The Chapter 11 filing, announced April 14 by Frontier, will cut its bondholder-backed debt by $10 billion. The company, one of two broadband internet service providers in Fort Dodge, has said through press releases that the filing will not affect any of its customers, employees or service offerings. The company has a physical presence in Fort Dodge with a location on First Avenue North.

“With a recapitalized balance sheet, we will have the financial flexibility to reposition the company and accelerate its transformation by allocating capital resources and adding talent to enhance our service offerings,” said Robert Schriesheim, chairman of the finance committee for Frontier’s board of directors.

But in Fort Dodge, a municipal utility in the works could give the struggling company a run for its money after an overwhelming majority of voters approved the measure last November.

City Manager David Fierke said that as things stand, Frontier has invested little in providing innovative or even competitive service for residential needs.

“What the situation is locally is that Frontier has not been willing to invest capital into the system to have it where it would be fiber optic to the home,” Fierke said, “where they could offer the kind of service we need with speed and reliability.”

Though he said Frontier is not unique among fellow telephone and cable companies in that regard, it’s a need that has to be addressed soon. Fiber optic service to the home is often costly with lower returns — the reason that, often, only the most competitive urban areas tend to have it.

But even in Webster County, Fort Dodge is an island without fully fiber-optic service in a sea of fiber optic service to homes. Rural telephone cooperatives serving surrounding towns and areas have been able to tap into a good mixture of local buy-in and federal funding available specifically to help connect them.

At least one surveyed in the city’s residential broadband survey with experience living both in Fort Dodge and in rural Webster County testified that service in rural areas is often of much better quality than service available in Fort Dodge.

About 26% of the 700 people surveyed by the city said they receive their service from Frontier.

“We feel rural, yet we’re too big to be rural,” Fierke said, according to certain governmental definitions. “We don’t fit in their (rural) size.”

As the city makes efforts to attract professionals, workers and residents to town, leaving something to be desired in an increasingly essential utility could put the city at a disadvantage.

The city’s feasibility study request for information is due next week, at which time the city will be able to sift through an in-depth look at short-term and long-term considerations such as construction costs and operational costs. After that, Fierke said the city will entertain further action.

The new municipal utility could be a hybrid public-private partnership, he said.

“We realized that there’s not going to be a fully private competitive broadband company that would serve everyone in Fort Dodge,” he said. “There needs to be city involvement somewhere in that.”

That is an understanding opposed to the idea of a third company coming in to compete with the other two.

A decisive majority of Mediacom, Frontier, Verizon Wireless and U.S. Cellular customers surveyed said their internet service was not meeting their needs, but Frontier was clearly in last place. Just 18% of Frontier customers said their service met their needs, while a whopping 57% said the opposite.

“One might come in and serve select customers, but the City Council made it clear that if someone’s going to come in, we want them to serve every household, not cherry pick the best customers,” Fierke said.

While the city manager was not sure whether Frontier’s shaky standing might better position the city’s future solution, the city’s idea is starting to advance just as an established provider goes on the defensive.

“The goal is to have adequate speeds in every household so that they have the opportunity to do whatever they need to do,” Fierke said, whether it be recreation, education or work.

He said the city wants to see everyone “fully connected” with both speed and reliability that can only come from new infrastructure as other companies prop up aging systems. New speeds from the broadband utility could easily double the current average download speed of 54 megabits per second, and city officials believe fiber to the premise is the only way to do that.

A pre-feasibility study showed that a completely underground network covering the entire city would likely cost in the range of $22.2 to $31.9 million. Underground fiber networks are more expensive to deploy primarily due to labor expenses, but offer distinct advantages with reliability and control.

“By the city getting in the game, hopefully it’ll provide access to capital that will make it successful as a private-public partnership,” Fierke said.

The new publicly-owned utility could be under construction as early as next year, with service possible as early as 2022.