband initiatives.
Residents who participated in the discussion Wednesday evening expressed frustration over the lack of competition. They included Bruce Juenger, the very first resident of the Miralon development, who highlighted the challenges faced by his community.
“We only have one choice of cable,” Juenger said. “Our residents are very unhappy that it’s Spectrum, or they’ve got to go to a broadcast signal like T-Mobile or something like that, which some people have tried and have had poor results within our area.”
Juenger also noted reliability issues with Spectrum.
“We had 20 people on Zoom at our last (HOA) meeting last week,” he said. “The line kept going down. We had to redial and reboot five or six times during a two-hour meeting because everybody lost their connection.”
“We’re a captured market, and nobody wants that.”
— Bruce Juenger, Miralon resident
Juenger and others emphasized the need for competition to drive better service and pricing.
“I was in Orange County for 27 years. I had two providers,” said Juenger. “One got too high, so I canceled and went with the other one. We don’t have that choice here. We’re a captured market, and nobody wants that.”
City staff could present options for multiple municipal broadband models, ranging from city-owned infrastructure to public-private partnerships. However, Klingaman stressed that the Palm Springs City Council will make the ultimate decision on any actions to improve broadband service in the city.
“I am not the one that is going to make any of these decisions,” Klingaman stressed. “We are compiling all of this information. That’s why we want to get as much input as we can — gather as much data as we can. We will give that data to council to make a policy decision of how they want us to proceed with this.”
Klingaman said he expects to present findings from the broadband study to the council in the first half of this year.
One option mentioned Wednesday by Carl Baker, a Palm Springs Planning Commission member who attended the meeting, was to explore ways to encourage developers to install broadband infrastructure in new projects.
Klingaman acknowledged the importance of such policies, noting that the city could consider a “dig once” approach to incorporate broadband infrastructure during other construction projects.
“We’re looking towards finding a way to try and maybe start going down that road,” Klingaman said, referring to potential policies to require or incentivize broadband infrastructure in new developments.
The feasibility study is also examining options to connect municipal facilities with fiber optic networks, which could reduce long-term costs for the city.
Stevens emphasized the need for regional collaboration to address broadband issues effectively.
“It really will take a great deal of coordination,” she said. “But it requires the (Coachella Valley) to think about itself as a unit because you are in this little island, and you have the capabilities of having this really quality network.
“But it will require the whole valley to come in on it together.”
