Skip to content
CityLab
Government

An Iowa Town’s $60 Million Plan to Span the Broadband Gap

In a bid to boost digital access, West Des Moines is building its own fiber-optic conduit network — and committing Google to provide citywide service. 

West Des Moines’s city-owned fiber-optic conduit network will eventually cover every home and business in the suburb. 

West Des Moines’s city-owned fiber-optic conduit network will eventually cover every home and business in the suburb. 

Photographer: Kathryn Gamble/Bloomberg
By
Katie Thornton

Ben McAlister, principal engineer for West Des Moines, Iowa, shows off a small hunk of flexible plastic tubing roughly three inches in diameter, filled with narrower tubes that look like thick colored straws.

It’s a section of fiber-optic conduit — the small, multilane tunnel through which internet cables run, and a critical piece of the town’s developing digital infrastructure. Nearly 1,000 miles of conduit like this is being laid in West Des Moines, bringing lightning-fast internet to every home and business, thanks to a $60 million municipal bond and a novel public-private partnership