april 14 – 16, 2015 - Broadband Communities Magazine

Transcription

APRIL 14 – 16, 2015
Renaissance Hotel – Austin
AUSTIN
Early Bird
Special Rate
350
$
(Save $545 off regular Summit price of $895)
Offer to expire soon.
Use VIP Code: BBCSUB
Co-located with the 2015
Broadband Communities Summit
twitter.com/bbcmag
TO SPONSOR OR EXHIBIT:
email: irene@bbcmag.com
www.bbcmag.com
505-867-3299
APRIL 14-16, 2015 • GIGAFYAMERICA.COM • AUSTIN SUMMIT
VALUABLE INSIGHT
EXPOSURE TO PEOPLE
ACROSS THE INDUSTRY
“Summit always provides valuable insight into market trends.”
– Brian Pagnella, Senior Consultant
Broadband Realty Advisors
KEYNOTES WERE
EXCELLENT
“I appreciate the visionary
forecasts of experts in the field
of broadband. Keynotes were
excellent. Lots of insights and
great stories.”
– David Moore, Director
Louisiana Broadband Initiative
“Good industry overview, exposure to people
across the industry and industry information.”
— E ric Friedman, President
Housing and Community Solutions, Inc.
PERTINENT TO COMMUNITIES
KNOWLEDGEABLE
AND INFORMATIVE
“Very important, useful and impactful information pertinent
to communities building and supporting networks.”
–A
llen Meyer, Business Development Manager
BHC Rhodes
“Good clarification
of options and
recommendations for
future considerations when
planning infrastructures.
All [panels] were good
– information valuable!
Speakers were very
knowledgeable and
informative.”
– Christine Taylor,
Manager,
Ancillary Services
Forest City Residential
Management
SPEAKERS WERE AWESOME
“All the speakers were awesome and the presentations
were great.”
—D
onna Sullivan, Technical Assistant Director
NC Department of Commerce – NC Broadband
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
BASED EVENT
“Very useful, hands on, anecdotal,
personal experience based event.”
–M
ichael Anderson, CIO
Spiral Internet
SUBSTANTIAL INFORMATION
TO HELP OUR STRATEGY
“Well planned and good updated information … substantial contact and
information to help our strategy.”
– Rick Mervine, Vice President, Strategic Planning
OnlIght Aurora
Here’s what attendees are saying
about the 2014 Summit!
April 14–16, 2015 • Renaissance Hotel - Austin • www.bbcmag.com
To sponsor or exhibit: email irene@bbcmag.com or call 505-867-3299
Make plans to attend
the 2015 Summit now.
GIGAFY
CO-HOST & SPONSORS
OFFICIAL CORPORATE HOST:
DIAMOND SPONSOR:
PLATINUM SPONSOR:
GOLD SPONSORS:
FEATURED SPONSORS:
SILVER SPONSORS:
To exhibit or sponsor, contact: Irene G. Prescott at irene@bbcmag.com, or call 505-867-3299
AMERICA
EXHIBITORS
®
DESIGN NINE
we build networks that perform
D IGITA L
TRENCH'N edge™ Micro Tre
TRENCH'N edge™ Micro Trencher
To exhibit or sponsor, contact: Irene G. Prescott at irene@bbcmag.com, or call 505-867-3299
A BIG YEAR FOR BROADBAND:
New Economics, New Technology, Net Regulations
WHY ATTEND THE SUMMIT:
For broadband, the recession is over... but the
landscape has been altered. Indeed, a perfect
storm is brewing over the broadband industry:
• Regulatory issues (net neutrality, fast lane...
and more)
• Massive data flows over myriad wireless devices
in homes and businesses
• The latest technological marvels such as DOCSIS
3.1, carrier-grade Wi-Fi, the “Internet of Things,”
and software-defined networking
• New housing economics – a boom in
multiple-dwelling-unit construction but for
rentals, not ownership
• Renewed
government interest
in (and incentives
Substantial contact
for) broadband at
and information to
all levels for public
help all strategies
safety (FirstNet), global
climate change issues
(smart grid, energy
conservation), and economic development
It is no wonder that the availability of fiberborne connectivity continues to increase – a
10% growth in premises passed by fiber in
2014 alone!
Sure, there are other events centered on
broadband technology. But year after year,
only the Broadband Summit focuses on what
the technology means for your business.
Only the Broadband
Summit details
the ever-changing
business cases for all
stakeholders, from
MDU owners and
managers to legal and
technical specialists.
Excellent content,
plus the best
opportunities to
network
That’s why Broadband Communities survived
and thrived during the recession. That’s why
attendance at the Summit never faltered. Good
times and bad, there are always worries, changes,
reasons to find shelter and reasons to do business.
Earn and learn at the next Summit,
Austin, April 14-16, 2015.
WHO SHOULD ATTEND:
MDU owners and managers. Have you figured
out where and how to provide the symmetrical,
versatile and reliable broadband your residents
need for entertainment, working at home, health
care, education? What about their mobile phones
and tablets? Is a distributed antenna system best
for your situation? Or installations by cellular
carriers? Or managed Wi-Fi? Or a few other tricks
you’ll explore at the Summit? How will all this
change the legal contracts you sign? What’s the
regulatory risk?
Summit 2015 returning once more to
the Renaissance Austin Hotel, within
easy driving distance from the city’s
main airport, The Austin-Bergstrom
International Airport (AUS).
AUSTIN
Can you improve the business case with networks
that meet other needs? The 2015 Summit
welcomes CABA, the building technology folks,
with a day of sessions on making that all work.
And of course, there’s the totally updated MDU
track. Last year’s news won’t help!
State and local officials. Considering a network
of your own? Enticing and incentivizing a private
carrier? Your region’s economic growth and quality
of life depends on it. Two robust tracks -- one on
economic development, one specifically on rural
issues run by the RTC -- will get the juices flowing.
Carriers. Whether you represent a rural ISP or
an urban CLEC or private cable operator, you’ll
get the business case for new technologies
and the emerging regulatory and funding
landscape. DOCSIS or end-to-end PON? Firmware
or software-defined networks? Public-private
partnerships? MSO or PCO? WISP or ISP or campus
IT partnership? Revenue strategies with staying
power? Find it all at the Summit.
The 2015 Summit welcomes the
CABA Intelligent Buildings &
Digital Home Forum, collocated
with this year’s BBC Summit.
Planners. Get the details your academic
coursework never covered. Broadband
infrastructure is perhaps the least expensive and
fastest way to add to infrastructure, attract growth,
and improve quality of life.
Consultants, contractors, designers, network
planners. You already know about the Summit’s
business-creating opportunities. You know that
most attendees are real customers looking for real
solutions -- they are not other vendors! Learn from
the masters, too.
AT&T Connected Communities hosting
the must-attend Welcome Reception!
Hint: Bring your flip flops, shorts,
Hawaiian shirts, and beachcomber hats.
AMENTIES INCLUDE:
• THREE Evening Cocktail Receptions
• THREE Continental Breakfasts
• MAJOR Keynote Awards Luncheon
• TWO Working Lunches
• MULTIPLE Refreshment Breaks
50+ SESSIONS WILL HIGHLIGHT:
Don’t miss the new “Wireless Revolution”
general sessions. Good wireless depends on
good fiber backhaul and local area networking.
Today’s fiber business cases depend on wireless
revenue. See how, see the latest technologies
and business cases.
Developers and Builders. Sure broadband is
good and more broadband is better. But where
do you get the funding? How do you structure
the business case? Who does the work? What are
the risks? In Summit panels, world-class talks by
top officials and experts, workshops and the
many opportunities for casual discussion, the
Summit delivers.
• The Wireless Revolution
• Financing Fiber Networks – day-long program
• World-Class Keynotes
• The latest rural strategies
• New market research for MDUs and more
• Latest economic development strategies
REGISTER NOW AND GET
MAJOR DISCOUNTS
Don’t delay. Low early rates will expire soon.
GIGAFY
2015 Broadband Summit Chairmen
Lending Their Expertise to the Creation of a Timely, Dynamic Program
CEO and Lead Consultant
NEO Fiber
Diane Kruse
President
The Baller Herbst Law Group, PC
Bryan Rader
CEO
Bandwidth Consulting LLC
The Hon. Hilda Legg
Andrew Cohill
Roland Cole
Kyle Hollifield
Jane Patterson
President
Design Nine
Jim Baller
Senior Fellow
Sagamore Institute
Magellan Advisors
Vice Chairman
Broadband Communities Magazine
Former RUS Administrator
and Vice Chair,
Broadband Communities
Secure your seat today by calling 877-588-1649,
or visit our website at www.bbcmag.com
President
The View Forward
AMERICA
THE SUMMIT is the leading event for
network builders and deployers
The Broadband Communities Summit is the leading venue for information on
digital and broadband technologies for buildings and communities. With a focus
on residential properties, developments and municipalities, the Summit has
become a must-attend event for network builders and large-scale and wholesale
buyers and users of broadband technologies, equipment, and services.
An Essential Venue For
Industry Leaders
Developers and property owners attending
the Summit include representatives from such
organizations as:
Matthew Murphy,
President, Grande
Communications
and Dahna Hull, Vice
President and General
Manager – Austin AT&T
Services, Inc. present
keynotes on Austin’s
Gigabit rollout.
Hillwood Communities – A Perot Company • Trammell Crow Residential • Buckingham
Companies • Education Realty Trust • Fairfield Residential • Peak Campus Management •
Special Full-Day
Camden Property Trust • Forest City Residential • AIMCO • American Campus Communities
Program on
• AMLI Residential • Associa • Atticus Real Estate • Herman & Kittle Properties • KB Home
Financing Fiber
• Landmark Properties • Laramar Communities,
Networks
LLC • Midtown Alliance Development • Avalon Bay
Communities • Baxter Southwest Corporate Realty
Top Venue for
Services • BH Management • BRE Properties • Campus
Unveiling LeadingLiving Villages • Post Properties • Preiss Company • Pulte Group • Raymond James Real
Estate • Related Companies • Capstone Real Estate Management • Carmel Partners
Edge Research
Developers • Casey Development Ltd • Choice Property Resources • Colonial Properties
Trust • Edward Rose Companies • Equity Residential • Essex Property Trust •
Flournoy Properties • H Properties LLC • Mills Properties • Picerne Development
Known As The
• Riverstone Residential Group • The Michelson Organization • The Roberts
Top Event For
Companies • Tonti Properties • Trimarchi Property
Best Networking
Management • Trump Organization • UDR Inc. • Verde
Opportunities
Apartment Communities • Village Green Apartment
Communities • Waterton Residential • Westdale Asset
Management.
Broadband providers in attendance include the
major incumbents – telco, cable and satellite – plus
private cable operators, rural telcos, competitive
overbuilders, municipalities, and more. Economic
development professionals, state broadband officials
and community broadband activists are also well
represented.
Rondella Hawkins,
Telecommunications and
Regulatory Affairs Officer,
City of Austin, Texas
To exhibit or sponsor, contact: Irene G. Prescott at
irene@bbcmag.com, or call 505-867-3299
FIBER:
It’s a New
Ball Game
NEW technology, NEW regulations,
NEW revenue opportunities even
for small operators... 2014 set the stage
for making the gigabit nation a reality.
2.7 million homes were newly passed with fiber -- the best year since 2008
and double the low point of 2011. Take rates have continued to rise for FTTH
builds, even as deployments have jumped ahead. Competitive overbuilds
now are closing in on 50 percent of all available customers signing up.
On the technology side,
it’s all positive:
But there’s regulatory
uncertainty:
• Wireless gateways.
• Cellular backhaul through Wi-Fi.
• DOCSIS 3.1.
• New BSS/OSS software.
• New ways to manage networks.
• Growth of Data Centers.
• Optical LANs for business.
• Net Neutrality.
• State restrictions.
• Mega-mergers.
And there are clear trends in
content consumption:
• Cord-cutting.
• On-demand content.
• Need for faster uploads.
Learn the latest about the industry, and network
with your peers at the speed of light.
It’s all at the 2015 Broadband Summit!
Introducing the NEW 2015 MDU Chairmen,
Property Owner Advisory Panel and the
Educational Advisory Group
Expanded Multi-Housing Program
An Agenda Developed by Industry Leaders
THE NEW 2015 MDU CHAIRMEN
Cheryl Barraco
Director Of
Telecommunications
Avalon Bay
Communities, Inc.
Kathleen Austin
Assistant Vice
President
Equity Residential
THE 2015 ADVISORY PANEL OF PROPERTY OWNERS
Scott Casey
Sr. VP & Chief Technology Officer
EdR
Michael Hallbrook
AVP of Business Development
Mid-America Apartment Comm.
Lori Reeves
Vice President
Forest City Management
Karen Seeman
Director, Ancillary Income
Essex Property Trust
Letitia Tucker
Director, Ancillary Services
UDR Inc.
Barney Pullam
Vice President, Business Process
Waterton Residential
THE 2015 EDUCATION ADVISORY PANEL
Steve Merchant
VP, Revenue Strategy
Equity Residential
Linda Willey
Director, Ancillary Services
Camden Property Trust
NEW SYNERGY
Between Wireless and Fiber
Businesses, building owners and building
managers need more wireless connectivity
for tenants’ portable devices -- and only
fiber can provide it. Deployers of fiber
networks need easier, more economical ways to
provide reliable, high-bandwidth connections
to fixed as well as mobile devices in homes and
businesses.
New carrier-grade
Wi-Fi gateways have
emerged as an almost
magical solution, Much
of the cost of FTTH
has been for in-home
wiring. Homeowners’
objections to FTTH
have often centered
around in-home
wiring. Now far-sighted
industry leaders are
asking:
Chris Curtin, Director, Verizon
Enhanced Communities and
Mathew Beattie, Executive
Director, Fiber-to-the-Building
Program, AT&T talk about
delivering fiber broadband to
multi-tenant office buildings.
“What if in-home wiring
were no longer needed?”
Yes, cellular operators are trying hard to get
their customers making calls through their WiFi connections. But customers on DSL or cable
often report that their phones have problems
connecting to their in-unit Wi-Fi, and that if they
leave the unit while talking, the call often
is dropped.
That’s a recipe for trouble,
especially in MDUs. But
A Place
solutions are here, now
Where Deals
– building-wide wireless
Get Done
antenna systems and inthe-home “carrier-grade”
gigabit wireless gateways
that are about to make
in-home network wiring obsolete – if you use the
right wireless technology. Right now, that’s the Wi-Fi
“802.11ac” standard with 4x4 MIMO antennas.
How would that impact
your business case for
fiber? At the Summit,
Three Evening
Cocktail
Receptions
Planned
the experts will tell you
what it means to cash flow
and to the bottom line,
what it means to owners
and renters, and what it means when you sign
contracts with providers.
2015
Cornerstone
Awards and
Keynote
Luncheon
• Find out about the Wi-Fi
revolution that promises
to make high-bandwidth
home networks invisible,
inexpensive and easy to
manage from the network
operations center.
• You’ll get the most timely, most
understandable, and most in-depth look at
this subject at Summit 2015, in a special threehour general session and in additional, specific
panels covering the
technical, regulatory
and customersatisfaction issues.
• You’ll get
comprehensive
answers to such
Jonathan Chambers, Chief of
questions as
the Office of Strategic Planning,
Federal Communications
defining service
Commission holds a
level agreements,
roundtable breakfast with a
ownership of network
captivated crowd.
devices in a building,
the handoffs between a unit-owner’s Wi-Fi
and the building’s managed wireless network...
and more.
DON’T DELAY.
LOW EARLY RATES
WILL EXPIRE SOON.
REGISTER TODAY.
OUR MISSION
Helping Communities Take Control
Of Their Broadband Future
Jim Baller, Chairman,
Economic Development Program
JIM BALLER is the chairman of the Economic Development
program at the Summit and at regional events produced
by Broadband Communities around the country.
With the unique credentials of both economic development expert
and the nation’s leading telecom lawyer for municipalities seeking
next-generation networks, Jim Baller has a special appreciation for your
community’s concerns. He knows these concerns involve creating jobs,
attracting and retaining businesses, fostering economic development
and contributing to America’s global competitiveness.
As Chairman of the Economic Development Program at our next
Broadband Communities Summit, he has described his mission as follows:
“Our mission is to help you meet these goals –
as rapidly and effectively as possible.”
To that end, our Austin economic development track will explore the
relationship broadband and economic development in every session,
with every speaker, and from multiple angles.
As a recent attendee observed, “There were town planners, activists,
civil servants, elected officials, academics, consultants, economists, not-forprofits, educators, healthcare experts, regulators, lobbyists, lawyers, trade
groups, analysts, design/build firms, hardware, software and outside plant
vendors, among many others … The conversation revolved around ‘how?’
rather than ‘why?” Go here for the full review: http://goo.gl/pLh9T9.
Attendees will get useful, practical information – including insights,
examples and principles – that they will be able to take home and put to
use at once.
We’re bringing together leaders and individuals at the very center
of America’s gigabit revolution – in a city that is taking advantage of the
development of entirely new fiber infrastructure. As a result, Austin is
an ideal place to explore the best ways of linking the communications
infrastructure of the future to economic vitality and the quality of life.
Attendees will also receive a wealth of economic research, case
histories, how-to materials, and other practical information to take
home and use effectively in their communities.
In our workshops and sessions,
we will address the latest, hottest
topics – including Google Fiber,
telemedicine, distance learning,
overcoming legal challenges, and
much more.
Attendees will learn about
Austin, of course, but also about
many other state, regional, and
community networks. We’ll
address several ways to improve
a community’s chances of getting
a gigabit network, including
approaches to attract privatesector network providers, develop
public-private partnerships, and
collaborate with vendors.
We’ll also highlight a variety of
successful efforts to fund advanced
communications capabilities
– including investments in
education, healthcare institutions,
and community anchors in
underserved areas.
Other topics include:
• the social and economic opportunities that ultra-fast broadband
provides citizens and businesses
• the benefits of creating commercial and innovation corridors
• the value of broadband in bolstering neighborhood safety,
enhancing education and improving health care services
• and much more
We’ll also have ample time for networking and learning about
relevant cutting-edge products and services.
Corinne Hill, Executive Director,
Chattanooga Public Library
RURAL ISSUES at the SUMMIT
Rural TeleCon: Co-Locating for the 6th Consecutive Summit
For the USA to thrive, rural America must have access to world-class broadband. Nearly 60 million Americans live
in rural counties. Since 2010, for the first time in American history, that number has been dropping! Nationwide,
Broadband Communities has uncovered a clear link between inadequate broadband and rural distress.
WHY ATTEND?
Get the information rural America needs to
achieve high speed broadband. Rural TeleCon
Austin is aimed at developing policies, strategies
and best practices to enable states and
communities to expedite deployment of critical
infrastructure and support the use of nextgeneration broadband for rural prosperity.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
• Accomplishments of the State Broadband
Initiative that can drive rural America to move
forward with high speed – even gigabit –
broadband.
• The Internet of Things is critical to rural users,
who often lack electricity grid redundancy and
will require stronger connections to emerging,
variable, wind and solar alternatives. Join Mark
Johnson and Jane Patterson.
• Monitoring rural America’s health. An all-star
panel including Galen Updike of Arizona and
David Kirby of the North Carolina Telehealth
Network will discuss three years of experience
providing real data on such issues as privacy
and security successfully dealt with.
WHAT YOU WILL DO
• INTERACT in sessions on the $7 billion FirstNet
initiative.
• EXPLORE best practices on the “how to’s” of
rural collaboration.
• CONNECT with leaders and stakeholders at
networking sessions and receptions.
• EXAMINE criteria and guidelines for using
technology to have significant impact in rural
communities.
• Education and its impact on rural America at • HEAR from experts on successful projects that
the community level. Frank Odasz leads a panel exemplify collaboration and partnerships.
on digital literacy training, digital textbooks and
• Panel on rural users. How much broadband
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
rural libraries, to provide information to take
they use, what they need, user demographics
• Representatives from all communities with
back for Community Access Institutions.
and more.
current or planned broadband initiatives.
• Plows to tractors to computers to prosperity.
• Case studies of successful deployments from
• Leaders in Economic Development, Education,
Economist Michael Curri presents the latest
Jason Whittet of IDC – Lessons to take home to
Healthcare, Government, Public Safety.
economic statistics that drive home the
guide future deployments.
need – and the opportunity – for high speed
• Officials from the USDA, FCC, NTIA, USAC in
• Farmers as data scientists. Keith Montgomery
broadband. Panel includes Joel Mulder of G4S
telecom and rural development.
on tools (mechanical and informational) needed on how people deploy rural broadband now
• State telecom and broadband mapping and
by farmers. Innovative corporate responses to
and how they will in the future.
planning leaders.
assist with broadband access, from John Deere,
MacDonald’s and more.
Collaborating for Rural Broadband at the Community, State and Federal Levels
Eric Mills, General Counsel, Connected Nation, Inc. addresses a full crowd.
p
SIX FREE PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS
Come Early For This Opportunity
Each FREE two-hour workshop is a $1,500+ value
Workshops on Monday, April 13th
· All registered attendees are welcome at no extra charge
· Each attendee can attend three workshops
Workshop #3: Gigafying the MDU
Workshop Leader: Richard Holtz – CEO, InfiniSys
· Learn from leading experts teaching six valuable sessions
Workshop #4: Telehealth: Its Impact on a Community’s
Economic Well-Being
Workshop Leader: TBA
Workshop #1: Hands-on Financial Modeling for MDUs
Workshop Leader: Steve Ross – Editor-at-Large, Broadband
Communities
Workshop #5: Legal Issues Affecting Broadband Projects
Workshop Leaders: Sean Stokes and Casy Lide – Principals,
The Baller Herbst Law Group, PC
Workshop #2: FirstNet’s Promise and Benefits to Rural
Broadband
Workshop Leader: Lisa Leahy – Associate Executive
Director, ConnectME
Workshop #6: Introduction to Fiber-to-the-User Networks
Workshop Leader: Larry Johnson – Founder and President,
The Light Brigade
· No limit on the number attending from any individual
company
SUMMIT 2015
Special One-Day Program
April 13, 2015
FREE to all registered attendees
Topics:
· Government financing mechanisms
· Private financing mechanisms – traditional
· Private financing mechanisms – emerging and DIY
· Financing for public/private partnerships
For each financing mechanism, learn:
· How it works
· Who’s eligible
· What kinds of projects are appropriate
· What funders/investors are looking for
· How to apply
· Advantages and disadvantages
· How to combine it with other types of financing
Book your seat today. No additional charge to registered attendees.
THE LIGHT BRIGADE TO HOST 2‐DAY
FTTH CERTIFICATION COURSE AT SUMMIT
Course Days: April 13 – 14, 2015
This two-day course will address FTTH design and planning, physical network architecture,
video systems, Ethernet/IP networks, business and economic issues, and future migration
considerations.
Taught by The Light Brigade to certify FTTH professionals, the FTTH Council’s Certified Fiber-to-the-Home
Professional (CFHP) program is the only curriculum and examination program specifically designed to determine and
certify professional competence in FTTH design, architecture, deployment and administration technologies.
Vital for engineers, consultants and contractors who need to be brought up to speed on FTTH. Useful for manageriallevel personnel and government officials involved with overseeing, contracting, financing or regulating fiber.
Make plans to attend!
Separate CFHP registration required:
• CFHP Course: $1,000 • CFHP Course PLUS Summit Registration: $1,500
EDITOR’S NOTE
Converting the
Skeptics
CEO & EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Scott DeGarmo / scott@bbcmag.com
PUBLISHER
Nancy McCain / nancym@bbcmag.com
EDITOR
Masha Zager / masha@bbcmag.com
EDITOR-AT-L ARGE
Steven S. Ross / steve@bbcmag.com
ADVERTISING SALES ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE
Irene Prescott / irene@bbcmag.com
Go, tell it on the mountain:
Broadband fuels economic growth.
ONLINE NEWS EDITOR
Marianne Cotter / marianne@bbcmag.com
DESIGN & PRODUCTION
Karry Thomas
CONTRIBUTORS
Joe Bousquin
David Daugherty, Korcett Holdings Inc.
Joan Engebretson
Richard Holtz, InfiniSys
W. James MacNaughton, Esq.
Henry Pye, RealPage
Bryan Rader, Bandwidth Consulting LLC
Robert L. Vogelsang, Broadband Communities Magazine
BROADBAND PROPERTIES LLC
CEO
Scott DeGarmo
VICE PRESIDENT, BUSINESS & OPERATIONS
Nancy McCain
CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD
Robert L. Vogelsang
VICE CHAIRMEN
The Hon. Hilda Gay Legg
Kyle Hollifield
BUSINESS & EDITORIAL OFFICE
BROADBAND PROPERTIES LLC
1909 Avenue G • Rosenberg, Tx 77471
281.342.9655 • Fax 281.342.1158
www.broadbandcommunities.com
Broadband Communities (ISSN 0745-8711) (USPS 679-050) (Publication
Mail Agreement #1271091) is published 7 times a year at a rate of $24 per year
by Broadband Properties LLC, 1909 Avenue G, Rosenberg, TX 77471. Periodical
postage paid at Rosenberg, TX, and additional mailing offices.
POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to Broadband Communities,
PO Box 303, Congers, NY 10920-9852.
CANADA POST: Publications Mail Agreement #40612608. Canada Returns
to be sent to Bleuchip International, PO Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2.
Copyright © 2014 Broadband Properties LLC. All rights reserved.
F
or the 11th consecutive year,
this magazine devotes its endof-year issue to broadband’s
effect on economic health. You’d
think there would be no one left to
convince, but that doesn’t seem to
be the case. For example, the author
of a recent article in the Tennessee
Watchdog was shocked – shocked! – to
discover that people use broadband
for entertainment. This undermines
the claim that broadband is needed for
economic development, he said.
The point is not that broadband
users watch football games and cat
videos or read celebrity gossip. Drivers
on public roads may be headed toward
karaoke bars, but people still need
roads to keep the economy moving.
Electricity powers video game consoles,
but it also powers factories.
Rather, the point is that, without
broadband, people have a hard time
making a living, getting an education,
updating their skills or staying healthy.
And the bar is rising – in the article
Bad Broadband Equals Low Population
Growth (p. 92), Steve Ross notes that
it now takes 25 Mbps broadband to
keep economies ticking; counties
without widespread access to 25
Mbps broadband are experiencing low
population growth or even population
loss. The population exodus might be
even greater were it not for the fact that
older residents have their life savings
tied up in houses that have become
essentially unsalable.
The article The Killer App for Local
Fiber Networks (p. 96) summarizes a
vast body of statistical and anecdotal
evidence showing that broadband is
good for local economies, and more
broadband is even better. Most of the
research and case studies cited have
appeared in the pages of this magazine
over the last decade – but their
cumulative effect is powerful. It’s hard
to imagine that seeing them all in one
place wouldn’t convince even the most
hardened skeptic.
SPREAD THE WORD
Skeptics must be convinced, or the
United States will continue to lag
behind other developed nations in
building, adopting and effectively using
advanced broadband. City leaders need
to understand that they are missing
opportunities to improve their citizens’
lives and life chances. They can start by
reading Stephen Goldsmith and Susan
Crawford’s book “The Responsive City”
and the Intelligent Community Forum
book “Brain Gain,” both of which are
excerpted in this issue.
I urge readers to distribute the
articles in this issue as widely as
possible. They are all freely available
online at www.bbcmag.com in several
formats. Send them to the people in
your community who need convincing.
And talk to us about getting copies
of the new edition of the FTTH
primer, which is included within the
pages of this magazine but will also be
printed separately. The primer, written
in nontechnical language, has helped
build community support for many
broadband projects. v
masha@bbcmag.com
Did you 2014
like this article? Subscribe here!
14 | BROADBAND COMMUNITIES | www.broadbandcommunities.com | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
COVER STORY – ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
92
Bad Broadband Equals Low Population Growth /
An original Broadband Communities study based on National Broadband Map and census
data shows a 10-fold difference in population growth rates between broadband haves
and have-nots.
By Steven S. Ross, Broadband Communities
2014 FIBER-TO-THE-HOME PRIMER
39
What Fiber Broadband Can Do for Your
Community/ By the Editors of Broadband Communities
This nontechnical publication, newly updated by the editors
of Broadband Communities, is a proven tool for building
community support for broadband.
FEATURES
FTTH DEPLOYMENTS
22
Q&A With Stephen Lane, InteliPort
An ISP in North Carolina is building out fiber to the home using backhaul from a BTOPfunded middle-mile network.
26
Bolt Lights a Spark in Oklahoma / By Masha Zager, Broadband Communities
A rural electric co-op in Northeast Oklahoma gets ready to launch gigabit services.
2015 BUYERS GUIDE
30
Buying for Ultra-Broadband Builds and Services
Where to buy equipment, software and services for delivering voice, video and data.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
71
The Responsive City: Chicago /
How broadband apps enable Chicago to improve city services.
72
Smart Cities and Broadband / By Kathleen McMahon, Applied Communications
The smart-city movement can make cities more livable, sustainable and competitive.
76
The Stratford Story /
82
PROVIDER
PERSPECTIVE
20
Are You Still Chasing
Road Runner? /
By Bryan J. Rader,
Bandwidth Consulting LLC
To win the race, private cable
operators need more than
higher speeds.
THE GIGABIT
HIGHWAY
108Future-Proof
Communities /
By Heather Burnett Gold,
FTTH Council Americas
A next-generation network is
a prerequisite for a flourishing
community.
DEPARTMENTS
14 EDITOR’S NOTE
18 BANDWIDTH HAWK
106MARKETPLACE ADS
107ADVERTISER INDEX /
CALENDAR
By Stephen Goldsmith and Susan Crawford, Harvard University
ABOUT THE COVER
By Robert Bell, John Jung and Louis Zacharilla, Intelligent Community Forum
Strategic use of broadband helps a small city in Ontario, Canada, punch above its
weight in the national economy.
The Challenge of Mass Innovation / By Frank Odasz, Lone Eagle Consulting
Grass-roots economic development shouldn’t be ignored – and it may not require
gigabit bandwidth.
86
Community Fiber Networks Boost Economic Development /
Highlights of the Broadband Communities Northeast regional conference.
96
The Killer App for Local Fiber Networks /
What’s the most important use for a fiber network? Most communities would say it’s
economic development.
Cover artist Irving Grunbaum
imagines the intersection of supply,
demand and bandwidth.
A BBC Staff Report
By Jim Baller, Joanne Hovis and Ashley Stelfox, Coalition for Local Internet Choice, and
Masha Zager, Broadband Communities
TECHNOLOGY
104 Nontraditional PON Architectures / By Tom Anderson, CommScope
IN THIS ISSUE
Visit www.bbcmag.com
for up-to-the-minute
news of broadband
trends, technologies
and deployments
t witter.com/bbcmag
Creative solutions for areas with limited fiber and spread-out neighborhoods.
16 | BROADBAND COMMUNITIES | www.broadbandcommunities.com | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014
BANDWIDTH HAWK
Bandwidth: Good for Rural
Residents, Good for the Country
The broadband haves and have-nots share the same economy.
By Steven S. Ross / Broadband Communities
R
ailroads. Canals. Harbors. Roads. Airports.
Electricity. Schools. Water. And now, broadband.
After more than a decade of producing annual issues
that highlight economic development, this magazine has
progressed from proving that bandwidth produces jobs to
proving that more bandwidth produces more jobs.
The evidence, detailed in this issue (p. 92), is overwhelming
and disturbing. An exclusive Broadband Communities
analysis of data for all 3,144 U.S. counties shows that counties
in the bottom half of their state rankings for access to 25
Mbps download speeds had a population growth of only 0.27
percent from 2010 through the end of 2013. The top half
enjoyed growth of 2.79 percent – more than 10 times greater.
In actual numbers, counties in the bottom half of their
state rankings added just 134,390 people, and those in the
top half added more than 7.2 million.
The counties ranked in the lowest 10 percent for broadband
access lost 0.55 percent of their population on average. The top
10 percent gained 3.18 percent. The single top-ranked counties
in each state grew even faster – 3.61 percent.
Most, though not all, of the disadvantaged counties are
rural. Their population densities are low, and the business
case for good broadband there is worse than in urban areas.
Indeed, for the first time in the nation’s history, from 2010 to
2012 the majority of rural counties lost population.
Many would say that’s tough, but capitalism is a hard
taskmaster. If it is more efficient for people to live in cities,
why should anyone try to interfere? Here’s why:
• First, the regulatory system is rigged against rural areas;
the game isn’t fair.
• Second, when rural residents have to move to cities, new
infrastructure must be built in cities to accommodate them.
• Third, any policy that fosters income disparities reduces
countries’ potential for economic growth.
• Fourth, if you eat food, you depend on people being able
to live, work and communicate in rural areas. That’s where
the farms are.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development says reducing income inequality would boost
economic growth. Countries where income inequality is
decreasing grow faster than those with rising inequality.
The United States lost between 6 and 10 percent of its prerecession growth to inequality. The impact of inequality on
growth stems from the gap between the bottom 40 percent
and the rest of society, not just the poorest few. The best
remedy is to increase access to public services, such as highquality education, training and health care – the very services
broadband can help deliver most efficiently.
The study, Trends in Income Inequality and Its Impact
on Economic Growth, is available at www.oecd.org/social/
inequality-and-poverty.htm.
In developed countries, population change is a good proxy
for economic change. The population grows in regions where
there are jobs, and each new job creates more jobs as the
newly employed spend their earnings.
The fact that 19 states restrict communities from building
their own broadband networks not only hurts communities
that lack broadband but also increases the need for public
expenditure on schools, roads and other infrastructure in
places that are advantaged. It also weakens the capital base of
rural lenders because of the deflation of rural asset values.
Lawmakers say the issue is fair competition. However,
the very ability of municipalities to threaten construction of
their own systems often rouses private enterprise to improve
existing infrastructure. Some incentives exist for publicprivate partnerships as well. These should be improved and
backed with access to needed new capital.
Public entities “lose” money on schools, roads, police,
and fire protection. A public entity merely has to break even
on broadband, as it does for water and power. On average,
fiber-to-the-home deployers can break even today with about
eight paying households per road mile. The national average
is almost 50 premises per road mile, of which about 25 would
become paying customers. But large corporations cannot
merely break even. They cannot merely do well. They have
to do better than their industry peers. They can’t do that by
building in depressed areas.
That has to change. At the Broadband Communities
Summit in Austin next April, get all the latest data and the
latest thinking on all sides of the issue. Your success and the
future prosperity of the United States may depend on it. v
Contact the Bandwidth Hawk at steve@bbcmag.com.
Did you 2014
PROVIDER PERSPECTIVE
Are You Still Chasing Road Runner?
Private cable operators have to keep up with changing expectations about speeds and
products – but that’s not how they’re going to win the race.
By Bryan Rader / Bandwidth Consulting LLC
T
he high-speed business has changed so much over the
last 20 years. In the mid-1990s, cable operators such
as Time Warner were looking for ways to convert their
cable plant to offer broadband.
It started a trend of rapid change in the cable industry.
After Time Warner tested a DOCSIS cable modem with
select customers, it officially launched a high-speed product
on September 10, 1996, in Akron, Ohio. Time Warner called
the service Road Runner, after the bird that the Warner Bros.
cartoon character Wile E. Coyote chased for decades. After
this product launch, the industry was off to the races.
High-speed cable was a step up from the DSL service that
telcos offered and was certainly a big improvement over the
very popular AOL, which used a dial-up connection – twice as
expensive but a hundred times faster. By the end of 1998, the
cable industry had 550,000 high-speed Internet customers.
As we all know, this was just the beginning. The initial 256
Kbps product was expanded to 500 Kbps and then to 1 Mbps.
Speeds grew, bundles expanded and customers always wanted
more, even while price points remained relatively constant.
The cable industry has followed the Road Runner down
the Internet superhighway to speeds of around 1 gigabit.
Applications evolved to include streaming of every kind of
video content using all types of devices. Usage skyrocketed
from 30 minutes a month per household in 1998 to more
than 500 hours a month per household. The industry has
more than 60 million customers in the U.S., and it’s still
growing. Time Warner’s selection of the Road Runner image
was right on target, as speeds increased, features expanded and
quality of service was redefined every year.
Pretty scary cartoon depiction of the cable market, right?
Each year, customers want more speed, and competitors are
always willing to give it to them.
KEEPING UP WITH CHANGE
It’s hard to compete in a market that’s always going through
radical change. How can an operator keep up?
In many ways, though, the “market” hasn’t changed at
all. Yes, the products continue to evolve. But customers,
audiences and the business itself haven’t changed at all.
Last month, I moderated a panel of longtime multipledwelling-unit (MDU) property owners who were nationally
recognized as industry leaders. When asked about how things
have changed, they rattled off new floor-plan concepts,
different countertop qualities and unique common-area
amenities, such as rock-climbing walls.
Their message to private cable operators (PCOs) was, “You
still have to satisfy my residents with better service than the
local cable company, you need to develop a strong relationship
with my on-site team and you should customize the right
product offering to make my community special.”
Wait a minute. Aren’t these the same messages we heard
18 years ago when Road Runner first launched? “Focus on the
resident,” “Build your support model around the on-site staff”
and “Customize for me.”
Though products go through constant evolution – analog
to digital, dial-up to gigabit – the market hasn’t changed at
all. The message from the MDU leaders makes it clear.
The apartment market still operates on the same principles
it did in the mid-1990s: Location matters. Curb appeal is
important. Amenities add value. Yes, technology has changed
the way owners run their businesses, but success is still driven
by strong leasing staff, talented maintenance folks, disciplined
managers and relationships with key vendors.
PCOs should recognize that although their world has
changed, their ability to succeed in the MDU world has
not. The same principles still apply: Take care of each user.
Manage the manager. Customize the program. This is no
evolution at all.
Remember that in all those cartoon episodes, Wile E.
Coyote never caught the Road Runner. It was a race he
couldn’t win. PCOs should focus on a race they can win by
staying true to the core principles of the MDU market, which
continue to be the same as they were many years ago. v
Bryan Rader is CEO of Bandwidth Consulting LLC, which
assists providers in the multifamily market. You can reach Bryan
at bryanjrader@yahoo.com or at 636-536-0011. Learn more at
www.bandwidthconsultingllc.com.
Did you 2014
FTTH DEPLOYMENT
Q&A With Stephen Lane,
InteliPort
Backhaul from a BTOP-funded middle-mile network and the clever use of FTTH
technology make it possible to deliver ultra-high-speed broadband to small cities in
North Carolina.
I
nteliPort is a North Carolina ISP that is
now building out fiber to the home in
several communities, thanks to a middlemile network funded by the BTOP program.
Recently, Broadband Communities had
the opportunity to talk with Stephen Lane,
president of the company. Following are
highlights of that conversation.
Broadband Communities: How did you decide to
deploy fiber to the home?
Stephen Lane: We’ve been in business since
1997 and are one of the few local Internet
service providers still functioning in the
black. Customer service is very important
for us, and we’ve learned from our mistakes.
We first looked at FTTH in the mid-2000s,
but we couldn’t wrap our budgets around
it. However, we knew we had to start
doing something besides wireless. We’re
using unlicensed wireless spectrum, and it
doesn’t scale very well. In North Carolina,
it’s difficult to penetrate many locations.
There’s less and less spectrum and more and
more devices. It’s a very crowded space. So
we looked at hybrid systems, we looked at
everything and then finally we realized, “We
can do this.”
BBC: What changed the economics of fiber for you?
SL: Originally, we didn’t have enough money
to build to a location where we could get
cheap enough backhaul. We started working
with MCNC early on but never could put
Stephen Lane runs a quality-control test on a Genexis ONT.
anything together till their BTOP project.
[MCNC builds and operates the North
Carolina Research and Education Network,
which was vastly expanded as a result of $144
million in grants from the BTOP program
and the Golden LEAF Rural Broadband
Initiative.] After that, we acquired 500 miles
of fiber from them through indefeasible rights
of use. MCNC has been very supportive to
us and to other last-mile providers,
trying to facilitate our builds.
We picked areas along the route
we started with, from Elizabeth
City to Rocky Mount, and
designated six cities, with a modest
goal of 1,250 active subscribers
by the end of the year. We started
laying fiber in the ground in
October 2013 and finished Rocky
Mount in April and Elizabeth City
in May. We’ve started marketing
door to door – door hangers, block
parties, social media – and we’re
getting good press. We installed
free Wi-Fi in Elizabeth City;
the equipment was paid for by
donations, and we donated the
management and bandwidth for one
year. People can get Wi-Fi for free,
but they still want to pay for fiber!
Our goal is to build gigabit
towns and cities throughout North
Carolina. We have to thank Google
for that – they put the “gigabit” into
the consciousness of the country.
BBC: Are you following the same plan as
Google? Are you using fiberhoods, for
example?
SL: Our business plans are similar
in nature, but there are some
differences. We want to serve
businesses as well as residential
users. We need 35 percent of
premises (residential, business
or multiple-dwelling-unit) to
preregister in each area, or we
will not build. We have to be very
careful about growth and failure.
We know that if you grow too fast
and can’t handle it, you’ll fall down.
So we took a number we could selffinance and do at a very reasonable
pace, where we could design,
build, install and turn up fiber
in a meticulous manner and have
enough cash coming in that would
allow us to bring people in and rent
or purchase equipment. Along the
way, we found investors with deep
pockets who were willing to finance
the business going forward.
We are asking for preregistration
in the same way Google is. The
money is refundable or applied to
the first bill. That $10 is symbolic.
People are saying, “We really do
want it; here’s money.” In one area
with an older population, a gated
community, there were holdouts
who didn’t want to risk putting
their credit card numbers online.
We worked something out for them.
BBC: Google originally thought it would
just offer Internet access but ended up
offering video as well. Are you doing
that, too?
SL: No, we’re not. We looked at
partnering with others for video and
realized there’s not enough meat on
the bone. Data services offer the best
revenue stream with the most profit.
I believe the industry is
changing drastically – cable
companies will start selling à la
carte programming, and [content
owners] will start selling directly to
consumers. So if we ever do video,
we’d do it from a local standpoint,
offering local channels. For other
programming, we’d teach people
about over-the-top boxes and which
ones to use and work out deals with
entertainment companies.
BBC: What kinds of data speeds are you
offering?
SL: We got started small – we’re
offering gigabit connections only
within the local network, so people
can telecommute via VLAN at
gigabit speed. For Internet access,
we’re offering 60 Mbps upstream
and downstream for residential
service and 80 Mbps upstream and
downstream for business service.
There are no data caps or contracts.
We’re planning to test gigabit
access for $119 per month, but we
have to be careful not to oversell it. I
don’t know if we can provide gigabit
access across the board at this point.
The fact that we have to go directly
to [the Internet gateway node in]
Raleigh drives up the cost for us –
we can’t get an Internet connection
from MCNC because we aren’t a
not-for-profit, even though we can
lease their fiber. But if we can scale
up further, more backhaul options
will become available.
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 | www.broadbandcommunities.com | BROADBAND COMMUNITIES | 23
FTTH DEPLOYMENT
When you give customers what they want,
they will stay with you.
BBC: Why did you choose an active
Ethernet architecture?
SL: We didn’t want to be married
to a manufacturer. If we had
millions invested in PON and we
wanted to retool, it would cost a
lot. In addition, active Ethernet
gives people true connectivity. We
wanted to offer symmetrical speeds,
to unleash speed to users.
BBC: One unusual equipment choice was
the Genexis modular optical network
terminal for the customer premises.
This device, which has separate,
snap-on layers for fiber termination,
network termination and residential
gateway, is better known in Europe
than in the United States. How did
you find out about it?
SL: We were being frugal and smart
and looking for technology all
over the world. That’s how we kept
our equipment and installation
costs down. We were following the
progress of the B4RN project in the
UK – it’s a very grass-roots project
[in which customers do much of the
fiber installation work], and we were
wondering if the American public
would hook onto this concept. We
realized very quickly we were not
going to be able to do that, but we
got interested in the equipment
they were using. We found a
picture of their ONT, did a Google
image search on it and found a
video showing how the Titanium
residential gateway product worked.
We were intrigued by the modular
approach, so we got samples from
Bruce Hudson at Genexis and put
them through our lab.
We were doing things that
surprised even the Genexis engineers,
so they made some modifications
for us, and we worked out a price
point. For example, we customized
the product by putting a bridging
adapter with the routing unit so
customers could add their own
equipment to the home network, and
Genexis made software changes that
allowed us to do that.
The device has multiple options
– we’re looking at WDM-PON
for the future, and we may be able
to use Genexis for that. [Genexis
currently does not support WDMPON but says it can easily add such
support to accommodate future
demand.] It supports shaping on the
ONT so we could give customers
a gigabit on the network and 60
Mbps on the Internet. As soon
as a unit comes online, it can be
automatically provisioned within
seconds – we liked that part of
it. We tested it against multiple
user devices, and for traditional
packet sizes, we got a standard 92
percent [of headline speeds]; when
we changed to jumbo frames, we
got 98 to 99 percent upstream and
downstream. The support is superb.
We ripped the product apart, and it
came through with flying colors.
And it’s a very sexy product. It
looks nice, it does what it’s supposed
to do and it looks as though it
belongs. Overall, this was the best
device at the lowest price point and
the easiest to install.
BBC: How easy is it to install?
SL: The first time I tried it, it took two
hours, not because of the equipment
but because of me. So we built walls
that duplicated what an install looks
like at a house, and eventually we
were able to install the product in
less than 30 minutes. Now we have
a two-step process. First, a drop
crew connects a house to the splice
point, and their job is to install a
box on the outside of the house –
just an enclosure. We didn’t want
to spend money on enclosures, but
having the demarcation point on the
outside is the best way. It might cost
more, but you don’t have to make an
appointment to install it.
The next scheduled date is the
“blue shoes” visit – an installer goes
into the house, drills through the
wall and sets up the box on the
inside, already provisioned. The
fiber management piece goes into
the wall, the network termination
piece goes on top of that and the
Wi-Fi piece goes on top of that.
BBC: Who owns the equipment inside the
house?
SL: Our customers pay for that
equipment as an up-front charge. If
we had to purchase the customerpremises equipment, we would need
a contract with the customer, and
we didn’t want to do that, except
for a few large businesses that need
service-level agreements. This way,
we don’t need to collect information
about customers, and we don’t have
to have a collections department.
With a contract, if a customer
doesn’t pay, we may not collect
even if we win in court. Without
a contract, we maintain a solid
relationship and just turn the
service on or off. We bill at
midnight on the day it’s due, and
if the payment doesn’t go through,
the card tries to bill again, and if
that doesn’t work, the systems are
automatically cut off.
Surprisingly, there’s been no
pushback at all on paying for
customer-premises equipment.
Some customers are a little taken
aback that there are no bundles and
no promotional deals, but I’d rather
create a customer loyalty program
– on your first-year anniversary,
I want to give you something of
value, such as increased speed or
antivirus monitoring. It’s actually
a simple concept: Just reward
customers for their loyalty. I don’t
want to follow big companies’
business plans because they’re really
one-sided. I’d rather think more like
Google: When you give customers
what they want, they will stay with
you. v
Did you 2014
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FTTH DEPLOYMENT
Bolt Lights a Spark in Oklahoma
A rural electric cooperative in Northeast Oklahoma gets ready to launch gigabit services.
By Masha Zager / Broadband Communities
I
n many rural areas where incumbent
operators have not built broadband
networks, electric cooperatives are rising
to the challenge. Co-ops, which are memberowned and whose mission is to support their
communities, view the need for broadband
with some urgency: Local businesses can’t
thrive without broadband, and when businesses
fail or relocate, the co-ops lose their biggest
electric customers.
Many co-ops began by building wireless
networks – the simplest, lowest-cost alternative
for a company without existing telecom
plant – but in the last few years, more than
a dozen have decided that fiber broadband is
needed to keep their service areas economically
competitive. One of these is the Northeast
Oklahoma Electric Cooperative, which serves
30,000 members in rural communities, tribal
areas and a lake resort area.
The cooperative had some experience with
fiber broadband already. Two decades ago, it
launched a technology subsidiary, RECtec,
which has connected school buildings, libraries
and enterprise customers. So when members,
fed up with satellite and slow wireless Internet,
began pressing the co-op to provide broadband
to homes and small businesses – annual member
surveys consistently show broadband as the top
need – the cooperative was ready to listen.
Finding a way to deliver broadband
took some time, however. The cooperative
examined and rejected several possible
solutions, among them WiMAX (unreliable
because of the terrain and foliage) and fiber
to the home (too expensive because of the low
population density). However, as prices for
FTTH equipment fell and members’ pleas for
broadband grew more urgent, the cooperative
decided to take another look at fiber and try to
develop a business case for it. Eventually, when
it had a business case that made sense, it formed
a new subsidiary, Bolt Fiber Optic Services, and
applied for a Rural Utilities Service loan.
Forming a subsidiary was critical to the
business case, says Alex Mercado, Bolt Fiber
Optics’ operations supervisor. He explains,
“Most boards want to make sure the co-op won’t
have to suffer on the electric side.” Though there
are synergies between the electricity and telecom
divisions, their finances are kept separate to
mitigate risk: Bolt attaches fiber to the co-op’s
utility poles but pays pole attachment fees; the
co-op will use Bolt’s fiber network (Bolt will put
Internet points of presence at the substations)
but will pay Bolt for transport. In addition,
some cooperative employees are working on the
network build, but Bolt reimburses the co-op for
their time.
A SHARED HEADEND
Making the business case required several other
strategic decisions. Perhaps most significant was
the decision to build a video headend. “We went
back and forth for about a year,” says Sheila
Allgood, Bolt’s manager. “Over-the-top video
is coming on the horizon, but we live in an area
where people still like to have channels. … We
felt that, [by offering] video, we would increase
the take rate enough to pay for it.” A member
survey clinched the deal; members indicated
they were very interested in buying TV services
from Bolt, and that convinced Bolt (and the
Bolt Fiber Optic Service’s new data center will offer data backup and colocation to businesses.
RUS) that a headend would be a good
investment.
However, video headends are
expensive, and programming is even
more expensive, even with help from the
National Cable Television Cooperative,
which negotiates programming
contracts on behalf of its nearly 1,000
members. To reduce the risks inherent
in video service, Bolt decided to lease
headend services to other providers
once the system was working smoothly.
“There are probably four municipals
and co-ops that are very interested in
sharing the headend with us,” Allgood
says. “We’re working on a business case
for a client in Kansas right now.”
Sharing the headend is possible
because of the technology that Bolt
selected – most importantly the IPTV
middleware, Ericsson Mediaroom. Bolt
chose Alcatel-Lucent as its integrator
and FTTH equipment vendor in large
part because the company had extensive
experience deploying Mediaroom.
Alcatel-Lucent is providing its GPON
solution (7360 Intelligent Services
Access Manager and 5520 Access
Management System) as well as its
Triple Play Express and Video Systems
Integration solutions. As integrator,
it is providing architecture, design,
engineering and installation services
and coordinating third-party solutions
such as Mediaroom.
Alcatel, in turn, recommended
that Bolt use ETI Software Solutions’
Overture Software Suite as its B/OSS
solution because ETI provides an
advanced Mediaroom applications
set that includes remote DVR
management, on-screen caller
ID, visual voicemail and more. In
addition, ETI had experience setting
up Mediaroom in a shared headend.
Allgood explains, “All of our subscriber
data will be kept separate and secure,
but we will be able to share technology
with our neighbors to quickly and
easily provide services to residents of
underserved communities.”
Bolt also uses Overture for
fiber design and management, GIS
monitoring of alarms, customer care,
provisioning and end-to-end billing
for all services. According to Frank
Gine, ETI’s president, the advantage
of integrating fiber management and
design modules with GIS and customer
care is that information about outside
plant becomes readily available to the
network operations center (NOC) and
customer care representatives. When
the NOC receives an automated alarm
or the customer contact center receives
a call about an outage, the responder
has full information about the outside
plant that may be affected and knows
whom, if anyone, to dispatch for
the repair. Most operators silo their
outside-plant information, Gine says,
but when this information can be
integrated with other systems, “it
becomes a living, breathing entity.”
All Overture modules update the
database in real time, Gine adds. When
a customer requests service, a customer
service rep can provision the optical
network terminal (ONT) instantly and
start delivering the service – and billing
for it – immediately. Provisioning the
ONT automatically updates the GIS
map, and the NOC will receive alarms
if anything is wrong with the ONT.
“The system stays on the pulse of what’s
happening every second,” Gine says.
PRIORITIZING BY DENSITY
Another strategic decision was to
prioritize the project by population
density. The fiber build will take three
years to complete, and the first phase,
which is in the lake resort area, is nearly
finished. The phase-one area has about
FTTH DEPLOYMENT
“The reason we’re doing the whole project is for
the people in phase three, but the only way to
get there is to do the first two phases.”
15 homes per mile, the phase-two area
about eight homes per mile and the
phase-three area two to four homes per
mile. Staging them in this order allows
the co-op to start collecting revenue as
quickly as possible and thus minimize
its debt. Says Allgood, “The reason we’re
doing the whole project is for the people
in phase three, but the only way to get
there is to do the first two phases.”
COMMUNITY SUPPORT
Excitement is mounting as residents
wait for Bolt’s triple-play services to be
turned up. The base speed for Internet
service, 20 Mbps, will be considerably
higher than what most residents can
currently access, and speeds up to a
gigabit will be available to all residents.
More than 1,200 households
preregistered even before pricing was
announced, and the phase-one area
already has a 70 percent take rate.
“Whole homeowners associations are
coming in,” Allgood says. “Banks
put up signs thanking us. We’ve had
support from communities, chambers
of commerce, colleges – it’s been pretty
remarkable.”
Residents are already getting
organized to use the network for
economic development. Communities
are collaborating to draw new
manufacturers into the area, and
a committee made up of realtors,
bankers and others is identifying
other employers that the network
might attract. Bolt will contribute to
economic development by offering data
backup and colocation in a new, secure
data center that is rated to withstand an
F5 tornado and has multiple redundant
AC and DC power systems.
“Seventy-five years ago, rural
America didn’t have electricity, and the
only way they got it was by communities
bonding together,” says Allgood. “This
is no different. We feel it is absolutely
part of our responsibility as a rural
cooperative to take care of our members’
needs, just as we did 75 years ago.” v
Masha Zager is the editor of Broadband
Communities. You can reach her at
masha@bbcmag.com.
Planning Your Gigabit Network?
Prove your business case with real-time customer demand
Take the guesswork out of your fiber deployment
Service Zones™
Delivering successful network deployments
© 2014 COS Systems
617.274.8171 | www.cossystems.com/service-zones
Did you 2014
GIVE YOUR RESIDENTS
THE RIGHT CONNECTIONS.
Residents expect the latest entertainment
and communication technology in their lives.
Cox owns, maintains and monitors one of the nation’s
largest hybrid fiber-optic networks, providing the
bandwidth options needed to support advanced
technology and connectivity. As a Cox Digital Community,
you can provide innovative services like Contour,SM a
personalized TV experience that adapts to individual
viewers. And you always get local support whenever you
need it. Make sure your residents are connected to the
services they want, today and in the future.
©2014 Cox Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Let’s Talk!
Shawn Geagan
Director MDU Sales
shawn.geagan@cox.com
404-269-3979
2015 BUYERS GUIDE
Buying for Ultra-Broadband
Builds and Services
Where to buy equipment, software and services for delivering voice, video,
data and more
I
f you are looking for help coordinating a
complex network project, differentiating a
multifamily property, delivering broadband
to unserved or underserved communities,
upgrading existing networks with state-of-theart equipment, meeting customers’ insatiable
demand for bandwidth or attracting new
businesses to your community, this is the place
to start.
The products and services described here
make deploying networks and services faster,
easier and less expensive than ever before. These
vendors can help you plan and execute your
project.
The 2015 Buyers Guide is for
• Property owners and developers
• Telecommunications service providers of all
kinds
• Municipal officials and advisors
• Contractors, consultants, integrators and
installers
• Banks and other capital sources.
3-GIS
390 Market Street, Suite C
Decatur, AL 35601
P: 256-560-0744
F: 256-560-0746
W: www.3-gis.com
Contact: Dustin Sutton
E: info@3-gis.com
based suite, the 3-GIS Network Solutions.
Allowing users to easily plan, design and manage
their networks, these solutions are focused
on empowering customers to construct fiber
networks quickly by utilizing tools designed to
increase efficiency from office to field. The 3-GIS
documentation process also helps streamline
network operations by providing the ability to
view assigned fiber and fiber availability and to
automate new service paths.
3-GIS Network Solutions offer innovations
for FTTH, such as automated planning,
QA/QC and work packet generation tools.
Leveraging GIS allows this suite to manage
complex connective networks and provide
analytics allowing for signal path tracing,
OTDR tracing and automated design.
Customers: Telcos
Products/Services: Software
3-GIS provides telecommunications companies
with a smart, simple, fast and affordable GIS-
In the index table, featured suppliers are in
boldface.
Staff members participating in the production of
this section included Irene Prescott and Dennise
Argil.
Customer-Premises Equipment
Training
Video Headends
Design/ Egineering/ Construction
Optical Fiber and Cable
Software
Wireline Broadband Equipment
Test Equipment
In-Home Cabling and Networking
Wireless Broadband Equipment
Inside Plant
Outside Plant
PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Voice/Video/Internet Services
Municipalities
Hospitality
Cable TV
Telcos
COMPANY
MDU/PCO
BUYERS
GUIDE
CUSTOMERS
3-GIS
3 3
Advanced Media Technologies (AMT)
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
AFL
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
ATX Networks
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
BEC Technologies
3 3 3 3 3
Calix
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
Clearfield
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
Comcast
3 3
Corning Optical Communications
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
COS Systems
3 3 3 3 3
Cox Communications
3 3
Crownduit
3 3 3 3 3 3 3
DASAN Networks USA
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
Display Systems International
3 3 3 3 3 3
DrayTek
3 3 3 3 3
Fujitsu Network Communications
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
GLDS
3 3 3 3 3 3
GMP
MaxCell
3 3 3 3 3
National Information Solutions
Cooperative (NISC)
3 3 3
OFS
3 3 3 3 3 3
Pace International
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
Pavlov Media
3 3 3
Power & Tel
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
Preformed Line Products
3 3 3 3 3 3
Spot On Networks
3 3 3 3 3 3
ViewTEQ 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
Built on the Esri ArcGIS Server platform, 3-GIS Network
Solutions are designed and licensed with flexibility to meet
the requirements of large to small customers and can be
deployed via an on-premises or cloud offering.
Advanced Media Technologies
3150 SW 15th Street
Deerfield Beach, FL 33442
P: 954-427-5711
F: 954-427-9688
W: www.amt.com
Contact: Rob Narzisi
E: rnarzisi@amt.com
Customers: MDU/PCO, Telcos, Cable TV, Hospitality,
Municipalities
Products/Services: Outside Plant, Inside Plant, Test
Equipment, Wireless Broadband Equipment, Wireline
Broadband Equipment, Video Headends, CustomerPremises Equipment
Advanced Media Technologies (AMT) is a value-added reseller
of high-performance broadband products specializing in data
over DOCSIS solutions. AMT offers end-to-end data services,
2015 BUYERS GUIDE
including expert design and engineering of data systems;
equipment purchase, installation and configuration of CMTS;
RF network testing and validation for distribution systems;
purchase and provisioning of cable modems and routers; and
ongoing technical support for installation and subscribers.
AMT also offers a complete line of FTTH, IPTV and CATV
products from leading manufacturers such as Adtec, Amino,
ARRIS, ATX Networks, Blonder Tongue, Casa, Drake, EGT,
Emcore, Olson Technology, Pacific Broadband Networks,
RGB Networks and ZeeVee. AMT has unmatched inventory
of stocked items, including CMTS, digital and analog
headend products, digital encoders, line gear, cable modems
and gateways, and digital QAM and IP set-tops. Located in
Deerfield Beach, Fla., AMT is a subsidiary of ITOCHU
International, the North American subsidiary of ITOCHU
Corporation of Japan.
and houses up to 288 fibers while maintaining flexible form,
thus optimizing space.
AFL
170 Ridgeview Center Drive
Duncan, SC 29334
P: 864-433-0333
F: 864-486-7310
W: www.aflglobal.com
Contact: Corie Culp
E: Corie.Culp@aflglobal.com
ATX Networks designs, manufactures, markets and delivers a
broad range of products to the global cable television industry.
Other market verticals served include government, broadcast,
hospitality, health care, education, enterprise, private cable
and telcos.
ATX Networks is a global manufacturer of digital video
solutions, including transcoding, multichannel and PEG
encoding, content streaming solutions, bulk video transition/
gateways, RF management, RF filters, transmitters/receivers,
headend and MDU amplifiers, node segmentation, node/amp
upgrades, monitor/control equipment, pads/EQs, drop amps,
digital voice switches and connectors.
Municipalities
Products/Services: Outside Plant, Inside Plant, Wireless
Broadband Equipment, Test Equipment, Wireline
Broadband Equipment, Software, Optical Fiber and
Cable, Design/Engineering/Construction, Video
Headends, Training, Customer-Premises Equipment
AFL provides industry-leading products and services to the
communications, broadband, enterprise and other markets.
Our diverse product portfolio includes fiber optic cable,
outside-plant equipment, connectors, fusion splicers, test
equipment and training. AFL provides PON and point-topoint electronics through a systems integration approach
for FTTx applications, offering a “last mile” strategy.
AFL’s service portfolio includes leading positions with
telecommunications companies supporting both inside and
outside plant. We provide engineering/program management,
material acquisition/manufacturing integration,
installation services, test, turn-up and maintenance.
AFL’s newest products include OSP
MicroCore, a 432-fiber, air-jetted cable with
a 12.6 mm outer diameter, one of the
world’s smallest high-fiber-count
fiber optic cables with a stranded
core; and Sub-Unitized
Premise MicroCore
3.0, a cable that is
ideal for highperformance
applications
ATX Networks
1-501 Clements Rd. W
Ajax/ ON/ L1S 7H4 Canada
P: 814-502-5409
F: 905-427-1964
W: www.atxnetworks.com
Contact: Tim Buck
E: tbuck@atxnetworks.com
Municipalities
Products/Services: Outside Plant, Inside Plant, Wireline
Broadband Equipment, Software, Video Headends,
BEC Technologies
1500 Precision Dr., Suite 100
Plano, TX 75074
P: 972-422-0877
F: 972-422-0886
W: www.bectechnologies.net
Contact: Janel Wilkiewitz
E: Janel@bectechnologies.net
Customers: Telcos, Municipalities
Products/Services: Wireless Broadband Equipment, Wireline
Broadband Equipment, Customer-Premises Equipment
BEC Technologies Inc., founded in 2004 as the North
American subsidiary of the 40-year old industry pioneer
Billion Electric Co., is a leading provider of advanced
broadband customer-premises equipment (CPE) solutions
focused on next-generation wired and wireless IP services.
BEC develops and markets an extensive portfolio of
broadband CPEs, integrating 3G, 4G/LTE, xDSL, VoIP,
PON, active Ethernet, HomePlug AV, HPNA, Wi-Fi,
centralized management systems, rugged industrial Ethernet
and smart-grid technologies. BEC is committed to providing
innovative solutions and continuously improving capabilities
and quality and exceeding the expectations of customers
and their subscribers. For more information, please visit our
websites at www.bectechnologies.net and www.billion.com.
Calix
1035 N. McDowell Blvd.
Petaluma, CA 94954
P: 707-766-3000
F: 707-283-3100
W: www.calix.com
Customers: Telcos, Cable TV, Municipalities
Products/Services: Outside Plant, Inside Plant, Wired
Broadband Equipment, Software, Customer-Premises
Equipment
Calix is a global leader in access innovation and North
America’s leading provider of fiber access systems and
software. Our customers leverage our fiber access expertise
to become the broadband service providers of choice to
subscribers. Visit www.calix.com for more information.
Clearfield
7050 Winnetka Ave. N.
Minneapolis, MN 55428
P: 800-422-2537
F: 763-475-8457
W: www.clearfieldconnection.com
Contact: Johnny Hill
E: sales@clfd.net
Customers: MDU/PCO, Telcos, Cable TV, Municipalities,
Wireless Providers, DAS, Government
Products/Services: Outside Plant, Inside Plant, Wireless
Broadband Equipment, Optical Fiber and Cable,
When it comes to distribution, consolidation, management
and protection of fiber, nothing comes close to Clearfield’s
streamlined, practical approach. Designed for scalable
deployment, craft-friendly operation and unsurpassed
performance, Clearfield’s line of panels, frames and cabinets,
optical components and full range of fiber optic assemblies
and patch cords is designed with the simplicity that delivers
lowest total cost of ownership. Ask us about FieldShield
“pushable” fiber – a Clearfield technology that delivers a
simple, fast fiber pathway through all points of the network
with limited labor and optimal restorability.
With the flexibility to deploy the product platform in
the entire range of applications, Clearfield is your fiber
connectivity specialist. Clearfield is the only fiber assembly
provider to offer the FiberDeep guarantee – a performance
threshold of .2dB insertion loss. NASDAQ: CLFD
Comcast
1701 John F. Kennedy Blvd.
Philadelphia, PA 19103
P: 215-866-8171
W: www.comcast.com/xfinitycommunities
Contact: Mike Slovin, VP, XFINITY Communities
E: Michael_Slovin@cable.comcast.com
Customers: MDU/PCO
Products/Services: Voice/Video/Internet Services
XFINITY Communities works with building and property
owners, developers, leasing agents and homeowners
associations to provide residents an entertainment experience
like no other.
Every building houses a community. Becoming an
XFINITY Community lets you give your residents access
to an entertainment experience like no other with the
best in TV, Internet, voice, home security – and the X1
Entertainment Operating System, the simplest, fastest, most
complete way to access entertainment on any screen.
Plus, as a leader in innovation and advanced technologies,
we are proud to offer our new Advanced Communities
Network – a fiber network solution that can help attract
new residents while giving existing residents what they are
looking for.
Corning Optical Communications
800 17th Street NW
Hickory, NC 28601
P: 828-901-5000
W: www.corning.com/opcomm
REGISTER NOW
The Leading Conference on
Broadband Technologies and Services
Register Early to Receive
Major Discounts
Special Reduced Rates Now in Effect
To Exhibit or Sponsor contact: Irene G. Prescott
irene@bbcmag.com | 505-867-3299
877-588-1649 |
www.bbcmag.com
2015 BUYERS GUIDE
Customers: MDU/PCO, Telcos, Cable TV, Municipalities
Products/Services: Outside Plant, Wireless Broadband
Equipment, Test Equipment, Design/Engineering/
Construction, Video Headends, Training, CustomerPremises Equipment
Corning Optical Communications, part of the Corning
Incorporated telecommunications segment, is a leading
manufacturer of fiber optic communications system solutions
for voice, data and video network applications worldwide.
We offer the broadest range of end-to-end fiber optic and
copper product solutions for telecommunications networks.
We put companies at the forefront of network innovation,
pioneering many of the global products and solutions
commonly used in state-of-the-art cabling systems.
Corning Optical Communications develops and
manufactures fiber optic cable, fiber optic and copper
cable hardware and equipment, including frames, cabinets,
terminals, network interface devices, splice and test
equipment, cable assemblies and fiber optic and copper
connectors. In addition, it provides network services
worldwide. Our commitment to total quality and superior
customer satisfaction distinguishes us as a leader in the
telecommunications industry.
COS Systems
16 Coddington Wharf #2
Newport, RI 02840
P: 617-274-8171
W: w
ww.cossystems.com,
www.servicezones.net
Contact: Ron Corriveau, General Manager
E: info@cossystems.com
Customers: MDU/PCO, Telcos, Municipalities
Products/Services: Software, Design/Engineering/
Construction
COS Systems offers a powerful set of tools to plan, deliver
and manage modern FTTH networks. COS Service Zones
delivers current market insight critical to business decisions
about when where to offer services, and which services to
offer, for a successful FTTH deployment. It identifies and
aggregates demand and cost-of-service information, making
it easy to identify and rank the best business cases, zone
by zone, in a planned service area. Backed by a powerful
workflow engine and detailed reports to document the
business case, service providers and network planners can
confidently deliver up-to-date reports to key stakeholders in
FTTH projects and make important deployment decisions
based on customer commitments and deployment cost
data. Obtaining customer commitments before making
construction plans eliminates the risk of building costly
underutilized networks and enables a cost-effective,
incremental buildout strategy.
The innovative COS Business Engine BSS solution
delivers a proven management framework and an easy to use
self-service marketplace that enables fiber network owners and
operators to easily offer services in a variety of categories from
multiple providers. It makes it easy to market promotional
offerings to highly targeted customers and prospects while
simplifying the process and reducing the cost of adding
new services on networks that support lots of services from
multiple providers.
These products are easily and quickly deployed in
customer networks using Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform,
delivering rapid deployment options and a scalable platform
to grow your network reliably.
To find out more, please visit us at www.servicezones.net
and www.cossystems.com.
Cox Communications
1400 Lake Hearn Dr.
Atlanta, GA 30319
P: 404-269-3979
W: www.cox.com
Contact: Shawn Geagan, MDU Sales Director
E: shawn.geagan@cox.com
Customers: MDU/PCO
Products/Services: Voice/Video/Internet Services
Cox is focused on helping customers discover and connect
to the things they care about in ways that are easy to use
and reliable. You told us what your residents wanted, and
we listened! Fast, reliable Internet service and a unique TV
experience are important to your residents, so we are increasing
Internet speeds again in 2014. Cox’s Contour TV can deliver
a personalized experience for all your residents, and with Cox
High Speed Internet, residents can enjoy streaming TV on
their wireless devices. Our team of multifamily specialists
works with owners, developers and management companies to
come up with solutions to bring the magic to your properties.
Crownduit
214 William Street
Red Bank, NJ 07701
P: 732-212-0220
W: www.crownduit.com
Contact: Bob DePaul
E: info@crownduit.com
®
Municipalities
Products/Services: Inside Plant, Design/Engineering/
Construction
Crownduit is a patented, service access, removable real crown
molding made from MDF that serves as an aesthetically
pleasing way to route, protect and conceal fiber optic,
home theater, audio, video and security hardwire cabling.
Crownduit was developed as a wire raceway that incorporates
an architectural feature into spaces while providing a wire
chase for future upgrades and additions for wired devices.
Removable wire raceways are usually made from plastic.
Building owners and condo associations often object to them
for aesthetic reasons. A hard-wired connection is faster, safer,
and more secure than wireless. It allows for streaming videos,
photo sharing, videoconferencing and downloading large file
transfers. Crownduit makes adding and relocating wired and
wireless devices faster, cleaner and easier than gluing fiber
or stapling cables along the baseboards, doors and crown
moldings. Crownduit allows this to be done with one single
drop to your desired locations.
DASAN Networks USA
5000 Research Court, Suite 700
Suwanee, GA 30024
P: 770-674-0302
F: 888-253-7054
W: www.dasannetworksus.com
Contact: Scott Kim
E: scottkim@dasannetworksus.com
Municipalities
Products/Services: Video Headends
Display Systems International is the third-largest provider of
scrolling TV listings in North America. Every day our listings
data and character generators help keep millions of viewers
informed about cable programming and local events.
DrayTek
No. 26, Fushing Rd., Hukou
Hsinchu Industrial Park
Hsinchu, Taiwan 303
P: 886-3-5972727 Ext 622
F: 886-3-5972121
W: www.draytek.com
Contact: Julia Su
E: jsu@draytek.com
Customers: Telcos, Cable TV, Hospitality, Small and
Medium Businesses
Products/Services: Wireless Broadband, Customer-Premises
Equipment
Municipalities
Products/Services: Wireless Broadband Equipment, InHome Cabling and Networking, Wireline Broadband
Equipment
DASAN Networks develops and markets access equipment,
including FTTP (GPON, active Ethernet, 10G EPON),
carrier and metro Ethernet, edge and aggregation Layer 2
and 3 switching, and triple-play solutions for residential and
business applications, including MDUs.
Based in Seoul, South Korea, with a local office in
Suwanee, Ga., DASAN Networks offers technologies
designed and built for carrier, enterprise, utilities,
government, hospitality and mobile backhaul networks
and applications. Dasan’s fiber-to-the-premises access
infrastructure solutions have been deployed to more than
30 million subscribers. DASAN supplies to major service
providers such as Korea Telecom, SK Telecom, SoftBank
Broadband, BSNL and Chunghwa Telecom. U.S. customers
include New Knoxville Telephone, Horry Telephone, Benton
Ridge Telephone, US Sonet and Hometown Cable.
Display Systems International
2214 Hanselman Avenue
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
S7l6A4 , Canada
P: 877-934-6884
F: 306-934-6447
Contact: Dale Lembe
E: dale.lembe@displaysystemsintl.com
W: displaysystemsintl.com
VigorACS SI is a powerful, TR-069–based, centralized
management system that lets system integrators manage
DrayTek devices conveniently. With its user-friendly interface,
it can help maintain the configuration of devices easily. As
a value-added service provider, a system integrator can assist
users in setting up VPN connections or VoIP services while
keeping customer maintenance fees low by using real-time
messaging from the VigorACS SI. The easy-to-understand
logic management can help new IT staff get up to speed
easily and start analyzing and serving customers. VigorACS
SI simplifies management tasks – for example, by providing
a VPN Wizard that requires less technical expertise than
setting up the complex parameters of IPsec or PPTP.
Through self-hosted or cloud-based subscriptions, DrayTek
Vigor routers can be managed for firmware upgrades, VPN
establishment, real-time monitoring and obtaining proper
customer care.
2015 BUYERS GUIDE
Fujitsu Network Communications
2801 Telecom Parkway
Richardson, TX 75082
P: 888-362-7763
F: 972-479-6941
W: http://us.fujitsu.com/telecom
Contact: Aubree Lambright
E: fncinsidesales@fnc.fujitsu.com
field-based workforce management, as well as telephone and
Web-based customer self-care.
Customers: Telcos, Cable TV, Hospitality, Municipalities,
Utilities, Federal and State Governments, Health Care,
Research, Education, Transportation
Products/Services: Wireless Broadband Equipment,
Wireline Broadband Equipment, Design/Engineering/
Construction, Training, Customer-Premises Equipment
Serving small and mid-sized operators, GLDS has
implemented its solutions for more than 400 broadband
operators in 49 states and 44 countries worldwide. For more
information, contact GLDS Sales at 800.882.7950 or visit
www.glds.com.
Fujitsu Network Communications Inc. has built reliable, costeffective communications networks for more than 35 years.
We bring the power of information and communications
technology to state and local governments, utilities, enterprises
and service providers. Our expertise touches the lives of
millions and opens doors to economic growth and progress.
Customers consider Fujitsu a trusted partner as they
expand, modernize or build new fiber networks. We specialize
in end-to-end, fully integrated solutions for core and fiber-tothe-home access networks. As an industry-leading network
integrator, we’ll work in step with you or alongside the
consultant you’ve engaged to develop, refine, implement
and maintain the right multivendor broadband network for
your community. We’re experts in sourcing best-of-breed
equipment, managing complex deployments and providing
a complete suite of professional services. As your broadband
solution implementation partner, we can help you mitigate the
challenges of complex deployments and minimize project risk.
GMP
3111 Old Lincoln Hwy.
Trevose, PA 19053
P: 215-357-5500
F: 215-357-6216
W: www.GMPtools.com
Contact: Ted Clemens, Director of Sales
E: tclemens@GMPtools.com
GLDS
5954 Priestly Dr.
Carlsbad, CA 92008
P: 760-602-1900
F: 760-602-1928
W: www.glds.com
Contact: Tina Aiello
E: tina@glds.com
Municipalities
A Broadband Communities Top 100 Company, GLDS sets
a new standard for broadband billing, customer management
and provisioning. Stand-alone or cloud-based solutions,
attractive Windows-based interface, and robust SQL database
provide tier-one features without the tier-one price.
FTTH, IPTV, digital and analog set-top boxes,
conditional access satellite receivers, cable modems, VoD and
VoIP can all be managed directly from the WinCable and
BroadHub billing systems. GLDS also offers a mobile app for
• Designed for anyone offering broadband or services over
broadband.
• Billing and provisioning support for FTTH, digital,
IPTV, interdiction, VoIP and more.
• Landlord/tenant billing options.
• Low-cost stand-alone or cloud-based solutions.
Customers: Construction contractors
General Machine Products (GMP) is a world leader in the
manufacturing of tools used to deploy fiber cable both aerially
and underground. Tools offered include fiber blowing and
pulling machines, aerial cable lashers, duct rodders, manhole
access tools, cable cutters, line blowing equipment, and duct
and cable slitters. GMP also offers repair and refurbishment
services for all the equipment we manufacture.
MaxCell
600 Plum Creek Drive
Wadsworth, Ohio 44281
P: 888-387-3828
W: www.maxcell.us
Contact: Mike Miller
E: mmiller @maxcell.us
Customers: Telcos, Cable TV, Municipalities, Government/
Military
Products/Services: Outside Plant, Inside Plant
MaxCell is the only flexible fabric innerduct system designed
specifically for the network construction industry. The unique
fabric construction allows MaxCell to conform to the shape
of cables placed within, greatly reducing the wasted space
associated with rigid innerduct. Network operators who use
MaxCell can increase their cable density by as much as 300
percent.
MaxSpace is a new, patent-pending, no-dig technology
and construction method that safely removes existing
innerduct from around active fiber optic cables with virtually
no load on the cables and no interruption of service. As the
innerducts are removed, cables migrate to bottom of the outer
conduit. Once all innerducts are removed, up to 90 percent
of conduit space is recovered, allowing up to nine more cables
to be placed in the reclaimed space of a conduit that was once
considered full.
Visit www.maxcell.us for more information.
National Information Solutions Cooperative (NISC)
3201 Nygren Drive NW
Mandan, ND 58554
P: 866-999-6472
F: 701-667-1936
W: www.nisc.coop
Contact: Todd Henecke
E: todd.henecke@nisc.coop
Customers: Telcos, Municipalities, Utilities
NISC, a leading provider of information technology products
and services, offers integrated software and hardware
solutions to telecommunications companies, utilities,
municipals and other infrastructure industries and businesses
in 48 states, American Samoa, Palau and Canada. NISC
provides advanced, integrated IT solutions for subscriber
billing, accounting and business solutions, engineering and
operations, mapping, carrier access billing, E-bill, end user
billing, wireless billing, self-service websites, switch and
CATV provisioning, customer apps and many other leadingedge IT solutions. NISC has facilities in Mandan, N.D.;
Lake Saint Louis, Mo.; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Shawano,
Wis., and employs more than 1,000 professionals. Additional
information can be found at www.nisc.coop.
OFS
2000 NE Expressway
Norcross, GA 30071
P: 888-342-3743
W: www.ofsoptics.com
Contact: OFS Global
E: ofs@ofsoptics.com
Headquartered in Norcross (near Atlanta), Ga., OFS is a
global provider with facilities in China, Denmark, Germany,
Russia and the United States. OFS is part of Furukawa
Electric Company, a multibillion-dollar leader in optical
communications.
Please visit www.ofsoptics.com.
Pace International
3582 Technology Drive NW
Rochester, MN 55901
P: 507-424-4900
W: www.paceintl.com
Contact: Matt Caplin
E: mattc@paceintl.com
Customers: MDU/PCO, Telcos, Hospitality
Products/Services: Video, Outside Plant, Inside Plant,
Test Equipment, Optical Fiber and Cable, Design/
Engineering/Construction, Video Headends
Pace International is an industry-leading distributor of
equipment for DBS, SMATV, PCOs, REITs, system
operators, installers, dealers and retailers. Pace offers products
from the industry’s most recognized manufacturers as well as
privately labeled Tradewind products.
Pavlov Media
206 North Randolph Street
Champaign, IL 61820
P: 800-677-6812
W: www.pavlovmedia.com
Contact: Chris Hunt
E: chunt@pavlovmedia.com
Customers: MDU/PCO
Products/Services: Voice/Video/Internet Services, Design/
Engineering/ Construction
Pavlov Media is headquartered in Champaign, Ill., and
offers broadband and television services nationally. The
$)XUXNDZD&RPSDQ\
Customers: MDU/PCO, Telcos, Municipalities
Products/Services: Outside Plant, Optical Fiber and Cable,
Design/Engineering/Construction
OFS is a world-leading designer, manufacturer and provider
of optical fiber, fiber optic cable, connectivity, fiber-to-thesubscriber (FTTx) and specialty photonics products. We
provide reliable, cost-effective solutions for a broad range
of applications, including telecommunications, medicine,
industrial automation, sensing, government, aerospace and
defense. These products help our customers meet the needs of
consumers and businesses today and into the future.
Left to right: Pavlov Media Purple Puppy; Dorothy Kallmayer, Regional
Vice President of Sales; Mark Scifres, CEO
2015 BUYERS GUIDE
company provides fiber services on its national backbone
network, delivering speeds up to ten Gbps. We specialize
in private Internet Protocol networks designed, constructed
and operated by a team of dedicated professionals from
the multifamily real estate industry. We add value to
properties and businesses by delivering IP products that
enhance customer satisfaction and protect assets. For more
information, visit www.pavlovmedia.com.
Power & Tel
2673 Yale Ave.
Memphis, TN 38112
P: 901-866-3300
F: 901-320-3485
W: www.ptsupply.com
Contact: Melissa Seibring
E: Melissa.seibring@ptsupply.com
Customers: Telcos, Cable TV, Municipalities
Products/Services: Data Centers, Export Business, Home
Networking, Network Electronics, Outside Plant, Power,
Test Equipment, TV & Video, Wire & Cable, Material
Management
For building or maintaining a network, having the right
material at the right time is critical to success. Power & Tel
is a reliable source for the various products and technologies
needed to provide broadband services. As a partner to the
communications industry for more than half a century, Power
& Tel also understands commitment to customers and the
business factors that allow for long-term success in an everchanging marketplace. By utilizing Power &Tel’s expertise in
moving and managing products within the supply chain, you
can place even greater focus on serving your customers and
meeting your profit objectives.
660 Beta Drive
Mayfield Village, OH 44143
P: 440-461-5200
F: 440-442-8816
W: www.preformed.com
Contact: Bill Upton
E: inquiries@preformed.com
Customers: MDU/PCO, Telcos, Cable TV, Municipalities
Products/Services: Outside Plant, Inside Plant
Founded in 1947, Preformed Line Products (PLP) is an
international designer and manufacturer of high-quality
cable anchoring and control hardware systems, fiber optic
and copper splice closures, high-speed cross-connect devices,
fiber connectivity components, structured cabling solutions
and photovoltaic system components and enclosures.
Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, the company operates
three domestic manufacturing centers, located in Rogers,
Ark.; Albuquerque, N.M.; and Albemarle, N.C. PLP serves
worldwide markets through international operations in
Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, England,
France, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland,
Russia, South Africa, Spain and Thailand.
Spot On Networks
55 Church Street, Suite 200
New Haven, CT 06510
P: 203-523-5231
W: http://www.spotonnetworks.com
Contact: Jessica DaSilva
E: jdasilva@spotonnetworks.com
Customers: MDU/PCO, Hospitality, Municipalities,
Commercial Real Estate
Products/Services: Voice/Video/Internet Services, Wireless
Broadband Equipment, Wireline Broadband Equipment
Spot On Networks (SON) is a wireless Internet service
providing managed UserSafe WiFi and WiFi Calling
networks to multitenant properties, assisted living, hotels and
commercial spaces. Spot On Networks wireless infrastructure
supports multiple wireless add-ons, such as CellBoost indoor
cellular coverage, security, energy management and patient
tracking.
ViewTEQ
1020 NW 6th St., Suite A
Deerfield Beach, FL 33442
P: 954-351-1121
F: 954-351-6977
W: www.viewteq.com
Contact: Charles Mildenberger
E: charliem@viewteq.com
Customers: MDU/PCO, Telcos, Cable TV, Hospitality
Products/Services: Test Equipment, Active Electronics,
Headend Equipment, RF Signal Management, CustomerPremises Equipment
The ViewTEQ headend product line offers operators a
variety of solutions for signal management, including IPTV
options. The test equipment line provides field personnel with
tools needed for verification of optical and RF signals. The
drop security product line and other drop products provide
networks with protection from unwarranted intrusion, theft
of services and introduction of signal interference. v
Did you 2014
Contents
Reliability...
Bandwidth...
Affordability...
Future-Proofing...
Symmetry...
3
8
9
11
12
WHY FIBER?
Optical fiber is the basis of the world’s communications
systems. Its limitless capacity can easily support today’s
broadband services and those of the future.
FIBER AND BANDWIDTH
Driven by video, the demand for bandwidth continues to
grow. Unlike copper, optical fiber carries high bandwidth
over long distances – in both directions.
FIBER: THE LIGHT FANTASTIC
Fiber is superior to copper in many ways. It’s strong, resilient
and impervious to lightning strikes.
IS IT REALLY FIBER TO THE HOME?
Not all “fiber networks” are FTTH!
WHY WE’LL ALWAYS NEED MORE
BANDWIDTH
Bandwidth growth and innovation go hand in hand. New
devices and applications are appearing every day.
14
SERVICES: BEYOND THE TRIPLE PLAY
Providers can deliver more than just the “triple play” over
fiber – including many high-margin services.
15
TELEHEALTH
17
EDUCATION GOES BROADBAND
Security...
Economic Development...
Sustainability...
New Broadband Content & Services...
Higher Revenue...
18
FTTH FOR COMMUNITIES: QUESTIONS
MUNICIPAL OFFICIALS ASK ABOUT FTTH
A fiber network can stimulate business activity and improve
quality of life. Municipalities can build their own networks or
work with providers to do so.
21
GIGABIT TO THE HOME
22
MORE INFORMATION FOR COMMUNITY
LEADERS AND SMALL NETWORK PROVIDERS
Some 100 communities now boast gigabit service – and
new applications will leverage this bandwidth.
Resources for learning more about fiber to the home.
24
FTTH SUCCESS STORIES
26
BUILDERS, REAL ESTATE DEVELOPERS
AND FTTH
Fiber communities experience economic revitalization of
many kinds. They may retain growing businesses, attract
new companies or play host to tech startups.
Surveys show FTTH adds value to all kinds of properties.
28
PROPERTY DEVELOPERS WIN WITH FIBER
Two recent case studies show how fiber can make
multifamily buildings more competitive.
Broadband-enabled health care allows the chronically ill to
live more independently.
Students in fiber-connected schools have access to more
information and new ways of learning.
This primer was originally written by Steven S. Ross and updated by him and by Masha Zager, both of the BroadBand Communities staff. It summarizes research
commissioned by the FTTH Council as well as independent reporting by the authors.
2 | What Fiber Broadband Can Do For Your Community | BROADBAND
COMMUNITIES | www.bbcmag.com | FALL 2014
Why Fiber?
52%
of FTTH customers
are very satisfied
with their service.
branches hundreds of millions of miles
in length and extended deep into most
of the inhabited world.
The final step is to build fiber
optic cables all the way to homes and
businesses and replace the old copper
networks entirely. Yes, many individual
premises now send and receive so much
36%
of non-FTTH
broadband
customers are very
satisfied with their
service.
data that their copper connections, built
originally for telephone and analog cable
TV, are struggling under its weight.
Worldwide, network operators
agree that only fiber to the home,
Photo courtesy of Adena Health System
W
elcome to the
Information Age –
also known as the
Fiber Optic Age.
The information and
communications revolution was brought
to you by glass – very long, thin, pure
strands of glass called optical fibers. So
much data zips around the world today
in commerce, education, entertainment
and personal communication that
copper wires and radio waves could
carry only a fraction of it. Because
fiber optic cable has so much capacity,
it now forms the backbone of the
Internet, cable TV networks, telephone
(including cellular) networks, private
business networks and even data center
networks. Without fiber optic cable,
none of these systems would work.
Fiber optics was developed for
communications in the 1960s. (The
inventor received a Nobel Prize in
2009.) By the late 1980s, fiber optic
cables were being strung across ocean
floors. Then these fiber trunks grew
< 1%
of any cellular
phone call actually
travels through
the air.
> 98%
of cellular calls
are carried at least
partially on fiber.
One of the new services enabled by fiber networks is telemedicine, which can improve the health
care available in smaller communities.
FALL 2014 | www.bbcmag.com | BROADBAND COMMUNITIES | What Fiber Broadband Can Do For Your Community |
3
Why Fiber?
35-PLUS
MILES
is the distance a
gigabit signal can
travel over fiber to
a home.
or FTTH, can meet the exploding
demand for bandwidth and deliver nextgeneration services. Everyone agrees
that fiber will meet the world’s needs for
the foreseeable future. The only debates
involve the speed of the transition.
The reason for this striking
degree of unanimity is simple: FTTH
offers far more bandwidth, reliability,
flexibility, security and longer economic
life than alternative technologies, even
300
FEET
is the distance a
gigabit signal can
travel over copper
to a home.
though its price is comparable. On
average, it is slightly more expensive
to build, but it is far less expensive to
operate and maintain than copper.
Consumers who subscribe to
FTTH rate it as the fastest, most
reliable broadband technology. They
appreciate that fiber networks can
deliver broadband services for medicine,
education, home-based businesses,
home automation, video and games.
1 OF 5
U.S. households have access to fiber-to-thehome services.
196
FIBER
STRANDS
each thinner than
a human hair, in a
bundle not much
thicker than a
pencil, could carry
all the world’s
Internet traffic.
Businesses are making a massive
shift to cloud services. For economic
efficiency and for redundancy, critical
business systems now operate at huge
data centers rather than on local
computers. The speed, reliability and
security of fiber connections make cloud
services viable for consumers as well.
In the United States, about
one-fifth of households have fiber
connections available, less than the
rest of the developed world. This year,
American broadband providers have
finally begun to catch up. The target is
moving, however. China alone expects
to have 70 million FTTH subscribers
by the end of 2015, with gigabit speeds
available in some larger cities.
46%
1 OF 11
U.S. households subscribe to fiber to the home.
of U.S. households
with access to FTTH
sign up for services.
WHO IS BUILDING
FTTH NETWORKS?
Most of the FTTH connections in
the United States come from large
telephone companies. Verizon, which
started offering services on its FiOS
network in 2005, was the first major
company to deploy fiber to the home
and now accounts for about two-thirds
of FTTH connections. AT&T and
CenturyLink have built FTTH in new
communities for nearly a decade, and
recently they announced gigabit FTTH
deployments in multiple U.S. cities.
The large franchise cable
companies have also experimented
with fiber to the home, especially in
new communities. As the demand for
“gigabit services” grows, they seem
likely to build FTTH on a larger scale
in the next few years.
However, that doesn’t tell the
whole story, because more than 900
entities are providing FTTH services
in the United States today, and most
are small. Nearly all were in the
telecommunications business to begin
with – they are independent telephone
companies, franchised and private
cable companies, local Internet service
providers, wireless ISPs and even
satellite video companies.
In addition, new companies have
formed specifically to build fiber optic
infrastructure in underserved areas.
RST Fiber in North Carolina and
ValuNet in Kansas are recent examples
of this phenomenon.
Local governments are attracted
to FTTH because it positions their
communities for tomorrow’s jobs and
economic growth. In areas where no
private cable or telecom companies have
taken the initiative, many communities
reach out to nontraditional providers or
even build their own systems.
In 2010, when Google announced
that it planned to build one or more
community fiber networks, more than
1,100 local governments proposed their
communities as suitable locations.
Several smaller software companies
have been working with communities
to build FTTH networks. Other
nontraditional providers include
cooperative electric utilities, property
developers and even universities.
It makes sense for these forwardlooking organizations to build FTTH
networks. Most property developers can
enhance the value of their real estate
by putting fiber into new properties or
upgrading existing properties. Some
small electric companies built fiber
1 OF 7
households
worldwide can be
served by fiber to
the home or fiber
to the building.
optic networks to manage their own
facilities and can extend these networks
to serve their customers as well.
Some municipal governments build
their own fiber networks or collaborate
with neighboring communities to do
so – there are now close to 150 FTTH
projects of this kind, as well as about a
dozen FTTH networks built by Native
American tribal authorities. Some serve
only businesses; most serve households
as well.
NO. 15
U.S. rank among
34 OECD nations
in percent of
broadband
connections that
are fiber
200 MILLION
Chinese households can be served with fiber
to the home or to the building.
ESTONIA, SLOVENIA,
SLOVAK REPUBLIC
AND TURKEY
are among the 14 countries that outrank the
U.S. in percentage of FTTH connections.
5
Why Fiber?
The copper and wireless last-mile connections
to customer premises have inherently limited
capacity, unlike fiber connections.
The newest model for FTTH
deployment involves collaborations in
which both public and private entities
take significant ownership stakes in a
network. This model has the potential
to combine the best aspects of public
and private ownership.
FTTH IS THE ONLY
UNLIMITED BROADBAND
TECHNOLOGY
As mentioned, most networks are
already largely fiber-rich. Cable
providers use fiber to get close to
homes and then employ copper coaxial
cable for the last 100 to 1,000 feet.
Many phone companies also bring
fiber to within a few thousand feet
of homes and use copper wire for the
rest of the trip. Fourth-generation
wireless broadband, which is widely
deployed today, usually requires fiber
connections at cell sites.
But the copper and wireless “last
miles” to customer premises still have
inherently limited capacity. Tweaking
more bandwidth from them becomes
increasingly difficult and expensive as
NO. 1
The amenity most
desired in MDU
buildings is fast
Internet.
time goes on. This isn’t true of optical
fiber, whose capacity is effectively
unlimited.
The technologies for transmitting
data over fiber are well understood,
and the upgrade path for the electronic
components that send and receive
signals has been defined for years into
the future. If anything, increasing fiber
At the Noblis Center for Applied High Performance Computing, Danville, Va.’s fiber network enables always-on videoconferencing.
90%
of seniors who
own MDU homes
demand fast
Internet.
bandwidth will become less expensive
rather than more expensive.
THE PAYOFF
FTTH providers enjoy much greater
revenue than traditional broadband
providers. FTTH subscribers today
often spend 30 to 40 percent more per
month than DSL subscribers – not
because basic services are more expensive
(they aren’t) but because more and better
premium services are available.
For example, multiple simultaneous
HD channels are difficult to implement
well over any medium but fiber; the
new 4K TV and high-definition
9X
The new fiber lines
that Verizon used to
replace the copper
that Hurricane
Sandy destroyed in
lower Manhattan
are nine times
as reliable as the
average for all New
York State, which
includes both
copper and fiber.
video communications are even more
challenging. Taking pay-TV services on
the road (true TV Everywhere) requires
high upstream bandwidth at home.
On average, FTTH offers three times
the upstream bandwidth of its closest
competitor. Home energy management
services, home security and medical
monitoring services all benefit from
fiber’s high reliability.
In general, access to utilities
makes private property more valuable,
and FTTH is among the utilities that
owners and renters especially value.
Fiber connections make singlefamily homes easier to sell and multiple
dwelling units easier to rent – in
fact, according to a recent survey by
RVA LLC, buyers of houses and
condominiums are willing to pay a 3
percent premium for a fiber-connected
home, and renters are willing to pay an
8 percent premium.
Renters and buyers both know
they can get the most attractive services
available on the market today – and
that if an exciting new service is
introduced in a few years, they’ll be
prepared for that as well. In addition,
working from home – either as a
telecommuting employee or a homebased entrepreneur – is far easier
with FTTH than with other types of
broadband connections.
FTTH communities have an
advantage in attracting everything from
advanced manufacturing to contact
centers to data centers. They can nurture
the tech startups and home-based
businesses that will provide tomorrow’s
jobs. They can provide better education
and health care for residents, deliver
government services more efficiently and
engage citizens in government.
This publication explores these
issues, and more, in detail. It’s written
in nontechnical language so you can
understand the value of next-generation
infrastructure – and what it means
to you – without a degree in optical
engineering.
In these pages you’ll see... the
advantages of fiber to the home. v
900+
100+
U.S. entities are
deploying FTTH.
42%
is the annual
increase in Internet
traffic – year after
year, for decades.
U.S. entities offer
gigabit FTTH.
150+
U.S. localities offer FTTH to residents or
businesses.
7
Fiber and Bandwidth
Q: What is bandwidth?
A: In a network, bandwidth (what engineers call bitrate) is
the ability to carry information. The more bandwidth
a network has, the more information it can carry in a
given amount of time. Networks with high bandwidth
also tend to be more reliable because fewer bottlenecks
disturb the flow of information.
have both entered the era of big-data applications that
collect and analyze data on massive scales. Today’s
big-data applications range from consumer pricing
models to DNA sequencing to particle physics to control
of electrical grids. Big data doesn’t work without big
bandwidth. A DNA sequencer produces enough data to
monopolize a 2.5 Gbps connection.
Q: What about other kinds of data?
A: Bandwidth requirements for many kinds
of data are exploding. For example, think
about uploading photos to a cloud storage
facility such as iCloud. Digital cameras
can create larger and larger images; 30
megabytes is not uncommon. And amateur
HD video cameras use about 10 gigabytes
per hour of video – the equivalent of 300 of
those 30 MB still images.
In health care, the medical images
produced by equipment such as CT scanners
are a hundred times larger than camera
images, and more. Business and science
Mbps
Q: How much bandwidth – or information delivered
by bandwidth – do we need?
A: The amount of bandwidth we need grows every year.
Worldwide Internet traffic roughly doubles every
two years and has been increasing even faster lately
because of smartphone use. The biggest growth has been
for video – traditional pay TV, over-the-top or Internetbased video, and video communications. By the end of
2013, network equipment vendor Cisco noted that traffic
had reached levels not expected until 2020 – seven years
ahead of schedule.
Video requires not only extra bandwidth but also
extra reliability. The smallest delay in data transmission
can result in distorted views. More video is available than
ever before, and people are watching video on more screens
at once. In addition, video formats are becoming more
bandwidth-intensive. HDTV can require 8 megabits per
second (Mbps) or even more for fast action such as in
sporting events, with MPEG-4 compression
technology. So-called 3D immersive HDTV
– already used in some academic and
industrial settings for telepresence – requires
between 50 Mbps and 300 Mbps. 4K video,
which has four times the pixels of today’s
600
best-quality HDTV broadcasts, requires
16 to 32 Mbps even with the new HEVC
500
compression, depending on how fast the
400
screen action is and how much of the screen is
taken up by fast-moving objects.
Q: Can’t copper carry high bandwidth?
A: Copper’s capacity is far less than fiber’s. It can support
high bandwidth for only a few hundred yards. The longer
a signal travels on copper, the lower the bandwidth.
Optical fiber is unique in that it can carry highbandwidth signals over enormous distances. Fiber uses
laser light to carry signals. Under some circumstances,
a signal can travel 60 kilometers (36 miles) without
degrading enough to keep it from being received. The
international minimum standard is 20 kilometers (12
miles). Fiber is also far better able to support upstream
bandwidth – that is, from a user to the network.
Q: What’s the difference between upstream and
downstream bandwidth, and why is it important?
A: In the debate about FTTH versus copper-based
broadband, people tend to argue in terms of downstream
bandwidth because most users have needed more
DSL Bandwidth Declines with Distance
from Fiber Node
VDSL2
VDSL2, Vectoring
G.fast, Vectoring
300
200
100
0
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
Feet from Fiber Node
The bandwidth of a DSL signal declines with distance from the fiber node. VDSL2+,
the most advanced form of DSL in general use, can deliver about 30 Mbps download
speed at 3,000 feet, depending on the quality of the copper. Vectoring and bonding
(combining the VDSL signals among multiple copper wires) can increase the speed.
G.fast, a new technology, can reach 500 Mbps for 100 feet when copper is high quality,
dropping to 325 Mbps download speed and 325 Mbps upload at 150 feet. VDSL has
very poor upload speeds (typically a fifth of download speed), but G.fast achieves
symmetrical speeds by adding a sophisticated transmitter at the customer end.
The equipment used to
send light signals over glass
fiber keeps getting better.
downstream bandwidth than upstream –
especially for bringing video entertainment
into their homes. But emerging consumer
uses such as home video uploads,
cloud storage, distance learning, video
communication and telemedicine may
require as much upstream bandwidth as
downstream. Small businesses, often homebased, may need upstream bandwidth as well
– consider a wedding photographer sending
proofs by email to clients. Businesses now
often copy all their working data files for
safekeeping to a remote computer center.
Q: What about wireless? I hear 4G wireless
can provide 54 Mbps. In Singapore,
there’s a wireless carrier boasting 300
Mbps!
A: That’s the potential bandwidth shared by
all users connected to a cellular antenna.
A wireless user might get high speeds for
a moment or two if no one else is around,
but average wireless speeds, even for 4G, are
similar to those for DSL. Wireless broadband
depends on fiber to move information to
and from cell towers. Even so, each antenna
can support only a finite number of cellular
signals. Cellular data traffic grew 300-fold
from 2006 to 2013 and will grow another
sixfold by 2017.
Providers severely limit wireless data,
encouraging or forcing customers to use
Wi-Fi connections instead of cellular
networks for data. Those Wi-Fi connections,
in turn, work best when they can quickly
offload data to a fiber network. A typical
cellular data plan allows 3 or 4 gigabytes per
month. Use your phone to view video, and
you quickly run over the limit.
Q: What exactly makes fiber “future
proof”?
A: The equipment used to send light signals
over optical fiber keeps getting better. So
Fiber: The
Light Fantastic
Fiber optic cable is made up of hair-thin (or thinner) strands of glass
that carry information by transmitting pulses of light, which are
usually created by lasers. (Copper cable, by contrast, carries lowvoltage electrical signals.) The pulses are turned on and off very, very
quickly. A single fiber can carry multiple streams of information at
the same time over different wavelengths, or colors, of light. Fiber has
many advantages over copper wire or coaxial cable:
1
2
Great for rural areas. Signals travel long distances inside
fiber cable without degradation – 35 miles or more in some
real-world networks and 65 miles or more in the laboratory.
Easy to deploy. Fiber cable is thin and flexible. An individual
fiber can be thinner than a human hair. Thin fibers can
be packaged in a narrow ribbon or inside a hollow plastic
microduct less than 1/8 inch in diameter. Fiber cable can be hidden
easily on the surfaces of walls in old buildings. There are even hairthin fiber products that can be attached with adhesive and painted
over.
3
4
Future-proof. Once installed, fiber is upgraded by changing
the electronics that create and receive the light pulses, not by
replacing the cable itself.
Rugged and weatherproof. Fiber cable has a longer life
than copper because it does not corrode, is not easily affected
by water and generates no heat. It isn’t damaged by lightning.
Nothing hurts it except a physical cut or the destruction of the
building it is in.
5
Low operating costs and high environmental benefits.
Fiber networks cost less to operate than copper. The most
common FTTH network technology, GPON, uses no
electronics – and therefore no power – between the provider’s central
office and the customer premises, which minimizes operating costs.
Even optical networks that do require electronics in the field use far
less power than copper networks do.
6
Reliable. Fiber is far more reliable than copper. Surveys
by market researcher Michael Render of RVA LLC show
that a typical DSL modem has to be reset by the user about
once a week. For fiber, it is once a month or less. This is critical for
telemedicine and for distance learning, but it is also important for
businesses. We have all sought to pay for something by credit card
only to find that the card reader is not working. This is usually
because the DSL or cable modem connection has been lost. A few
lost sales per month can cost a retailer more than the monthly fee
for the connection!
9
Fiber and Bandwidth
In a properly designed fiber
network, users will always get
the speeds that are advertised –
or better.
equipping an existing fiber network with new electronics
and with lasers that pulse light faster, or lasers that use
different wavelengths of light, can vastly increase available
bandwidth without changing the fiber itself.
New electronics are very cheap compared with the
original cost of laying the fiber. At the customer end,
the system can be designed so that customers themselves
can simply pull an old unit out and plug a new one in.
Therefore, once fiber has been deployed, network operators
can keep increasing bandwidth as needed at very little cost.
Q: How long has fiber optic technology been in use?
A: Fiber optic cable is the foundation of the world’s
telecommunications system. It has been used for more
than 30 years to carry communications traffic from
city to city and from country to country. Almost every
country has some fiber optic cable, delivering services
reliably and inexpensively. The first time fiber delivered
a signal directly to a home (in Hunter’s Creek, Fla.) was
more than 25 years ago.
Q: All providers seem to claim they have fiber
networks. What’s different about fiber to the
home?
A: Don’t be fooled! It is true that most cable and FTTN
(DSL) networks use fiber. In these networks, the fiber
carries the signal close enough to homes so that copper
can carry it the rest of the way. However, this approach
requires expensive, difficult-to-maintain electronics at
the point where fiber meets copper. (These electronic
devices use a great deal of power and are quite sensitive
to lightning strikes. Even the cost of bringing electric
power to them can be huge, depending on where they are
located.) The available bandwidth is far less than in an
all-fiber network. And most of these halfway approaches
do not allow symmetrical bandwidth – cable and DSL
systems generally can’t upload information as fast as they
can download it.
Q: Isn’t a network with some fiber good enough?
A: It may be fine to send emails, download songs or share
family photos. If you want to log on to the corporate
LAN from home and work effectively, or run a homebased business, you’ll need more. And what about
uploading a high-def video of your child’s football game,
or sitting down to dinner virtually with family members
a thousand miles away?
Q: Why does it matter how close to the home fiber
comes?
A: With copper cable, bandwidth drops precipitously
with distance. The most recent expedient, vectored
DSL, allows 50 Mbps downstream for as far as 1,800
feet under ideal conditions. It won’t work on very old
copper wiring, its upstream bandwidth is limited and
it requires expensive electronics. However, it is touted
as an interim solution for network builders that cannot
afford FTTH. A new technology, G.fast, is being fieldtested now; under ideal conditions and with vectoring
(crosstalk cancellation), G.fast is expected to provide
500 Mbps symmetrical bandwidth up to 300 feet from
a fiber node. G.fast may prove to be an excellent solution
for retrofitting apartment buildings with fiber to the
basement (as long as those buildings already have good
internal copper wiring), but it requires bringing fiber
very close to customer premises and is still limited in
comparison with true fiber to the home.
Q: With cable and DSL, there’s often a gap between
advertised and actual bandwidth. Is that true for
fiber?
A: No. Cable, DSL and even wireless networks are usually
heavily oversubscribed – that is, providers promise users
more than the total amount of available bandwidth
because they know all users aren’t going full throttle
most of the time. As a result, networks slow down
during periods of heavy use, such as when teenagers
come home from school. Copper networks are also more
subject to speed degradation due to the condition of the
wiring. Fiber has enough bandwidth and reliability that
providers can guarantee high speeds with little or no
oversubscription. If a fiber network is designed properly,
users will always get the speeds that are advertised – or
better. Data published by the FCC in June 2014 showed
that, on average, fiber-to-the-home services delivered 113
percent of their advertised speeds.
The FCC published data in June
2014 showing that, on average,
fiber-to-the-home services
delivered 113 percent of their
advertised speeds.
Is It Really Fiber
To the Home?
W
hen service providers
advertise “fiber rich,”
“fiber deep” and “fiber
optic” networks, how
do you know whether you’re really
getting fiber to the home? In 2006,
the FTTH Councils for Europe, Asia
and North America standardized the
definitions for fiber to the home and
fiber to the building (also called fiber to
the basement). They are as follows:
FIBER TO THE HOME (FTTH)
A fiber optic communications path that
extends from an operator’s switching
equipment to at least the boundary
of a home living space or business
office space. The definition excludes
architectures in which the optical fiber
terminates before reaching either a home
living space or business office space,
with the access path continuing over a
physical medium other than optical fiber.
Also called fiber to the premises (FTTP).
FIBER TO THE BUILDING
(FTTB) A fiber optic communications
path that extends from an operator’s
switching equipment to at least the
boundary of a private property that
encloses homes or businesses. The
optical fiber terminates in the basement
or, in larger buildings, in a closet on
each floor, but not in home living spaces
or business office spaces. The access
path then continues over another access
medium, such as copper or wireless,
to subscribers. Only FTTH is truly
unlimited, but FTTB can provide as
much capacity as most households and
small businesses can use today. Also
called fiber to the basement. Often used
in multiple-dwelling-unit buildings.
SOME “FIBER”
NETWORKS ARE NOT
FIBER TO THE HOME
Other network architectures, such as
FTTN, FTTC, FTTdp and HFC, do
not fit the FTTH Councils’ definitions.
Their capacity depends on how far users
are from nodes and on the number of
users on each node.
FIBER TO THE NODE
OR FIBER TO THE
NEIGHBORHOOD (FTTN) In
an FTTN network, fiber is extended
to a street cabinet or an on-pole
cabinet an average of 1,000 to 5,000
feet from users. From there, copper,
or occasionally wireless, serves users,
typically through a variant of DSL.
FIBER TO THE CURB OR
FIBER TO THE CABINET
(FTTC) FTTC is similar to FTTN
except that the fiber is brought closer
to user premises – typically closer than
1,000 feet and often closer than 300
feet. Service continues over copper
(rarely wireless), using a DSL variant
or Ethernet.
FIBER TO THE DISTRIBUTION
POINT (FTTdp) In this emerging
Q: Is FTTH technology expensive?
A: In new construction, fiber costs about the same as
copper to build, and it costs much less to operate and
maintain. Building fiber to the home is expensive only
when compared with not building a new network – that
is, with making minor tweaks to an existing copper
network. The problem is that these less-expensive
solutions don’t meet users’ needs. In the last few years,
the flood of video content has outrun the ability of older
architecture, fiber is brought very
close to a building – sometimes right
outside – and the fiber termination unit
is placed along with a DSL modem
in a small enclosure (the distribution
point). Signals are carried using one of
the newer variants of DSL – VDSL2
or G.fast – to anywhere from one to
16 subscribers. Distribution points
may take their electric power from the
customer premises.
HYBRID FIBER-COAX (HFC)
This architecture is used mainly by
cable TV companies and is common
in community broadband networks
built before 2004. In a typical HFC
system, fiber runs to a node in each
neighborhood, and coaxial cable
running from the node serves between
100 and 500 users. HFC networks
typically use DOCSIS (Data Over
Cable Service Interface Specification)
technology for Internet access. A new
version of this technology, DOCSIS
3.1, has an option for the first time to
use fiber all the way to subscribers or
to the basement of MDU buildings
without resorting to RFoG (which
just moves the DOCSIS node closer
to users). Starting in late 2014, we
expect to see a few large DOCSIS 3.1
deployments, mainly in new buildings,
that use this option, with the signal
carried by EPON over fiber (there is
also an EPON over coax standard
coming). More deployments will come
in 2015 as the standard is fully adopted.
copper technologies to handle bandwidth demands. In
many parts of the world, providers shut off or slow down
service or impose prohibitive fees for customers who
exceed monthly bandwidth caps. Customers don’t like
these restrictions, and they don’t appreciate being called
“bandwidth hogs” for using services they have paid for.
In addition, it’s not clear that providers save
money by failing to meet users’ needs because limiting
bandwidth means limiting revenue potential as well. v
11
Why We’ll Always
Need More Bandwidth
Hundreds of millions of consumers store their
data files in the “cloud,” using services such as
Apple iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive
and Dropbox..
not your own PC. Users no longer know
or care exactly where their files are
located or their programs are running
– that’s what makes it a cloud. All they
need is fast, reliable Internet access.
Families now stay in touch
via social media and video calls –
Facebook, Skype and Twitter have
become household words. Businesses
use video communication whose quality
is good enough to bring the illusion of
“being there” to teleconferencing. It’s
called telepresence. High-definition
video communication has even reached
the home market; telecommuting
workers can send telepresence robots
in their offices to sit in for them at
meetings while they participate via their
home TVs.
Today, people visit doctors from
home or work, saving a trip to the
doctor’s office or emergency room if
they don’t need to be seen in person.
(Home telehealth is a great way to
reduce hospital readmissions.) They
take classes from home – MOOCs,
Photo courtesy of UC2B
I
n a century of telephone
communications, the bandwidth
on voice channels changed
very little. Today, however,
Internet bandwidth needs are growing
exponentially. Cisco Systems estimates
that global Internet traffic in 2018 will
be equivalent to 64 times the volume
of the entire global Internet in 2005.
Globally, Internet traffic will reach 14
gigabytes per capita by 2018, up from 5
gigabytes per capita in 2013.
To put that another way, global
Internet traffic increased more than
fivefold in the past five years and will
increase at least threefold over the
next five years, Cisco predicts. On the
Internet, bandwidth drives innovation,
and innovation drives bandwidth
demand.
Sure, increased bandwidth lets us
send email faster, but bandwidth’s real
value is that it lets us do entirely new
things. In the past few years, we’ve seen
Internet video evolve from a novelty
to the standard way of accessing news,
information and entertainment. We’ve
seen a host of new Internet-connected
devices – always-on smartphones and
tablets that keep us connected with
the world full time, smart TVs (and
TV-connected devices such as Roku
boxes and Chromecasts), home security
devices that broadcast alerts and video
images to our phones.
Who had heard of the “cloud” a
few years ago? Today, consumers and
businesses store their data, run their
programs and even access computing
power “in the cloud.” More than 300
million people store files on Apple
iCloud, 250 million on Microsoft
OneDrive, 175 million on Dropbox and
120 million on Google Drive – to name
just a few of the more popular cloud
storage systems. The default storage
location setting in the most recent
version of Microsoft Office is OneDrive,
Fiber ambassadors sign up their neighbors for a new FTTH network.
19 MILLION MILES
of fiber were laid in the U.S. in 2011, a record
year.
44 MILLION MILES
of fiber were laid worldwide in the second
quarter of 2014.
32%
Growth of busy-hour Internet traffic from
2012 to 2013
1.0 PETABITS
PER SECOND
Busy-hour traffic forecast for 2018, the
equivalent of 335 million people streaming
HD video continuously
Telecommuting and home-based
businesses are on the rise, too. A
quarter of all owners of home-based
businesses say they could not operate
without fiber to the home, and
telecommuters say their employers
would be less likely to let them work
from home without fast, reliable
fiber broadband. There appears to
be a pent-up demand for working
from home at least part-time – in a
recent survey of federal employees, 93
percent said they valued the option to
telecommute.
There is every reason to believe
that innovation will continue, that
bandwidth needs will keep on growing
– and that only fiber to the home,
with its superior reliability and vastly
superior upstream capacity, will be able
to keep delivering the goods.
Here are a few of the new
applications emerging now:
•
•
•
•
or massive open online courses, give
anyone and everyone a taste of what
the country’s leading universities have
to offer. The most popular MOOC
platform, Coursera, boasts more than
22 million enrollments in its courses.
•
•
Ultra high-definition video
with four times the pixels of
conventional HD creating massive
bandwidth requirements. (With
the new home video cameras that
can shoot in Ultra HD format,
the demand will be as great
for upstream bandwidth as for
downstream.)
E-jamming and rehearsal
applications for musicians and
music teachers requiring perfect
synching of multiple remote audio
streams.
Remote operation of complex
equipment, such as medical
robots, electron microscopes, radio
telescopes and even nuclear power
plants.
Interactive classes where students
can not only watch their professors
but also participate in real-time,
video-based discussions.
3-D videoconferencing.
Virtual-world environments. v
13
Services:
Beyond the Triple Play
M
ore than a decade
ago, cable companies
introduced the triple
play of voice, video
and data. Fiber’s greater bandwidth
and reliability allow FTTH providers
to think beyond the triple play and
offer services tailored to communities’
specific needs. Some of these services
help differentiate fiber-to-the-home
communities; some generate additional
revenue streams (often with high
margins) or help retain customers; still
others are used by providers or property
developers to manage their assets more
efficiently. Many do all three.
Telehealth allows instant
access to medical specialists
via videoconferencing from a
home or community center. The
videoconferencing may be integrated
with Internet-enabled diagnostic
devices (blood pressure cuffs,
respiration measurement and so
forth), sensor-based home monitoring,
electronic medical records systems,
online prescription services and
online appointment scheduling.
Telehealth helps keep older adults
living independently for longer, offering
The services that fiber to the home
supports can make your community a more
appealing place to live, enable efficient asset
management and generate new revenues.
tremendous savings for payers and
families. It is a boon for members of
the “sandwich generation,” who are
responsible for caring for both their
children and their elders.
Social applications build a
sense of community. They range from
community-focused social networking
sites to intranet sites that feature local
news and events to video channels
that broadcast local athletic contests,
artistic productions and political
meetings. Because these offerings
can be interactive, they easily trump
conventional cable public-access stations.
Home-automation and
concierge services make residents’
lives comfortable and convenient.
Cameras that recognize cars when they
Electric meter set up to transmit smart-grid information
enter a community can alert parking
attendants and security personnel and
then turn on lights and heating or air
conditioning at home. Residents can
view the laundry room, connect to
community services or schedule a dry
cleaning pickup, pizza delivery or home
repair. These applications also help
owners control energy use.
Mobility is easier to accommodate
with a robust fiber-to-the-home network.
Using the backhaul afforded by fiber,
providers can offer Wi-Fi connections to
residents in indoor and outdoor public
spaces without overloading the network.
Residents can bring their laptops or
tablets to a pool area, check email from a
laundry room, check the laundry status
from a community room or listen to
Internet radio in a gym.
ADD NEW REVENUE
STREAMS
Because fiber-to-the-home networks
have virtually unlimited capacity,
unparalleled reliability and remote
service monitoring, fiber providers have
a wide choice of applications for resale.
The smart electric grid is expected
to radically improve the business case
for fiber to the home. Connecting
electric meters to fiber enables
automated meter reading at frequent
intervals, providing massive data for
analysis and planning.
Automated meter reading is usually
the first smart-grid application that
utilities deploy because it is relatively
straightforward to implement and has
an immediate payback. Though most
Telehealth
FTTH deployers that have installed
smart meters are public or cooperative
electric utilities, a few telcos install and
read smart meters for utilities.
Beyond automated meter reading,
such smart-grid applications as
demand-response programs, SCADA
and outage detection greatly reduce
electric utilities’ operating costs. Smartgrid applications are major reasons
that electric utilities across the country
have long been connecting their own
equipment with fiber networks.
Mobile backhaul is another
enormous revenue opportunity for fiber
deployers. The exploding demands
for mobile bandwidth are prompting
wireless providers to upgrade the
connections from their cell sites to the
Internet (traditional connections are
usually copper T1 lines with 1.5 Mbps
bandwidth; the latest fiber connections
are a gigabit per second, more than
600 times the bandwidth). Half of cell
sites are now served by fiber, and more
are added every day. In addition, the
next generation of wireless architecture
(LTE-Advanced, which is now in field
trials around the world) will move all
baseband processing from cell sites
to the cloud; cell sites will have to be
connected via fiber to the hubs where
processing takes place.
Broadband providers offer many
other applications through Web
portals or set-top boxes, often at lower
prices than customers could obtain
by purchasing these services directly.
In addition to creating new revenue
streams, these applications reduce
customer churn, and they lower expenses
by keeping more traffic in-network.
Business services have become
a major new revenue source for
FTTH deployers because the cloud
computing revolution has moved
storage, applications and computing
capacity from the desktop to the Web.
Service providers now supply managed
F
iber is the technology
of choice for in-hospital
networks and for
consultations between local
clinics and off-site specialists, which
help improve the standard of health
care outside major metropolitan
areas. Until recently, however,
regulatory requirements limited
the opportunities for home-based
telehealth.
That’s now changing. A new
Apple initiative, in partnership with
the Mayo Clinic and dozens of other
health care providers, could be on the
verge of helping to solve one of the
biggest problems in the U.S. economy
– one out of every six dollars spent in
the U.S. is spent on health care. This
is far more than any other country
on Earth spends, yet results are
meager: The U.S. ranks 26th in life
expectancy, right behind Slovenia.
To start, Apple is releasing
programming interfaces that allow
any interested parties to create a wide
range of personal health and activity
monitoring apps. The company has
also improved upon inexpensive
sensing chips that can be embedded
into a wide range of products,
from iPhones to watches to home
exercise machines – thus potentially
kickstarting a slowly growing field.
While the Apple initiative
is aimed at younger individuals,
NewCourtland, a senior services
provider in Philadelphia, has been
operating its LIFE telehealth program,
modeled on the Medicare/Medicaid
Program of All-Inclusive Care for the
Elderly (PACE) initiative, since 2007.
In August 2014, it doubled its service
area. PACE serves individuals age
55 or older who are certified to need
nursing home care, are able to live
safely in the community and reside in
a PACE service area.
In the LIFE program, remote
monitoring helps substitute a
$125 per month technology cost
per person for $225+ per day in
nursing home costs. By employing
remote monitoring over broadband,
NewCourtland enabled 33 residents
to move safely from traditional
nursing home care to less restrictive
environments, realizing an annual
savings of more than $1.8 million.
Fiber providers, whose networks
rarely suffer outages, have a huge
advantage over DSL or cable
providers in supporting programs
like this one. Some 104 providers in
31 states had received Medicare and
Medicaid waivers to operate PACE
programs as of summer 2014.
“Keeping even one person
out of the hospital can pay for all
systems for a PACE program for a
year,” said Jim Reilly, then director
of Courtland Health Technology.
The NewCourtland program could
be copied by many local network
providers under current regulations.
Some continuing-care providers
are now using similar approaches,
backed by fiber-to-the-unit networks,
to keep residents from escalating to
higher levels of care.
Remote monitoring also
promises to reduce the cost of
treating patients who have chronic
diseases. A U.S. Department of
Veterans Affairs review of its home
telehealth program found a 25
percent reduction in the average
number of days hospitalized and a 19
percent reduction in hospitalizations
for patients using home telehealth.
For some patients, the cost of
telehealth services in their homes
averaged $1,600 a year – much lower
than in-home clinician care costs.
Several innovative telehealth
applications are being developed and
tested in gigabit communities today
under the aegis of the US Ignite
program. Some of these include
video-based support for caregivers
of dementia patients, a solution
for home-based psychological
counseling and 3D video interaction
for physical therapy.
15
Services
services to business customers that
until recently were provided only by
corporate IT departments. Hosted
PBX services are rapidly replacing
on-premises PBX equipment, and
online backup, storage and disaster
recovery services are replacing the
tape libraries of earlier days. Unified
communications, managed Wi-Fi,
transparent LAN and email exchange
services are also popular offerings. In
addition, many fiber network deployers
derive revenue from allowing business
customers to colocate servers in their
data centers or central offices.
Home security, like many other
technologies, is migrating from analog
to digital. Digitally based home
security allows residents to control
settings, receive alerts and view their
homes via PC or cellphone. Digital
security systems also support a wider
range of sensors – not only traditional
motion detectors but also cameras,
water detectors, carbon monoxide
monitors, smoke detectors and many
others. With FTTH’s high upstream
bandwidth, home surveillance cameras
can even upload video footage of home
intrusions to owners’ cellphones, police
departments or security monitoring
companies. Because digital security
uses wiring already installed for
broadband, it is inexpensive to install
and makes economic sense for renters
as well as homeowners.
Over-the-top video (delivered via
the data service, not the video service)
may be offered as either an adjunct
to or a substitute for traditional pay
TV, and it may be delivered through
either a Web portal or a set-top box.
The business models, technologies and
legal status of provider-delivered OTT
video are evolving rapidly – a fact that
demonstrates the enormous amount
of interest in this application. If OTT
video eventually displaces traditional
pay TV, fiber-to-the-home providers
are well-positioned to benefit because
they can guarantee the quality of user
experience.
Videoconferencing or video chat
is universally available through free
or low-cost Web-based services, but
the quality of low-end services is often
poor. Fiber to the home, with its high
upstream bandwidth and its reliability,
presents opportunities for providers to
make high-quality videoconferencing
available through TV screens.
Targeted advertising represents
an important potential revenue stream.
In IP-based networks, ads can be
sent to households or specific TVs or
other devices based on demographic
criteria or viewing patterns. Another
potential source of advertising dollars
is T-commerce, in which television
viewers click on ads – or even product
placements in television shows – to see
more information about products or
order them.
MANAGE ASSETS MORE
EFFICIENTLY
Broadband enables property owners
to manage their assets efficiently and
allows them to avoid costly upgrades
or replacements of proprietary asset
management systems, such as fire
protection systems. The addition of
broadband – especially the highcapacity, high-reliability broadband
that fiber enables – turns “smart”
buildings into “genius” buildings.
Internet-enabled sensors and
applications automate work that was
once done by maintenance crews –
and get it done it more quickly and
accurately. Broadband applications also
help owners communicate with tenants
and employees.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Rural telco BEK brings local sports events to its video customers; this is the mobile studio.
Guarding buildings and
construction sites can be managed
inexpensively and intelligently
through IP-based video
surveillance.
Videoconferencing allows
construction managers to make
virtual site inspections more
frequently than they can make
physical inspections.
Online work order scheduling
helps property managers be more
responsive to their residents while
reducing operating expenses.
Residents can request repairs
at any time – not just when the
office is open or they can find the
superintendent – and management
personnel can deal with problems
that require personal attention
rather than routine requests.
Residents can be automatically
notified when work is completed.
Proprietary building management
networks, such as fire protection
systems, can be replaced by
standards-based systems that are
less expensive.
Energy management and water
management can be broadbandenabled.
Motion sensors, intelligent
thermostats and automated
ventilation equipment can keep
public spaces and unoccupied
units at appropriate temperatures;
applications that monitor and
analyze usage help property
managers and residents find
opportunities to shift loads to
nonpeak times and reduce their
overall usage. v
Education Goes Broadband
W
“Every time you increase the speed of the
network, you are enabling incredible
educational opportunities.”
– Bailey Mitchell, CTO and CIO, Forsyth County (Ga.) Schools
The system takes into account
learning interests and learning style to
increase student engagement and boost
academic performance. Students can
learn at home on their own or at school,
using high-speed Internet connections,
and be rewarded by their teachers in
collaborative settings.
Forsyth County’s Bring Your Own
Technology (BYOT) program lets
students use their individual Internetcapable tablets, laptops, netbooks and
cellphones to work in classrooms.
Other schools around the country have
substituted standard equipment – iPads,
Chromebooks and so forth – vastly
cutting their maintenance costs while
creating new learning environments.
In Forsyth schools, for instance,
students participating in the NOBLE
Photo courtesy of Belen Jesuit Preparatory School
hen it comes to
education, can
communities afford
not to assure highcapacity broadband for residents?
Today’s fiber-connected schools
demonstrate how broadband enhances
students’ educational opportunities.
Though most schools now have Internet
access, adequate school broadband
is still rare. But over the next few
years, fiber-connected schools should
become more common, thanks to the
federal government’s new ConnectED
initiative. One big issue that is taking
longer to solve: ensuring that all
students have access to broadband after
they leave the school building for home.
The Forsyth County school
district in Georgia uses a business
Ethernet connection from Comcast to
support streaming video, interactive
whiteboards, mobile devices and
digital content for its 40,000 students.
A next-generation learning system
provides individualized learning plans
based on students’ needs, preferences
and performance, helping to keep this
Atlanta suburb’s district among the
state’s top 10.
Students at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School in Miami began using iPads in the classroom during
the 2011-12 school year. In this picture, sixth-grade students use iPads during a Spanish class
taught by Alicia Fariñas.
Virtual World project interact in a
digitally created world where they can
create anything they imagine. Students
develop creativity, data analysis and
problem-solving skills by working in
teams and creating plans and solutions.
Forsyth County Schools reduced
its textbook costs by about 85 percent
using interactive online content,
including streaming video, simulations
and other digital resources that, unlike
physical textbooks, are kept always
up to date. Administrative offices
also benefit from fast, efficient data
transmission as well as from file sharing
and document storage via the district’s
central server.
“Bandwidth is the key. The only
way to have access to all that digital
content is to connect the technology
and infrastructure in support of it,” said
Bailey Mitchell, chief technology and
information officer for Forsyth County
Schools. “My view is that every time
you increase the speed of the network,
you are enabling incredible educational
opportunities.”
Connected schools offer students
the opportunity to take interactive
field trips to museums and historical
sites, study specialized subjects with
teachers at other schools, and watch
activities ranging from neurosurgery to
Himalayan expeditions in real time.
School districts with superior
broadband capabilities use “flipped
classrooms,” in which teachers record
lessons as videos on YouTube or similar
sites and students study the lessons at
home. In school, students solve problems
based on the previous night’s lesson and
get individual help from teachers. v
17
FTTH for Communities
B
y summer 2014, the number of public and
public-private fiber networks in the U.S. reached
about 145 – and many of these serve multiple
communities. Many communities are expanding
the networks they started building in earlier years, thanks in
part to stimulus funding, and are upgrading them to offer
gigabit-speed service.
In 2012, Google launched gigabit Internet service in
Kansas City, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo. – locations it chose
in large part because the city governments were willing to
collaborate with it. In 2013 it expanded to Austin, Texas,
and acquired the municipal FTTH network in Provo, Utah.
It also announced that it would negotiate with localities
about expansion in nine other metropolitan areas with 34
communities.
All this activity has made municipal officials keenly
aware of the potential for using ultra-broadband to promote
economic development and enhance the quality of life in their
communities. They are looking for new ways to encourage
private providers to build FTTH networks, new partnership
arrangements with telecom providers and new ways to
leverage such municipal assets as conduit, utility poles and
existing fiber. And they are finding takers – there are more
than 100 networks offering or soon to offer gigabit services.
Many are operated by small telcos, some of which have
partnered with municipalities.
Questions Municipal Officials
Ask About FTTH
Q: Will a fiber network help bring new business into
my community?
A: There’s growing evidence that fiber connectivity
encourages businesses to stay, helps businesses grow and
become more productive, and attracts new businesses,
particularly in high-tech industries. FTTH supports
home-based startup businesses and helps workers
telecommute. It makes a community a more attractive
place to live – especially for young people – which can
stem the population loss that many small communities
experience. If inadequate health care resources hamper
economic growth, fiber connections permit local health
care providers to call upon specialists in regional health
centers. And if an unprepared workforce is a hindrance
to business expansion, fiber connectivity can enable costeffective distance learning.
FTTH is only one component of an overall
economic development strategy – but it’s a vitally
important one.
Q: How can I get fiber to my residents without
building my own network? My town has too
much debt now to borrow more, and we have no
experience operating a municipal utility.
A: Lobby the incumbents – the cable and telephone
companies that serve your town now. Lobby competitive
providers or even local businesses that need more
bandwidth and have the capability to undertake such a
project. Offer such incentives as reduced franchise fees,
Fiber to the home is only
one component of an overall
economic development strategy,
but it’s a vitally important one.
access to public property or an accelerated permitting
process.
If you own an institutional fiber ring that connects
municipal buildings, schools and libraries, or if your
traffic lights are connected by fiber, you might be able
to propose fiber swaps to a potential provider. Take a
fiber inventory to find out whether there is abandoned or
unused fiber in your town that might either revert to the
locality or be donated in exchange for a tax exemption.
Educate residents about the value of FTTH, and
encourage them to commit to taking fiber services if and
when a provider offers them. Start a community fiber
campaign on CrowdFiber.com or a similar site so you
can document the extent of subscriber interest in fiber
broadband.
Alternatively, enter into a partnership to build a
fiber network jointly with a private partner. In Europe,
such partnerships are common, and the approach has
begun to gain traction in the United States. A variety
Pulaski Electric System, a municipal electric utility in Pulaski, Tenn., uses its FTTH network to operate a smart electric grid and deliver triple-play
services to residents.
of arrangements between the public and private parties
are used, depending on legal requirements and on each
party’s assets and capabilities.
In 2011, a group of university communities banded
together to invite both incumbent and competitive
providers, as well as nontraditional providers, to build
advanced networks. This project, called Gig.U, has given
rise to several FTTH projects.
Q: Wouldn’t it be better – and cheaper – to put in a
community wireless network?
A: Wireless services are important public amenities, but they
are not substitutes or replacements for FTTH. Rather,
they complement and extend fixed fiber networks. Many
wireless access points and cell sites are already fiberconnected, and most of them will be soon. Wireless
service can thus be considered an application on a fiber
network rather than a separate type of network.
Wireless access alone cannot attract new businesses
to a community or enable businesses to grow. Wireless
networks that cover wide areas are not reliable enough
to deliver video and other emerging broadband services
with high quality of service. Wi-Fi is highly desirable in
targeted areas such as commercial shopping streets and
common areas, but no one has developed a compelling
business case for a municipalitywide Wi-Fi network.
Q: Don’t all wired broadband networks use fiber?
A: They use fiber, but not all the way to the home.
Generally, the last 1,000 to 5,000 feet from the
fiber’s endpoint to the home is copper – coaxial cable in
cable networks, plain copper wire in telephone networks.
That limits bandwidth, reliability and versatility.
Q: How do I know whether my community is
underserved?
A: Without a fiber network, your community is underserved
– or it will be very soon. Even with upgrades, your nonfiber network won’t be able to handle the ever-increasing
bandwidth demands placed on it. Be sure to consider the
needs of the business community in addition to those of
residents – many economic development officials believe
that affordable, symmetrical 1 Gbps access is needed to
lure new businesses to a town.
If you can’t get site selection committees to look
at vacant commercial properties, or if your residents
have trouble selling homes due to their poor Internet
connections, your community is underserved.
Q: The telephone company that operates here is
installing FTTH in the new development just 10
miles up the road. Why not here?
A: Installing fiber in new developments is usually easier
than installing it in existing neighborhoods. The fiber
goes into the same trenches that have to be dug anyway
for water, electricity and sewer service. In fact, copper
wiring usually can’t be run that way, so fiber is usually
19
FTTH for Communities
Start preparing for fiber now
by adding underground ducts
whenever you or a utility repair a
street or open it to excavation.
cheaper. Also, the new residents have not yet subscribed
to cable or phone service, so whoever installs an FTTH
network in a new community has an easier time signing
up customers. That’s why most new, large housing
developments are being equipped with fiber.
Q: Would installing fiber require that my streets be
dug up?
A: It depends. Many network builders in North America
use aerial fiber installed on poles along with existing
telephone, electric and cable wiring. Where trenching is
impractical, contractors can often use horizontal drilling
or pull fiber through existing ducts, water pipes, sewers
and gas lines rather than digging up streets and sidewalks.
When there is no good alternative to trenching,
new microtrenching techniques may allow fiber to be
laid with less disruption to traffic. In microtrenching,
a deep groove is cut quickly into the pavement or road
with a large circular saw on wheels, and fiber is laid into
the groove. Finally, many cities already have usable fiber
under their streets – fiber that is not being used to its
limit or that has been abandoned altogether.
networks or networks built by companies that specialize
in bringing fiber to new buildings and subdivisions.
Municipal utilities sometimes prefer to provide
services directly, at least at the outset, for two reasons:
First, being the service provider gives them more control
over the quality of user experience; second, they may have
difficulty attracting third-party providers to new networks.
The downside of a closed network, however, is less variety
in content and services. Many public broadband advocates
believe that opening networks to innovative service
providers is the best way to maximize the networks’ value
for their communities. Networks built with broadband
stimulus funds are required to allow open access.
Q: There seem to be advantages to running closed
and open-access networks. Why not both?
A: Some network operators, especially smaller ones, are
doing just that. Networks built with funds from the
2009 stimulus program must offer access to thirdparty providers. These have often taken the form of
infrastructure-sharing arrangements. Some use local
data centers as “managed service providers” that package
outside content for local carriers. A network operator
could also provide voice, video and data. Third parties
– either content providers, or managed service providers
handling multiple types of services – would add the
variety of services customers expect. This is the same
arrangement that all cellular phone providers use. The cell
phone company provides voice, video and data. Users then
customize their smartphones with third-party apps. v
Q: What can I do to make installing FTTH less
expensive?
A: Start preparing for fiber now by adding underground
ducts whenever you or a utility repair a street or open
it to excavation. You can also adopt an “open trench”
policy that gives telecom providers the opportunity to
install ducts any time a street is opened. When it comes
time for the city or a private provider to install fiber, the
cost will be much lower if the fiber can simply be blown
or pulled through ducts.
Q: Is it better for the same company to run the
network and provide services, or should we
consider an open-access network with multiple
providers?
A: Both methods have been successful. Open-access
networks, in which the public or private network builder
“rents” bandwidth to a potentially unlimited number
of service and content providers, are more common in
Europe and Asia than in the United States. However,
they have succeeded here as well. At present, most openaccess networks in the United States are either municipal
Danville, Va .’s use of its own utility poles for the nDanville network
saved the city time and money.
Gigabit to the Home
A
gigabit (1 Gbps, or
1,000 Mbps) will soon
be the standard for both
downstream and upstream
bandwidth. Only fiber to the home can
support symmetrical gigabit speeds.
Google Fiber made “gigabit” a
household word, but Google was hardly
the first to offer these speeds. Many
providers now offer gigabit – or even
10 gig – speeds to businesses. Among
residential providers, EPB Fiber Optics
(the municipally owned network in
Chattanooga, Tenn.) was the first to
offer 1 Gbps access throughout a large
service area. It was followed by other
network operators, both public and
private. By mid-2014, residential gigabit
speeds were available in more than
100 communities, a number that is
expected to double and redouble by the
end of 2015. Large companies such as
AT&T, CenturyLink and Bright House
Networks have now begun offering
gigabit FTTH service in selected
locations.
More than three dozen American
research universities are collaborating on
Gig.U, a program to bring 1 Gbps fiber
access to the communities surrounding
their campuses. Multiple Gig.U projects
are already underway, usually with both
private and public participation.
working closely with the private sector
and local foundations to make sure
the community derives maximum
benefit from the new infrastructure.
The scenario was repeated in Google’s
second major deployment, Austin.
In Chattanooga, Harold DePriest,
CEO of EPB, called his city’s FTTH
network “the basis for creating the
products and services of the Internet
of the future.” In 2012, 2013 and 2014
the city sponsored summer programs
in which entrepreneurs and students
competed to develop gigabit business
ideas, tested them with customers on a
live network, and won startup money
and mentoring to help commercialize
their ideas.
US Ignite, a public-private project
launched with leadership from the
National Science Foundation, chose
Chattanooga, Lafayette and other
gigabit communities as test beds
to develop the applications of the
future. The project focuses on new
applications in health care, education,
workforce development, energy,
advanced manufacturing and public
safety. Mozilla Ignite, part of the US
Ignite project, is an open innovation
contest that awarded $500,000 to
22 developers of applications that
range from remote process control to
collaborative learning to public transit
planning. The teams are busy fleshing
out their applications.
EARLY GIG ADOPTERS
A survey by Telecom Thinktank and
RVA LLC found (not surprisingly) that
1 Gbps subscribers are heavy Internet
users – or even households with several
heavy Internet users. They are online
an average of eight hours per day,
compared with the overall average of 2.5
hours, and they have many networked
devices. Some may be streaming
movies and chatting on Facebook while
participating in multiple online games
through multiple consoles.
In addition, many are content
creators. Traffic measurements by Hong
Kong Broadband, which provides 1
Gbps service in Hong Kong, show its
gigabit subscribers use three times more
upload bandwidth than download
bandwidth. Upload speed is critical for
distributing HD photos and videos,
efficient cloud computing and virtualpresence videoconferencing.
Finally, superfast connectivity also
appeals to work-at-home professionals
who need low latency and rapid file
transfers. v
WHAT WILL YOU DO
WITH A GIG?
When it announced its Fiber initiative,
Google offered several scenarios.
“Imagine sitting in a rural health
clinic, streaming three-dimensional
medical imaging over the Web and
discussing a unique condition with a
specialist in New York,” its statement
said.
“Or downloading a highdefinition, full-length feature film in
less than five minutes. Or collaborating
with classmates around the world
while watching live, 3D video of a
university lecture.” Once Google
began building the network, the
two Kansas City governments began
21
More Information for
Community Leaders and
Small Network Providers
I
nterested in fiber to the home? Start with a visit
to www.bbcmag.com. BroadBand Communities’
municipal portal, www.bbpmag.com/MuniPortal/
FTTHLand.php, can direct you to additional
resources, and its FTTH deployment database at www.
fiberville.com shows all FTTH deployments by municipalities
and others, including small telephone companies.
BroadBand Communities has also created investor
feasibility models and monthly cash flow models, available
free at www.bbcmag.com/FTTHAnalyzer/. The models are
easy to adapt to your specific situation – whether you are
in an urban or rural district, or you are a property owner
looking to investigate the business case for FTTH.
The FTTH Council (www.ftthcouncil.org) holds quarterly
meetings and monthly webinars and offers other information
for fiber deployers. See especially its Community Toolkit
(toolkit.ftthcouncil.org) for resources for
municipalities.
Note the council’s advice on
organizing your community by
identifying fiber champions, forging
partnerships, and building consensus.
Develop a business case by identifying
your assets, estimating demand,
building a financial model and finding
the money to build. Once you are
ready to build, the site offers advice on
developing an RFP, finding a provider
and managing the deployment.
The Baller Herbst Law Group
(www.baller.com) offers links to
many groups working on broadband
issues and to discussions of laws and
regulations covering FTTH.
The Blandin Foundation (www.
blandinfoundation.org) is aimed at
helping rural Minnesota communities
thrive, but it has a national outlook
when it comes to FTTH. The site
includes multiple case studies.
What makes a smart community?
The Intelligent Community Forum
(www.intelligentcommunity.org)
has an annual “smart community”
competition and publishes numerous
reports and studies showing what
communities worldwide can do with
broadband. The ICF is associated with
New York University.
The Institute for Local SelfReliance is a nonprofit research
and educational organization that
provides technical assistance and
information on environmentally sound
economic development strategies. It
is a great source of information about
community broadband networks, and
its broadband advice and newsletter
(www.ilsr.org/initiatives/broadband,
www.muninetworks.org) have helped
many communities.
The National Broadband Map –
a continuing, nationwide collection
of broadband availability and usage
(www.broadbandmap.gov) – can help
communities deploy FTTH networks
where they are most needed and use
them to best advantage. Though the
data are still being refined, the map has
already been used by:
•
•
•
•
•
Industry to site new facilities.
Service providers to target new
opportunities.
Municipalities to monitor
broadband adoption.
Policymakers to target broadband
grants.
Native American tribal
authorities to reveal broadband
training needs. v
Subscribe today.
FREE to those who qualify.
Original Research | Trusted Reports
Latest Trends | Industry News
www.bbcmag.com/subscribe | 877.588.1649
23
FTTH Success Stories
A
lmost every new FTTH
community offers a success
story – young people or
businesses that didn’t leave
town or new businesses that arrived.
However, economic development
doesn’t occur inevitably as a result
of investment in fiber infrastructure.
Bankers have to be sold on investing
in local businesses. Existing business
operators have to learn how broadband
can help them. Government agencies,
local health care providers, educational
institutions and builders all have to
be brought up to “speed” on what
broadband can do.
The good news: Broadband offers
more “bang for the buck” than any
other major infrastructure category –
and it can be built faster.
Kansas City, Kan., and Kansas
City, Mo., showed the way when they
became the first Google gigabit cities.
Yes, small tech companies streamed
into town as soon as Google launched.
But the homegrown Kansas City
Startup Village, an entrepreneur-led,
grassroots initiative encouraged by
municipal officials, established several
startup neighborhoods into which
young software writers streamed.
Local business groups and the mayors
of both Kansas Cities offered startup
help. Now the growth is expanding
into underutilized office buildings
downtown.
San Leandro, a city of 85,000
residents across the bay from San
Francisco, has long had good
transportation, civic infrastructure and
a history of manufacturing. Now its
businesses have better-than-gigabit fiber,
thanks to a private-public partnership
that’s attracting a new generation
of employers and keeping existing
employers in town. Lit San Leandro
is the brainchild of Dr. J. Patrick
Kennedy, a San Leandro resident and
president and founder of OSIsoft, one
of the city’s largest employers. Mayor
Stephen Cassidy met with Dr. Kennedy
in 2011. Nine months later, the San
Revitalization projects in downtown Danville have been undertaken along with the buildout of
the nDanville network.
1.1%
is the increase in
per capita GDP
for U.S. cities with
widely available
gigabit services.
Leandro City Council unanimously
approved Lit San Leandro to install
a fiber optic loop through the city’s
existing conduit. Businesses get up to
10 gigabits per second.
The city then won a $2.1
million U.S. Economic Development
Administration grant to expand the
system from 11 to over 18 miles, with
connections to Oakland. More than
950 businesses are now within 200
meters of 10 gigabit fiber. One site, a
future mixed-use development project,
will help attract broadband-hungry
office tenants.
As for Dr. Kennedy? His business
got the bandwidth it needed to stay in
San Leandro.
Danville, in south-central
Virginia, suffered from the decline
of tobacco and textiles. Unable to
attract businesses without affordable
fiber services, local leaders began
a development program centered
on advanced telecommunications
infrastructure, technology education
and workforce training, and targeted
downtown revitalization projects.
Today, companies that require
sophisticated new technology are
moving to Danville. The city became
the second site globally for a nextgeneration Cray XMT supercomputer.
IKEA chose Danville as the
location for its first U.S. manufacturing
facility in large part for its access to
fiber. CBN, which produces all the
driver’s licenses for Virginia, located in
Danville in part because of the security
of its fiber connections.
Corrie Teague of Danville’s Office
of Economic Development notes
the network’s success in inducing
technology companies to start up or
move to the area, creating a positive
spiral effect. “High-tech companies
attract other technology companies,”
says Teague.
Chattanooga saw the same thing.
It attracted as many as 2,400 jobs – at
a new Volkswagen Passat factory and
an Amazon distribution center, among
others – because of its fiber-based
broadband and the reliable power
that its fiber-enabled smart electric
grid guarantees. But perhaps even
more important, its pioneering gigabit
network is attracting a new generation of
entrepreneurs and gaining a reputation
as a place to start and grow businesses.
Even companies based in Knoxville, 100
miles away, now look to Chattanooga
when they want to expand.
Powell, Wyo., is located 500 miles
from the nearest metropolitan area
and has more than 1,000 of its 5,500
residents below the poverty line. After
it spent $4.9 million connecting each
Auburn, Ind., retained key employers by providing fiber connectivity.
home to a fiber optic network, Alpine
Access, a contact-center outsourcer
that uses home-based agents, opened a
virtual call center there.
Palm Coast, Fla., needed extra
capacity for its communications
network. In 2005, the city began
connecting its 21 sites with a fiber
network that would provide more
bandwidth and reliability and cost
less, too. By 2010, all but one site was
connected. The city decided to offer
its system to private businesses as well.
It followed the model of Leesburg,
Fla., which began installing fiber in
1987 and now serves county schools,
Leesburg Regional Medical Center and
area businesses.
The business model is simple for
Palm Coast – like San Leandro and
many others, it rents access to providers
of broadband service to businesses.
By 2013, it had revenue of more than
$500,000 a year, more than three times
its expenses.
Auburn, Ind., went with fiber
in 2005 when Cooper Industries, a
Fortune 200 company whose global
data operations were located in Auburn,
Ind., was at a crossroads – it had to
either expand its Auburn facility or
relocate. The company’s most critical
requirement was for fast, resilient and
reliable broadband.
Auburn Essential Services, a
municipal broadband provider, worked
with Cooper to craft a businessclass broadband service and thereby
preserve $7 million in annual payroll
for the community. In addition,
the city has retained a number of
Internet-dependent, small but growing
businesses.
There are now hundreds of
examples. When it comes to highways,
the Information Highway is the one to
be on, to attract and keep businesses. v
25
Builders, Real Estate
Developers and FTTH
M
ost large developers of single-family homes
and many developers of multiple-dwellingunit (MDU) communities add FTTH to
new properties. Many are retrofitting older
properties as well. By mid-2006, FTTH was economically
viable in new developments with as few as 80 MDU living
units or 100 single-family homes. That number has continued
to fall based on improvements in deployment technology.
FTTH adds value. Since the mid-2000s, the market
research firm RVA LLC has surveyed home buyers and
developers. Through boom, recession and recovery, surveys
have noted that FTTH adds more than $5,000 to the price of
a single-family home. The most recent survey indicates that
fiber access adds between $5,000 and $6,000 to the value of a
$300,000 home. RVA’s 2014 survey of MDU residents found
that condo buyers were willing to pay a 3 percent premium
for an FTTH connection, and renters would pay an 8 to 15
percent premium for FTTH.
The reason fiber adds value is that subscribers are more
likely to be very satisfied with their broadband and video
services and much less likely to consider moving from their
current homes. According to RVA’s most recent survey of
MDU residents, good broadband is now the No. 1 amenity,
beating out even in-unit washers and dryers.
Q: How can I justify increasing my construction cost
by adding fiber?
A: First, don’t assume that fiber is more expensive to install
than copper – that’s not necessarily the case. Second,
homes sell for higher prices when they are wired for high
bandwidth and provide access to fiber. And because
demand
91% offaststudents
Internet or
broadband in their housing.
44%
of students want cable TV.
FTTH homes sell faster than non- FTTH homes in the
same market, this may translate into a greater profit. This
is even more important in bad times. When few homes
are sold or rented, you can bet that homes with highbandwidth amenities sell faster. This is equally true for
rental properties. Developers of MDU communities say
their new buildings lease up faster if they can advertise
them as fiber-connected.
Q: Do buyers and renters really care about fiber to
the home? How many of them have heard of it?
A: They really care about fast, reliable broadband. Survey
after survey shows that FTTH customers are more
satisfied with their broadband and TV service than cable,
DSL and wireless customers.
Q: Do I need to hire an engineering firm to design
the installation?
A: Fiber does need to be engineered in large apartment
complexes – that’s true for coax, too. But smaller
installations do not need that kind of sophistication to
work well. Greater standardization, clever new systems
from equipment vendors, fiber that can be stapled and
bent tightly around corners, distributors’ growing design
expertise and an expanding corps of qualified technicians
have made less formal design regimes feasible.
Q: Will other labor on my construction site damage
the fiber cable?
A: Optical fiber is very, very thin – thinner than a human
hair. But vendors have developed many techniques to
protect fibers from harm. Cable can be armored to ward
off cuts. Contractors can route inexpensive microduct
– hollow plastic tubes typically 1/8 inch in diameter –
through walls before the walls are closed in with drywall
or other materials. The microducts are easily repairable.
After everything else is completed, thin fiber can be
“blown” through the microduct for hundreds of feet. New
fiber can be bent almost like copper. Some vendors offer
fiber in thin adhesive tape that can be rolled onto walls.
Q: Do any building codes pertain to fiber?
A: Yes, all the usual fire and life-safety issues apply. For
instance, just as copper with PVC sheathing would be
considered a life-safety hazard because of the combustion
products released when it burns, so would various plastics
used in fiber that is meant for outside installation.
Indoors, look for Low Smoke Zero Halogen (LSZH)
cables. If you are using thin plastic microduct, it should
$5,000-$6,000
Value that FTTH adds to a typical
house or condo.
Extra ROI (compared
with cable) for adding
FTTH to a rental property.
20%
be labeled Halogen-Free Flame Retardant. You use a
simple junction box to change from “outside” to “inside”
wiring, just as you might with electrical cables.
Of course, you should check with your local
building code inspector. Aside from fire issues, codes
may govern where fiber optical network terminals (ONTs
– the boxes that convert pulses of light from the fiber
into electrical signals for the computer or TV) may be
placed on the outside walls or in common areas. A few
municipalities specify where network connections should
be placed in homes.
Q: Where should we put users’ network connections,
assuming no specific building code or guidance
document covers that subject?
A: Expect users to desire broadband connections in virtually
any room in the house – bedrooms, office-dens, the
kitchen. That’s because Internet connections these days
accommodate telephones, televisions, set-top boxes, digital
picture frames, security sensors, fire and smoke monitors
and, of course, computers. As the “Internet of things”
develops, more appliances will be Internet-enabled. Many
manufacturers already provide such connectivity.
To minimize wireless interference inside multifamily
buildings, experts often advise using wired Ethernet
connections for all stationary IP-connected devices.
Portable consumer electronics devices, such as smartphones
and tablets, usually communicate with the Internet via
Wi-Fi – as do appliances (manufacturers have adopted a
standard for building Wi-Fi into major appliances), so you
also need a wireless gateway. Such gateways are offered by
all network equipment vendors as standard-issue to be used
on the home side of fiber network deployments.
Q: In single-family homes, I often see ONT boxes –
the fiber terminals – hung on the outside walls.
Can they also be placed indoors?
A: Yes. In harsh climates, where heat or heavy snow could
affect the outside installation, you will probably want to
$81
Monthly rental premium that
FTTH adds to a $1,000 apartment.
put ONTs indoors. Outdoor ONT models are sometimes
placed in garages or utility rooms; you can also buy small,
portable indoor models that look more like cable or DSL
modems and connect them with tough, flexible fiber that
can be laid anywhere. Indoor ONTs, which are popular
with apartment dwellers, are sometimes designed to be
user-installed. Most are not much bigger than a cellphone.
Q: Why do ONTs sometimes require backup batteries?
A: Optical fiber cannot conduct electricity. Thus, to keep a
network connection running during a power outage, you
need a battery at the user premises or a fiber cable that
includes a thin copper conductor connected to an off-site
battery. This requirement is changing as cellular phones
replace landlines – a change that has already taken place
in most of Europe. In North America, where about three
of five households still have landlines, many standard
designs are available for in-wall, between-stud boxes that
hold the battery, ONT and fiber connections.
Q: Does every dwelling unit or office need its own
ONT located at the unit?
A: No. Separate ONTs for each unit in an MDU building
can be located centrally, often in a basement or an
equipment cabinet. There are also ONTs designed to serve
multiple units, typically four or eight. This flexibility is
made possible by small, low-power circuitry and by the
fact that some ONTs can deliver 1 Gbps or more – often
enough bandwidth to share among multiple customers.
Q: Is lightning a problem with fiber?
A: No. Because fiber does not conduct electricity, lightning
strikes do not directly affect fiber at all.
Q: Is FTTH a sustainable technology?
A: FTTH generally consumes less power than other
broadband technologies. Passive optical networks (GPON
and EPON) are especially energy-efficient because they
require little or no active electronics in the field.
FTTH enables more sustainable lifestyles, too. A
2008 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers showed that the
greenhouse gas emissions associated with deploying an
FTTH network are outweighed within five years by the
savings from increased telecommuting. Other fiberenabled applications, such as telehealth, telepresence,
distance learning and cloud computing – and, of course,
smart-grid applications and home energy management –
reduce travel, minimize heating and cooling loads or help
shift energy consumption to renewable sources. v
27
Property Developers
Win With Fiber
F
or a collection of articles on properties that have
deployed fiber to the building or fiber to the unit, ,
see www.bbpmag.com/property/Property_Land.php.
There you will find details of the precise technologies
used at three dozen properties in all property sectors and in
all regions of the U.S. Here are two recent examples.
ATLANTA CONDO TAKES
DO-IT-YOURSELF APPROACH
The Brookwood, a 219-unit high-rise condominium in
Atlanta’s ultra-chic Buckhead neighborhood, now has an
attractive, low-cost amenity for condo owners as well as cost
savings for the management office. When homeowners took
over management of the community from the developer, one
of their top priorities was to improve broadband services and
provide the fastest Internet speeds in Atlanta to all residents.
They succeeded: Today, every resident of The Brookwood can
get 50 Mbps symmetrical Internet access for only $22 a month.
Atlanta’s Brookwood condo installed its own fiber backbone.
Fiber-based broadband adds
cachet – and value – to multipledwelling-unit properties.
Communities with fast Internet
speeds are appealing to buyers.
After reviewing proposals from several traditional
providers, the association decided to take matters into its
own hands. At the recommendation of Clara Sorrells of
FirstService Residential, the property’s management company,
it hired Broadband Planning, an Atlanta-based consulting
firm that represents both owners and condominium
associations in negotiating broadband services.
Richard Price, owner of Broadband Planning, explains,
“Technology is rapidly changing, and property managers
and community boards of directors need to know all the
options available for their communities before getting locked
into long contracts with cable providers. Communities with
fast Internet speeds and the ability to have choice for cable
providers are going to be more appealing to potential buyers.”
The Brookwood Residential Condominium Association
created a committee, led by a resident and telecommunications
professional, Karen Angellatta-Wheeler, to work with
Broadband Planning and search out high-quality companies
that could help the condo association accomplish its goal.
After a yearlong search, the association made a bold
move: It decided to build an Ethernet data network in the
building, using the telephone wires that already served each
unit along with commercial-grade Ethernet electronics and a
10 Gbps network backbone.
The system is powered by a whopping 500 Mbps data
circuit, which can be upgraded to 1 Gbps or more with only
a week’s notice to keep the building on the cutting edge. The
Brookwood’s bandwidth pipe is even larger than that of nearby
Georgia Tech, and it serves a much smaller constituency.
Because it was a modification of the existing infrastructure,
the new system was implemented without major cost.
This solution gave all residents 50 Mbps upstream and
downstream – a service that was not previously available
to residential users in this area – at a cost of only $22 per
month. There’s access to a dedicated customer service line that
dispatches technicians 24 hours a day.
The Ritecom Group, a wellestablished local commercial broadband
and fiber optic contractor, provided
the design, network equipment and
commercial-grade customer service
for an all-inclusive monthly fee. The
Ritecom equipment and services and
the separately contracted commercialgrade circuit are the association’s only
two expenses.
The association uses the excess
bandwidth for management office
telephones and other low-voltage
monitoring, cutting its management
office monthly expense from more than
$1,500 to $250.
GIGABIT TO STUDENTS
IN AUSTIN
Callaway House, a new student housing
community, offers 1 Gbps Internet
service. Austin, home to the University
Callaway House was the first student housing in Austin to offer gigabit Internet access.
of Texas and a thriving high-tech
industry, is a lucky city. Google Fiber
is building a gigabit network there.
AT&T launched its GigaPower service
innovation – and second, entry costs were relatively low
there. But several hundred exceptionally lucky University of
because Austin’s fiber infrastructure is abundant. (This is one
Texas freshmen didn’t have to wait for the completion of these
reason Google chose Austin for a citywide gigabit network, de
large-scale projects: Their off-campus residence hall opened in
Cardenas points out.)
August 2013 with unrestricted 1 Gbps connectivity to both the
ACC turned to CampusConnect, an Austin ISP that had
Internet and the university network.
both student-housing expertise and available fiber, to design
American Campus Communities (ACC), the property
and build the network. “We wanted to try it out to see what
owner, is well aware of broadband’s importance to student
kind of impact it would have,” de Cardenas says.
housing. When ACC conducts surveys in the 191 studentACC is already looking for additional markets where
housing properties it owns or manages, residents always rank
gigabit networks might be feasible. At the same time, it is
Internet access high on the list of amenities. After all, students
tracking the experience of Callaway House residents to find
tend to own multiple connected devices and to be heavy users
out how students use the bandwidth available to them and
of bandwidth for both schoolwork and entertainment. In
whether an outstanding technology amenity will become a
addition to taking online courses, they carry iPads to class, buy
driving factor in the selection of an apartment.
e-textbooks, participate in Skype study groups and post their
ACC wasn’t sure what students would do with their
homework to online services such as Blackboard. “Broadband
gigabit access, other than taking online classes (yes, more
is not a reason for them to pick a property, but it’s a reason for
than one of 10 courses taken by students on U.S. campuses
them to leave if it’s poor,” explains Jorge de Cardenas, ACC’s
are online, despite the proximity of classrooms) and relaxing
senior vice president and chief technology officer.
with Netflix movies on the weekend. But that was not a
When ACC planned The Callaway House, it saw a good
problem. De Cardenas says, “We’re removing the barriers to
opportunity to take a “significant step up” in bandwidth
students’ doing things we don’t even know about yet. We’re
creating an environment that’s conducive to academics, to
delivery, according to de Cardenas. First, the market was right
innovation, to all kinds of new things.” v
– the University of Texas has a strong focus on technology
29
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communities get on
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benefits of fiber networks.
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leaders and fiber
champions are
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to every household
and business.
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The Responsive City: Chicago
One of Chicago’s first digital-organizing successes was a system that maps and reports
dangerous building conditions in the southwestern part of the city.
By Stephen Goldsmith and Susan Crawford / Harvard University
D
aniel O’Neil wants to use digital tools to give a voice
to people who aren’t on traditional city government’s
map. “If you’re not in the network, you’re invisible,”
he says. “You don’t matter. And everybody matters. Which
means they have to be in the network. And not just on the
Internet. But meaningfully. And not just meaningfully, but
looking at meaningful things.” Spiky-haired and fearless,
O’Neil, who cannot resist cracking wise about any and all
things, runs the Smart Chicago Collaborative. It’s a civic
organization founded jointly by the city of Chicago, the
MacArthur Foundation, and the Chicago Community Trust
and devoted to improving lives in Chicago through technology.
The collaborative’s work revolves around three goals:
increasing Internet access, improving technology skills and
expanding the innovative use of data to improve lives. Smart
Chicago works toward these goals through administering
programs and funds sponsored by its public and philanthropic
parent organizations.
One standout initiative is Connect Chicago, a program
that unified and expanded a network of more than 250 places
that offer free computer use. Through administering federal
Broadband Technology Opportunities Program funds, Smart
Chicago upgraded computers and facilities and managed
rollouts of computer training courses citywide. With more than
250 locations – 195 of which offer training – the program has
made progress in bridging the digital divide. Another program,
#CivicSummer, teaches teens how to use digital tools and
become proficient in technology, media and civic innovation.
As executive director, O’Neil isn’t shy about sharing Smart
Chicago’s mission and philosophy. “More than anything,
we’re about being open and inclusive to everyone in Chicago
and beyond,” he says. “While we support organizations that
help people through technology, we’re not primarily funders.
We’re workers. We’re practitioners. We’re conveners.”
Smart Chicago was the driving force behind one of
Chicago’s first digital-organizing successes. With its partners
– a community group, the Southwest Organizing Project
(SWOP), and a new startup, LocalData – Smart Chicago
devised a digital system that maps and reports dangerous
conditions in buildings in Southwest Chicago in order to
increase the city’s attention to their need to be renovated. That
creates new housing in the revitalizing neighborhood, replacing
dilapidated buildings with homes suitable for families.
SWOP had been doing something similar, the oldfashioned way, since it was started in 1996 to “enable
families to exercise common values, determine their own
future and connect with each other to improve life in their
neighborhoods.” SWOP members would walk around
Southwest Chicago with pen and paper, making notes about
vacant and abandoned buildings. Later, they would enter the
data into an Excel spreadsheet, and then they’d use Microsoft
Planner to put the information on maps to show it to other
members. All in all, it was a pretty clunky system.
What brought the project into the digital age was the
work of LocalData, a civic startup supported by the Knight
Foundation and Code for America. LocalData created a
mobile app to allow community organizers to gather and
organize neighborhood data and display them visually, using
Chicago’s already existing geodata.
SWOP, O’Neil’s team realized, could use this app to
digitize its processes for tracking neglected properties.
LocalData gave Smart Chicago a license to provide its
software to SWOP – and made sure that SWOP would have
technical support, unlimited hosted data and the ability to
allow an unlimited number of app users.
Gone was the era of paper notes and sitting later at a desk,
navigating multiple pieces of software. Now, SWOP members
simply use their phones to take pictures of problem buildings,
automatically associate those pictures with their geocoded
locations and export the data in a form that can be forwarded
to Chicago’s 311 system. When they see a dangerous
building where dumping has occurred or windows have been
broken, they can flag the place, answer all the questions that
311 needs to route the service request and know that this
information is going in real time to the city. v
Stephen Goldsmith is the Daniel Paul Professor of Government
and director of the Innovations in American Government
Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of
Government. Susan Crawford is the John A. Reilly Visiting
Professor in Intellectual Property at the Harvard Law School
and a co-director of the Berkman Center. This article is
excerpted from their 2014 book, “The Responsive City: Engaging
Communities Through Data-Smart Governance.”
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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER
2014 | www.broadbandcommunities.com | BROADBAND COMMUNITIES | 71
Smart Cities and Broadband
The smart-city movement is a new approach to making cities more livable, sustainable
and competitive. Smart-city applications depend on broadband infrastructure, so
broadband advocates need to get involved in the planning process.
By Kathleen McMahon / Applied Communications
U
rban areas are undergoing a
transformation from industrial
centers to smart cities. Although
various definitions of smart cities exist – some
focus on futuristic applications, others on
integrated systems that lead to a smarter use
of resources – common elements include the
use of information technology and broadband
to promote innovations that result in more
sustainable, economically competitive and
livable cities. In addition to the technology
components, human and social concerns are
important elements of the dialogue.
In the long history of human settlements,
the smart city is a relatively new phenomenon.
It raises a novel set of issues that city planners,
engineers and public officials must address.
Municipal leaders are just beginning to engage
in policy discussions regarding the implications
of these new technologies. The American
Planning Association (APA), a professional
organization for city planners that has more
than 30,000 members nationwide, is at the
forefront of this dialogue.
APA recognizes that professional planners
are uniquely qualified to provide leadership
in defining, analyzing and debating the issues
of sustainability, inclusion and integration of
place-based strategies in the broader discussion
of smart cities. To facilitate this discussion, the
APA created a Smart Cities and Sustainability
Task Force whose mission is to “address
advances in technology and innovation to
Don’t miss Kathleen McMahon’s
workshop on planning and
broadband at the
in Austin, April 14–16.
cultivate cities which are smarter, more resilient
and sustainable.”
SMART-CITY COMPONENTS
The first generation of smart-city technologies,
just recently adopted, represents a wide range of
applications. Innovations are being introduced
at a dizzying pace. A sampling of these
applications includes
• smart devices and sensors embedded in
roadways, power grids, buildings and other
assets to provide data that can be used to
design more efficient and integrated urban
systems
• smart communications systems that use
wired and wireless technologies for realtime monitoring of utilities, buildings
and infrastructure systems and for remote
operations that automatically adjust systems
to environmental factors
• smart software to create valuable
information for researchers
and provide digitally enhanced
services to empower and engage
communities.
As a framework for discussion and
research about the multifaceted concept
of the smart city, the APA Task Force
identified five components of the smartcity movement.
Infrastructure Implementing smartcity technologies requires a robust,
reliable, affordable broadband
network. Broadband infrastructure
components include fiber optic
cables, wireless networks, sensors,
data centers, gigapops (network
access points that support data
transfer rates of at least 1 Gbps)
and other facilities. Cities need to
assess the capacity of their networks
and work with private and public
partners to proactively ensure that
their broadband infrastructures are
adequate to meet current and future
needs.
Big Data applications Data collected
by governments, private companies
and others is a key component
of planning. Big Data refers to
extremely large data sets collected
in real time by public agencies or
private corporations. City planning
applications of Big Data include
• visualizing citizen reports of
issues and city services requests
• modeling transportation and
water systems
• analyzing urban impacts on
ecosystems
• predicting commuter behavior
and crime patterns
• engaging citizens in public
decisions through social media,
crowdsourcing and other
technologies.
Although these applications
have great potential to improve city
services, cities must grapple with
such issues as privacy, cybersecurity,
model reliability, government
accountability and priorities for
technology investments as they
adopt these new technologies.
Wired and wireless communications systems,
smart sensors and analytical software are all
necessary for smart-city applications. Together,
these components can support systems that
adjust to environmental factors.
Sustainability, resiliency and
energy A sustainable planet
requires urban systems that are
compatible with natural systems.
This demands innovative solutions to
designing infrastructure, managing
waste and monitoring natural
resources.
Cities are already starting to
adopt new approaches, such as smart
grids, telemetry and intelligent
transportation systems, that often
rely on broadband networks.
Increasingly, broadband technology
will underlie city plans that are
designed to mitigate urban impacts
on the environment. As broadband
technology becomes more integrated
into the fabric of urban areas,
planners must unlock its potential
for sustainable applications.
Equity and the digital divide As
communities increase their reliance
on new technologies, municipal
officials must make certain that
groups with different incomes,
different ages and different
cultural backgrounds have the
same opportunities to access these
technologies. Broadband must
be available and affordable for
all households, and people must
have the skills to adopt and use
smart-city applications. Broadband
access across neighboring states,
jurisdictions and school districts
must also be equitable.
Planners’ roles Planners are in a
position to advocate for broadband
as a critical infrastructure. They
have the skills to conduct visioning
processes, communicate with public
officials and identify collaborative
strategies. The APA recommends,
“Planners will need to become
aware of the importance of planning
for broadband infrastructure. In
order to incorporate broadband
strategies into local plans, they
need familiarity with how
various technologies operate.
Understanding broadband
applications is essential to working
with telecommunications experts
that are designing wireless, fiber and
cable networks.”
BROADBAND COMMUNITIES
AND SMART CITIES
On September 16, 2014, at the
Broadband Communities economic
development conference, the APA
Smart City Task Force sponsored a
breakfast forum to gather input from
the broadband community about the
potential for smart-city technologies and
the obstacles to adopting them. This
interactive forum asked three questions:
1 Which additional topics related to
smart cities should the task force
consider?
2 What are the most significant
challenges to adopting smart-city
technologies?
3 Which smart-city innovations and
methods are you aware of in your
community, and which of them
could other communities adopt?
The discussion centered on the
challenge of getting city departments
and public agencies to work outside
their normal silos and develop a
cooperative approach to instituting
smart-city technologies. Participants
noted that more benefits will accrue
“You can’t have smart cities with dumb
infrastructure. “
– Participant at the Smart City Task Force forum,
Broadband Communities economic development conference,
September 2014
when smart-city technologies are
instituted through partnerships
and collaborations that increase the
ability to pool resources and avoid
duplication of effort. Finding cost
efficiencies through joint initiatives can
be an important strategy to address
the concerns raised about funding
investments in smart-city technologies.
Other attendees at the breakfast
forum remarked on the need to
overcome public mistrust of government
use of smart technologies and on the
lack of technical skills to deploy and
operate smart systems. Not surprisingly,
several people brought up the lack of
adequate broadband infrastructure to
support technologies. As one individual
commented, “You can’t have smart
cities with dumb infrastructure.”
NEXT STEPS
The APA Task Force is conducting a
survey of its members to collect more
information about smart-city practices
and will present the findings at the
APA national conference in the spring
and at the Broadband Communities
Summit in April. This will be a start
of an ongoing dialogue to share best
practices, research and innovations.
This dialogue should include the
broadband community. The APA Smart
City Task Force is compiling a list
of interested parties who would like
updates on the smart-city initiatives,
including opportunities to participate
in webinars and other forums. If you
are interested in being added to this
list, please send an email to me at
kate@appcom.net. v
Kathleen McMahon is a founding
partner of Applied Communications,
a Montana-based consulting firm that
provides land-use planning, broadband
planning and strategic planning for towns
and community organizations. You can
contact her at kate@appcom.net.
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The Stratford Story
A small city in Ontario, Canada, punches above its weight
in the national economy. Much of its success comes from
intelligent use of world-class broadband.
By Robert Bell, John Jung and Louis Zacharilla / Intelligent Community Forum
“T
ake an extra $25. New York is an expensive
place.”
Those words of wisdom came from the
city council of Stratford, Ontario, Canada, in 1952. A
prominent citizen, journalist Tom Patterson, had come
before the council with a proposal. Patterson wanted
to travel, at the council’s expense, to New York City
to convince legendary British director Tyrone Guthrie
to come to his city and found a summer Shakespeare
Festival in the park. Who could resist attending
Shakespeare in the park on the banks of the Avon River
in a town called Stratford?
Those were hard times in Stratford. Its prosperity
had been built on agriculture and on serving as a repair
depot for the steam engines of the Canadian National
(CN) railway. Agriculture was still going strong – though
employing fewer people every year – but a decision by CN
management had centralized repair services somewhere
else on the line. No idea promoting the community’s
survival was too crazy to consider. So, on January 22, the
council signed off on Patterson’s brainstorm, giving him
$25 more than he had originally requested for the trip.
Patterson did meet with Guthrie – more than
once, as a matter of fact, which required more $125
disbursements. By July of the following year, the Stratford
Shakespeare Festival, under artistic director Guthrie,
presented its inaugural production of “Richard III,”
starring Alec Guinness, under a massive tent in the park.
Cultural tourism became a new industry in
Stratford. It was a homegrown economic development
solution and the first sign of a new innovation ecosystem
in the making. But six decades would pass before the
next sign appeared.
During that time, the festival
thrived. By 2010, it was the largest
employer in the city and generated
C$135 million in local economic
activity and C$70 million in tax
revenue for all levels of government.
Stratford grew with it, reaching a
population of 32,000. However, the
festival, restaurants and lodging were
seasonal businesses that brought
prosperity only four months of the year.
Stratford is a scenic community of 32,000 located in Ontario, Canada.
A BROADBAND ECONOMY
In 2003, the people of Stratford
elected Dan Mathieson mayor. He was
a young, entrepreneurial businessman
with deep roots in the city, and he
set out to change the way Stratford
did business.
His first priority was to embrace
high-speed broadband connectivity and
take it to new heights. He believed that
broadband needed to be treated as basic
infrastructure, not a luxury amenity.
As he told The Globe and Mail in
August 2013, “In the future economy,
the data that flows across those
networks is going to become part of
everyday life, if it hasn’t already. If you
can’t entice commercial entities to do
it, then government should look at how
they can play a role in advancing public
broadband.”
His vision led to a series of strategic
choices. Like many rural cities,
Stratford owned its own municipal
electric utility. In the 1990s, the utility
laid optical fiber along its rights-of-way
to provide communications capacity
for lease to large industrial customers.
Early in his tenure, Mayor Mathieson
faced pressure from Ontario province
to privatize the utility in the name of
efficiency. His council chose a different
path. It spun the utility off into a pair
of private companies with the city as
sole shareholder: a hydro company to
own and operate the electrical system
The fiber network that Stratford’s municipal
utility built has attracted external business
investment and helped the local tourist
industry market itself across North America.
and a services company to become a
data utility that operated the dark fiber.
By 2012, the services company
had grown its network to 37 miles
and introduced 1 Gbps connections to
125 locations, including city facilities
and schools. The network also served
as the backbone of a 300-node Wi-Fi
network, which the hydro company
used to roll out a smart-meter program
to 18,000 customers.
Mayor Mathieson and his team
were creating a new innovation
ecosystem that was built on
homegrown talent but proved equally
attractive to external investment.
Today, Stratford is leveraging that
ecosystem to transform its economy.
The fiber network proved pivotal
in attracting external investment from
the Royal Bank of Canada, which built
a national data center in the area. The
city-owned utility signed an agreement
with a private carrier to provide retail
triple-play services over its network and
extend fiber to premises throughout the
city. The network has already enabled
the Stratford Shakespeare Festival to
significantly improve its Web-based
services and expand online marketing
across North America.
The city council and the local
business community created the
Stratford Tourism Alliance, which
launched online and traditional
advertising campaigns to make Stratford
a destination for foodies and cultural
tourists. In its first year, the Web
traffic grew 200 percent while Ontario
Tourism’s traffic fell 18 percent in
response to recession. More than half of
all leisure travelers carry smartphones,
and the Alliance introduced a mobile
site in 2010 and mobile versions of its
“Savor Stratford” foodies and festival
campaigns. Apps for the iPhone, iPad,
Android and BlackBerry that followed
in 2011 provided everything from
reservations for hotels and restaurants
to schedules of events and augmented
reality. A set of walking tours of
Stratford’s many heritage buildings uses
signs with QR codes to play two- to
three-minute audio clips describing the
history of each location. Online, the
many individual private businesses of
Stratford’s tourism industry were now
acting as one, with all the advantages
of scale usually enjoyed by much
bigger companies.
With each addition to Stratford’s
ecosystem, the city’s attractiveness to
innovators has increased. The mayor’s
team has successfully sold Stratford as a
test bed for technology projects – a city
large enough to give new technologies
a meaningful test but easy to operate
in because of its small size. Toshiba,
Cisco, BlackBerry, Inter-Op Canada
and Clemson University all have pilots
running in Stratford. These international
brand names lend validation to a
strategy that has proven its value to
the city. During the financial crisis,
the near crash of the North American
auto industry pushed unemployment
in Stratford to record highs as the city
lost 1,600 mostly low-skilled jobs in
manufacturing. During the same period,
the city gained 700 high-paying jobs
requiring ICT skills and within three
years found itself managing a new
problem: a labor shortage.
THE STRATFORD TRIANGLE
Stratford has a reputation for two other
attributes that distinguish intelligent
communities: vision and a pronounced
talent for making a deal. Deciding
that little Stratford needed the same
kind of government-business-education
innovation triangle as much bigger
places, Mathieson and the city council
set out to build one nearly from scratch.
The biggest gap in the Stratford
triangle was education: It is tough to
have a university-business-government
alliance without a university. However,
less than an hour down the road was
a place called Waterloo, ICF’s 2007
Intelligent Community of the Year and
home to the University of Waterloo
(UW). Today, it has Canada’s largest
engineering faculty and the world’s
largest postsecondary cooperative
education program; its graduates
have founded companies that include
BlackBerry and OpenText.
Stratford wanted some of that
entrepreneurial energy, and, as it turned
out, the university wanted something
that Stratford had. UW was interested
in expanding its digital media offerings
with a focus on how these fastchanging technologies would transform
business and industry. Stratford had its
Shakespeare Festival – an enterprise that
generated large volumes of high-quality
content, considered itself to be in the
education as well as the entertainment
business and welcomed the idea of
involving students in extending its reach
into the digital realm.
Several years went into assembling
the components of a deal. The city
committed to investing C$10 million
to revitalize part of an abandoned
industrial site in its downtown core.
The province of Ontario matched that
investment, as did OpenText, and the
federal government added C$5 million.
The new building opened in October
2012 to 98 undergraduate and 19
graduate students working in state-ofthe-art digital media labs for graphic
design, animation, Web development
and audio and video editing. Two-thirds
of the students were Canadian, and the
remainder came from around the world.
The Bachelor of Global Business
and Digital Arts is a four-year
undergraduate program that emphasizes
project-oriented learning in partnership
with private companies and outside
institutions. Students work in project
teams that mix artists, business majors
and engineers. Every student graduating
from the program leaves UW Stratford
as a certified project manager.
The city lost no time pursuing
economic benefit from the new campus.
By January 2013, UW Stratford and
the local school district announced
the School Within a University
program, which will bring universitybound secondary school students to
campus for technology training and
participation in projects. Just before
UW Stratford ended its first school
year, the Stratford Accelerator opened
in a nearby building to provide a local
home for digital media startups.
The digital media focus spread
downward as well as outward. At
Stratford Central High School,
enrollment in the digital media and
information technology majors is
growing fast. In 2011, a digital media
instructor organized the DIGIs,
Canada’s first national digital media
awards for secondary school students.
Dylan Woodley, one of Central High’s
students, saw his animation “Pancake
Island” go viral on the Web and receive
national and U.S. media attention.
Another of Woodley’s videos was
featured on the website of the band
Coldplay.
Stratford is also the center of a fourhospital regional partnership called the
Huron-Perth Healthcare Alliance. Its
fiber network connects 85 percent of the
physician groups and family doctors in
the Stratford area. The network allows
centralized laboratories and specialized
care units to serve a widely dispersed
set of hospitals, clinics and medical
practices, which saves time and money
while delivering the highest possible
quality of care to a largely rural area.
Stratford General Hospital currently
conducts 70,000 tests per year for
patients in surrounding counties. Lab
results are turned around in hours and
delivered by twice-daily courier or, for
connected facilities, via broadband.
The interpretation of medical images is
likewise centralized, so four radiologists
at the hospital can serve the entire
region – with another radiologist in
Austria available for off-hours service.
Telemedicine projects include
service for mental and emotional
conditions that would otherwise need
hospitalization. Staff visit clients
through a high-quality videoconference
to check on their states of mind,
ensure they are taking medications and
consult on their issues. Client response
is overwhelmingly positive: Clients see
the videoconference terminal not as
Big Brother invading their homes but
as a tangible sign they are being cared
for. Caregivers are equally enthusiastic
because eliminating travel time means
they can spend more time with clients.
Stratford attacked all three
disadvantages of its rural location. A
strong online and traditional marketing
campaign reaches across distance to
attract cultural tourists from eastern
Canada and the U.S. and deploys the
interactivity of social media to foster
relationships and keep potential tourists
connected to Stratford’s cultural
calendar. Within the community,
social media apps effectively turn many
disparate small businesses into a unified
whole in terms of customer marketing. A
cultural brand that spans theater, food,
history and art projects the charisma
that Stratford needs to be a destination
not only for tourists but for both
companies and employees. And health
care networking within the greater
Stratford region creates the kind of social
infrastructure that only dense urban
areas are supposed to be able to afford.
All have played their part in making
Stratford a rural success story. v
This article, published with permission
from the Intelligent Community Forum,
is an excerpt from the 2014 book “Brain
Gain: How Innovative Cities Create Job
Growth in an Age of Disruption.”
Robert Bell, John Jung and Louis
Zacharilla are the three co-founders of
the Intelligent Community Forum of
New York. For more information, see
www.BrainGainBook.com and www.
intelligentcommunity.org.
The Leading Conference on Broadband Technologies and Services
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For becoming the sponsor of the Wednesday Exhibit Hall
Reception at the 2015 Broadband Communities Summit.
For more information on Comcast,
visit www.comcast.com/xfinitycommunities.
You are cordially invited to come see
Comcast at the upcoming
877-588-1649 | www.bbcmag.com
here!
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER
Announcing A new
organization . . .
Mission stateMent
The Coalition for Local Internet Choice – CLIC – represents a wide
range of public and private interests who support the authority
of local communities to make the broadband Internet choices
that are essential for economic competitiveness, democratic
discourse, and quality of life in the 21st century.
board of advisors
Charles Benton
Chairman
Benton Foundation
Blair Levin
Executive Director, Gig.U
Edyael Casaperalta
Programs and Research Associate, Center for
Rural Strategies
Vint Cerf
Chief Internet Evangelist, Google Inc.
Sharon Gillett
Principal Strategist, Technology Policy, Microsoft
Christopher Libertelli
Vice President, Global Public Policy, Netflix
Matthew Rantanen
Director of Technology, Southern California Tribal
Chairmen’s Association (SCTCA)
Gail Roper
CIO & Community Relations Officer, City Of Raleigh, NC
Lev Gonick
CEO, OneCommunity
Maria Alvarez Stroud
Director, Broadband & E-Commerce Education Center,
University Of Wisconsin
Brett Kilbourne
Vice President, Government and Industry Affairs
and Deputy General Counsel, UTC
Desmarie Waterhouse
Director of Government Relations & Counsel,
American Public Power Association
www.localnetchoice.org
principles
ThE InTERnET IS ESSEnTIAL 21ST CEnTuRy InfRASTRuCTuRE:
Modern broadband Internet networks are essential infrastructure in the 21st century economy.
Access to modern broadband infrastructure is vital in ensuring that all communities – rural, tribal,
and urban – can access opportunity and participate fully in community life.
LoCAL CoMMunITIES ARE ThE LIfEBLooD of AMERICA:
America is built on its great communities. Towns, counties, and cities are where economic activity
and civic engagement live — and communities recognize modern broadband Internet infrastructure
as essential to enable such economic and democratic activity.
CoMMunITIES MuST BE ABLE To MAKE ThEIR oWn ChoICES:
Local choice enables local self-reliance and accountability. Local choice enables local innovation,
investment, and competition. Local communities, through their elected officials, must have the
right and opportunity to choose for themselves the best broadband Internet infrastructure for their
businesses, institutions, and residents. Federal broadband policies must prioritize local choice and
provide local communities full, unhindered authority to choose their own broadband future.
. . . To Advocate for
Local Internet Choice
leadership
Jim Baller, President | Jim@LocalNetChoice.org
Joanne hovis, CEo | Joanne@LocalNetChoice.org
Chris Mitchell, Senior Advisor | Chris@LocalNetChoice.org
Catharine Rice, Project Director | Catharine@LocalNetChoice.org
please join us
Coalition for Local Internet Choice
2014 P Street, NW | Washington, DC 20036 | www.localnetchoice.org
The Challenge of Mass Innovation
For the majority of people, broadband’s economic benefits may depend more on
usability and usefulness than on bandwidth.
By Frank Odasz / Lone Eagle Consulting
T
ime is the most finite resource of all.
People are willing to pay for services that
save time instead of wasting it. But for
low-income populations, a super-fast broadband
network may not save as much time as a slower
but smarter “public benefits network.”
Gigacities have not yet had much economic
impact on low-income populations, and
few digital inclusion programs offer scalable
solutions to help average folks learn to earn
online. Stimulating high-tech startups hasn’t
proven to create large numbers of jobs, and the
jobs created will likely be only for those with
high-level technical skills. Connecting the
unemployed online to the local job service isn’t
much of an innovation when it means ignoring
or missing booming opportunities for entrylevel digital entrepreneurship.
Can broadband be a solution for low-income
Americans? Maybe low-tech, high-imagination
jobs that proliferate in large numbers from the
bottom up can outperform the top-down, hightech efforts.
MOBILE LEARNING
The most scalable educational solution is distance
learning, especially if it is delivered on mobile
devices. As of 2014, more online purchasing is
done via mobile devices than via PCs. Mobile
devices outsell PCs four to one. Pundits are
predicting the death of the PC. Mobile devices
are quickly becoming smaller, faster, increasingly
integrated, interconnected, more powerful and
essential to daily functionality.
Apple has more than a million apps, and
in 2012, it paid $12 billion in commissions to
Don’t miss Frank Odasz’s session
in the rural broadband track
third-party app developers. New forms of entrylevel digital entrepreneurship are popping up all
over. Anyone can become a developer and create
apps without learning to code, publish e-books
without a publisher and much more. Creating
and maintaining free websites via iPhones
and iPads is now possible, enabling ever-easier
“create and share” community capacity-building
opportunities.
For several years, 2 billion people have had
Internet access – so that many of those with a
bent toward self-directed learning and innovative
entrepreneurship have already created a global
boom in innovations, learning continually from
one another globally and giving the rest of us
the opportunity to use, copy, modify, mash up
or morph their innovations into something new.
New microsatellites and other technologies will
help get the remaining 5 billion online within
five to 10 years.
The smartphone applications booming in
Africa already provide insights into what kinds
of solutions are most scalable globally.
For example, a low-cost mobile money
transfer application is providing the
first banking service available to most
Kenyans. According to The Economist,
the application has increased Kenya’s
GDP by as much as 25 percent.
However, best practices for keeping
everyone up to the same level of progress
are missing, and elected leaders often
make decisions about how economic
development is likely to occur without
knowledge of what have already proven
to be inevitable major trends. Topdown policy makers have to learn to
partner meaningfully with bottom-up
innovators and pay close attention to
what citizens are proving as the best
solutions for utilization.
Social media marketing outperforms
other forms of e-marketing, and
scalable entrepreneurship innovations
demonstrate that the “sharing economy”
– now up to $100 billion per year – is
something to take seriously. Airbnb.
com allows anyone with a spare couch
to instantly open a bed and breakfast
in any of 190 countries. Uber.com and
Lyft.com allow anyone with a vehicle to
become a taxi driver, all mediated with
secure transactions from smartphones.
And then there is the emerging
“Caring Economy” cited by Google’s
CEO. Twenty-eight percent of new jobs
are expected to be in the health care
industry, and new health monitoring
apps for the booming senior population
offer opportunities to reduce the
trillions of dollars in overspending on
health care.
The Alaska Native tradition of
creative adaptation is alive and well in
the village of Metlakatla, on Annette
Island, Alaska, as Tsimshian youth,
even in elementary grades, are learning
to innovate with robotics, drones,
2D/3D printers, e-publishing and
digital entrepreneurship.
Although their community is
growing, most of the 65 southwestern
Alaska villages with ARRA-funded
microwave broadband (GCI’s TERRA
Project) continue to suffer from youth
out-migration because no one has yet
stepped up to provide the vision and
solutions for their creative adaptation.
However, in Metlakatla, the NTIA/
Connect Alaska/SBI Innovation
Incubator project is preparing the youth
to launch a global MOOC (massive
open online course). They are learning
to teach the world how Alaska Native
values of generosity and trusted mutual
support have come full circle, aided by
powerful new tools for sharing, and are
now being continually reinvented by
digital Natives of all ages. The Annette
Island School District has quietly
become a model for all Native and rural
school districts.
In another project, the Cook
Inlet Tribal Council partnered with
RESOURCE GUIDE
Annette Island School District Innovation Incubator (work in progress):
http://aisdk12.org/innovationincubator/open-invitation/
List of entry-level digital entrepreneurship innovations:
http://lone-eagles.com/opportunities.htm
Three-minute video walk-through:
www.screencast.com/t/pOjDQvSt04v
Service for creating apps without coding:
http://workapphome.com/
Upper One Games (Cook Inlet Tribal Council):
http://neveralonegame.com/
The first Alaska Native global video gaming business
Resources for e-publishing and entrepreneurship:
http://lone-eagles.com/digitizing-alaska.htm
Six-minute video walk-through:
www.screencast.com/t/4mLxDmzysM
Personal assessment guide – readiness for self-directed learning:
http://lone-eagles.com/academy-info-diet.htm
Creating and running a global business is
possible with only a few Mbps of bandwidth
and minimal or no capital.
E-Line Media, an entertainment and
educational publisher based in New
York City, to create an Alaska Native
video gaming company that will sell
educational games to a global market.
Using imagery inspired by Alaska
Native cultures, the games bring the
world of traditional stories alive. Even
if the gaming company does not create
much youth employment, it will create
interest in broader, more scalable,
digital entrepreneurship opportunities.
Citizens without a predilection
toward education are unlikely to make
the choice to self-educate and seek out
entrepreneurial innovations without
an opportunity literacy effort, peer
encouragement and social recognition
for their participation in a trusted,
mutual support, local network – but,
with such support, they can do it. These
efforts show that creating and running
a global business is possible with only a
few Mbps of bandwidth and minimal
or no capital. Thousands have already
proven this.
GETTING READY
FOR THE GIGABIT FUTURE
Will we all need far faster speeds sooner
than we think? Most likely, but the
Magazine
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For becoming a Gold Sponsor as well as the Wi-Fi Café
Sponsor at the 2015 Broadband Communities Summit.
For more information on Spot On Networks,
visit www.spotonnetworks.com.
You are cordially invited to come see
Spot On Networks at the upcoming
few who have a gigabit when most
others don’t won’t have many others
to connect to at that speed. One killer
app would be life-size telepresence
for meeting with loved ones – but,
at present, it would make more sense
to locate telepresence facilities in
community anchor institutions (CAIs)
than in homes. CAIs could begin to
raise awareness for what inevitably is
coming, and they could dramatically
accelerate the arrival of these new
applications by providing experiential
opportunity literacy innovations.
Innovation leadership in the U.S.
is happening at the grass roots, and
billions whose dire needs should
morally be a priority to address are
coming online. The emerging impacts
of crowdsourcing, crowdfunding
and peer mentoring, which offer the
potential for everyone to be both
learner and teacher, consumer and
producer, all the time, are both subtle
and blatant.
Yet this is still very much a culture
of silos that resists the politics of
transparency in which truth is honored
as fundamental to American values. If
the U.S. is to be globally competitive, it
will have to lead with a demonstration
of honest values that can inspire all the
world’s people and be adopted as their
own. As William Gibson once said, the
future has already arrived – it’s just not
evenly distributed yet. v
Frank Odasz is the president of Lone
Eagle Consulting, which has specialized
in rural, remote and indigenous Internet
learning since 1997. He has offered
workshops on rural e-commerce and
telework strategies funded by USDA,
USDOL, Alaska Department of Labor,
NTIA/SBI and Connect Alaska. Lone
Eagle’s grass-roots adventures range
from delivering Internet workshops to
11 Alaska Native villages in 1998 to
presenting rural broadband training
best practices for Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC International
conferences). Recent online courses include
teaching digital entrepreneurship as
21st-century workforce readiness. Contact
Frank at frank@lone-eagles.com.
Did you 2014
MAKE
THE
LEAP
Community Fiber Networks
Boost Economic Development
Broadband Communities held its third conference on broadband and economic
development in Springfield, Mass., in September 2014. Following are highlights of some
of the conference presentations.
A BBC Staff Report
Connecting Massachusetts
C
entral and Western Massachusetts
have lagged behind the rest of the state
in access to broadband, and dozens
of rural towns still have little or no broadband
access. This situation, which adversely affects
those towns’ property tax bases, is now changing.
In 2008, Governor Deval Patrick established and
funded the Massachusetts Broadband Institute
(MBI), whose goals are to improve broadband
access, adoption and use throughout the state.
MBI, in turn, won a federal BTOP grant
and constructed a middle-mile network,
MassBroadband 123, to provide transport
in underserved areas. MassBroadband 123
now connects some 1,200 community
anchor institutions, and the state legislature
recently approved an additional $50 million
to help provide last-mile access for homes
and businesses.
The central and western regions of
Massachusetts, which have long been
underserved, are beginning to see the
benefits of fiber broadband.
The unserved communities have been
preparing for the last-mile build. Most of them
joined forces to establish WiredWest, which
will become the last-mile FTTH operator in the
area. According to David Epstein, WiredWest’s
executive director, about 13,000 households,
or nearly half the households in the unserved
area, have signed pledge cards showing their
intention to subscribe to WiredWest services.
MassBroadband 123, which was completed
in February 2014, is already helping
Massachusetts communities as well as state
government agencies.
BUILDING FIBER, SAVING MONEY
Seven years ago, Kevin Warenda took the
job of director of technology in the town of
Longmeadow. He inherited a 10 Mbps cable
broadband ring that the franchised service
provider made available for free to the local
government. The problem was that it didn’t
work very well. Squirrels and rainstorms
frequently brought the system to a grinding halt;
even when it was running, it wasn’t fast enough.
“How could we replace free bad technology with
expensive good technology?” Warenda asked.
Both the cable provider and the local
telephone provider offered to build a better
network and lease it to the city, but Warenda
thought the city would be better off building its
own network. Because the town was
fiscally strapped, “it was a tough sell for
the budget people,” Warenda said.
MassBroadband 123 came
to Longmeadow’s rescue when it
connected the town hall, high school
and police station to its regional
network. That left only 11 more
municipal buildings to connect, which
the town borrowed $440,000 to do.
Now, because Longmeadow can
avail itself of the state’s low bandwidth
prices, it has a 10 Gbps ring with a 200
Mbps connection for each building.
All its systems are now cloud-based,
including online permitting, bill paying
and citizen reporting of potholes
and similar problems. The town live
streams municipal meetings and shares
data with other towns. The network
construction will pay for itself for in
three years and the entire project in
seven years.
Warenda has plans for the future –
he would like to provide Wi-Fi
downtown and in the schools and offer
fiber connections to local businesses.
Only two of the 96 fiber strands are in
use today, so huge amounts of capacity
are still untapped.
What made municipal officials
decide to take the risk? In addition to
MassBroadband 123, the October 2010
snowstorm was a deciding factor. That
early snowstorm, which caught most of
the Northeast by surprise, caused power
outages that brought down all the town’s
computer systems. Warenda explained
to town officials that with cloud-based
software, the town could have resumed
operations from anywhere. “That
helped the town leadership and school
leadership understand the value of the
system,” he said.
FIBER NETWORKS
FOR HEALTH CARE
MassBroadband 123 connects many
of the facilities of the Berkshire Health
System (BHS), a group of hospitals,
medical practices, long-term care
facilities and other health care providers
in Western Massachusetts. When BHS
began using electronic health records
and sharing data among providers
serving the same patient, it suddenly
had to transmit large quantities of data.
A NONPROFIT MODEL
Lev Gonick, OneCommunity: OneCommunity has
a singular structure for a fiber network: We’re a notfor-profit rather than being community owned. We
have a dual obligation – to benefit the community
and to be economically sustainable. This model
offers a chance for well-organized communities to do
things differently. But to get it started, Case Western
Reserve University had to cede away control of its network.
“We needed a high-speed network,”
said Bill Young, the organization’s chief
information officer. “We’re becoming
reliant on health care systems that have
to be fully available and redundant
and that save money.” (Recently, the
benefits of redundant connectivity
were dramatically demonstrated when
a hospital’s primary connection failed
and the facility was able to remain open
by using its backup connection.)
In addition to sharing electronic
health records, BHS uses the
network for telemedicine. Western
Massachusetts is too sparsely
populated to have specialists in every
facility, but now, with a high-speed
network, neurologists can diagnose and
treat stroke patients remotely, saving
valuable time.
“The network is helping us change
health care,” Young said, “and that will
change the economy.”
SUPPORTING SMALL
BUSINESSES
Even if fiber connections are not yet
available to small businesses in Western
KEEPING THE BTOP SPIRIT ALIVE
Douglas Kinkoph, NTIA: Now that the huge BTOP
effort is completed, how can NTIA continue to move
the needle on broadband without grant money? One
way is through technical assistance, including online
resources, convenings, workshops and hands-on
assistance at the request of communities. In addition,
we are educating other federal agencies that do have
money to spend – Department of Veterans Affairs,
Housing and Urban Development, Department of
Labor, Department of Education, Economic Development Administration
and others – about using some of their funding for broadband. For
example, HUD money can be used to connect public housing to
broadband, and the EDA is about to announce a broadband project in
Cleveland. [This project, a 100 Gbps metro ring funded by the EDA, the city
of Cleveland and OneCommunity, was announced in November.]
Communities are becoming more aware of their ability to build
broadband networks, but they often underestimate the costs, particularly
for pole attachments and marketing, and overestimate the penetration
rates they will achieve. In addition, communities must be aware that they
have to take the lead in using their networks for economic development.
MARKETING A BUSINESS PARK
Chris Merdon, Howard County, Md.: BTOP funded the Inter-County
Broadband Network, which connected nine central Maryland counties and
cities. Each jurisdiction took ownership of its own fiber; Howard County has
250 miles of fiber and has been pretty aggressive about using it. We plan
to provide open-access lit services, and we have also become an Internet
service provider for the businesses and community anchor institutions
connected to the fiber. We’re very excited about the new partnership
contract with the Columbia Gateway Business Park. That space wasn’t
leasing well, but now that the owners will be able to market it as a gigabit
facility, they can attract a different type of tenant.
Note: Since the Springfield conference, Howard County has announced a
telemedicine project in the public schools, a new corporate headquarters for
systems integrator nTech Solutions, and enhanced connectivity for a nonprofit
cultural and recreational association, all based on connections to the InterCounty Broadband Network.
Massachusetts, they are available
to anchor institutions that support
those businesses. One is the Quaboag
Valley Community Development
Corporation, which works with small
businesses and nonprofits in rural
towns over a 400-square-mile area.
The organization trains workers
and business owners and operates
a loan program. It also distributes
grant funds to help businesses get
broadband connections and acquire
other technology. Grants have ranged
from less than $500 to about $5,000,
but for many recipients, “even a small
dollar amount made a big difference,”
said Sheila Cuddy, the organization’s
executive director.
Businesses and nonprofits that
received technology grants include
• a pet shelter that added technology
to its mobile van
• a social-service organization that
accessed Internet-based training for
its staff
• a home-based craft business that
sells via the Internet and accepts
credit cards at craft fairs
• a wholesaler that added an eBay
presence
• a furniture company that uses
computer-assisted design and emails
drawings to clients.
• an auto body shop that sells parts
worldwide.
A survey of QVCDC’s clients
showed that grant recipients increased
their revenue, expanded their markets,
reduced costs, and retained and
added employees. None of the grants
displaced employees.
THE GATEWAY CITIES
INITIATIVE
Even outside the MassBroadband 123
area, underserved areas remain. One of
these is north-central Massachusetts,
where local mayors have taken matters
into their own hands. The mayors
formed a coalition – the Gateway Cities
Initiative – to work on ideas that would
benefit the region as a whole. The
area still has a strong manufacturing
base that employs 28 percent of the
workforce, said Mayor Lisa Wong of
Fitchburg, Mass. Most manufacturers
are technologically advanced and
operate in international markets.
“But they need broadband,” Wong
said. “That’s what they need to be
competitive. And looking to the future,
we’re hoping to attract companies in
the life sciences and financial services.”
Fitchburg took a step forward
recently when it accepted a grant
that funded free or reduced-cost
lunch for all schoolchildren. This had
the unintended effect of making all
students’ families eligible for Comcast
Internet Essentials, a low-cost, basic
Internet service. “Now we can make
sure every child and family has access
to these technologies,” Wong said.
The Fitchburg schools plan to make
language-translation and educational
resources available to children at home,
especially in non-English-speaking
homes. “Broadband is a big hope for
equalizing literacy,” Wong said.
“STATE GOVERNMENT IS A
DIGITAL BUSINESS”
Governor Patrick’s vision for Central
and Western Massachusetts included
more than just infrastructure, said
William Oates, chief information officer
for the Comonwealth of Massachusetts.
Oates’s agency, MassIT, bridges the gap
SMART RURAL COMMUNITIES
Ashlea Kenalty, GVNW Consulting: When rural
telcos build fiber-to-the-home networks, their
communities can become “smart rural communities”
and expand opportunities for residents. For
example, in areas that have no pharmacies or clinics,
metropolitan hospitals operate e-pharmacies
and remote health monitoring so residents can
access health care without traveling. Colleges offer virtual online degree
programs. Residents with high-tech jobs can telecommute. Communities
need to promote the use of the infrastructure they already have.
FIBER TO THE PEERING POINT
Tad Deriso, Mid-Atlantic Broadband: Our not-for-profit economic
development agency owns and operates a middle-mile fiber network
in rural Virginia. We connected our industrial parks to peering points in
Atlanta and northern Virginia so tenants could have access to hundreds
of carriers. That was the biggest driver of economic development I could
imagine – way more successful than we expected.
Of the last two dozen companies that visited us to discuss relocating
or expanding, 100 percent asked how they could connect with AT&T,
CenturyLink, Verizon, or whatever carrier was hosting their corporate
cloud. None asked about gigabit service. So we market the region by
telling companies that if they select one of these business parks, we
can extend fiber to their facility at no cost and provide 100 Mbps to the
peering point. That has a major impact.
Since 2006, we’ve had 1,012 new jobs and $1.5 billion in private-sector
investment. Microsoft put a big data center into a tiny town with no
broadband – but Microsoft has a connection. That industrial park had been
sitting fallow for years. The data center employs 150 people at an average
salary above $40,000, and Microsoft pays taxes and gives money to the
local schools. Now we’re working on attracting prospects that would like
to locate near Microsoft. Favorable power costs are also a plus.
Next, we’ll be working on connecting cell towers. The toughest
problem is trying to connect residential users, which we don’t do directly.
But wherever we put an Internet point of presence, a carrier comes in and
uses it. We now have 45 carriers using our network. We’ve done fiber swaps
with some of them.
between technologists and operating
managers in state agencies and tries to
maximize the public benefit from the
new infrastructure.
Thanks to MassBroadband 123, the
state has been able to locate a highperformance computing center and a
central disaster recovery site in Central
Massachusetts and make them available
to all state agencies. It is developing
strategies for making public data more
useful to the public – for example,
there is now a real-time application
that tells travelers whether their trains
TELEMEDICINE FOR
Duke Horan, Henkels & McCoy: The Rural Nebraska
Healthcare Network has increased residents’ access
to health care, improved physicians’ efficiency and
helped small towns recruit physicians. In addition,
the network has indirect economic development
benefits. A healthier workforce is more productive,
and retirees can age in place because they can receive care without having
to travel. Access to health care can even help persuade college-educated
residents to remain in or return to the towns where they grew up.
MEASURE TWICE,
CUT ONCE
Chris Lynch, Matrix Design
Group: A good design for
an FTTH network must
include enough capacity to
accommodate the growth in
homes and businesses that
the network will stimulate.
All buildable plots should be
included in the design. Take
into account that some farms
may be converted to housing
developments. Just adding
10 percent to the number of
premises won’t cut it.
Make sure to include
businesses in the design. We
generally design active Ethernet
for business versus GPON for
residential areas. You might
even need to provide T1 service
for legacy business lines. Not
just industrial parks but even
day-care centers and machine
shops need broadband today.
Remember that many new jobs
will be in home offices. If there
are houses that can’t access
broadband, people won’t move
there, and children can’t do
their homework.
The builds we’re working
on are getting extremely high
take rates. In terms of speed,
the important thing is not so
much to offer gigabit speeds but
to offer speeds comparable to
what nearby areas are getting.
People want to do whatever
their neighbors are doing on the
Internet, and they want to be
able to sell their homes when
they need to.
are on time. “Clearly, this is just the
beginning,” Oates said. “It would be
tragic if we don’t build on these assets.”
MassIT is already reducing costs
by consolidating data centers and
systems and coordinating such major
IT initiatives as the health insurance
exchange, public-safety broadband,
next-generation 911 and mobile
technology for child-safety workers. It
is developing a culture of innovation by
encouraging state agencies and startup
businesses to launch pilot projects that
use public data for public benefit. “State
government is a digital business,”
Oates said.
Oates now hopes to work with
local officials to extend MassBroadband
123 to more municipal facilities,
including schools. “We want to provide
better connectivity at lower cost,” he
said. He also wants to help cities and
towns use that connectivity for public
benefit in the form of Wi-Fi hot spots,
open-data applications and transparent
government.
“We want to eliminate the obstacles
and limitations so that no one is
BAR HARBOR RETAINS
A RESEARCH LAB
Josh Broder, Tilson: Jackson Labs in Bar Harbor,
Maine, supports research institutions by breeding
mice with specific genetic mutations. The lab was
originally located in Bar Harbor because, being close
to a big body of cold water, it’s a good place to breed
mice. But there was no easy way to get fiber there –
so the location was no longer so good once broadband became a necessity.
With help from a new commercial carrier in Bar Harbor and from the
state research and education network, the lab was able to get a fiber
connection to Boston, where it can connect to Internet2 at low cost. It’s
now linked to a new facility for computational science in Farmington,
Conn. The 1,300 employees at the lab can continue working there.
The issue now is getting connectivity to the off-island community
where the lab’s employees actually live – but that community recently won
a federal grant that will provide capital to build a lateral off the fiber line.
The fact that a fiber line runs through the community from the lab to the
research network made the grant application more competitive; it would
have been a really hard case to make otherwise. The fiber is available to
the community because it was part of a BTOP project, which makes it
open access.
To help smaller communities gain access to broadband, community
anchor institutions where middle-mile fiber terminates should agree to
serve as wire centers for distributing last-mile service. Small carriers or
municipalities could colocate their headends in these institutions and
share their connections to the Internet.
In addition, we need to define anchor institutions more broadly. A
cell tower could be an anchor institution – it provides 911 services, and
it probably has fiber to the base. If some carrier spent a lot of money to
build fiber there, we could start thinking about the cost of deployment
beginning there. From the cell tower, fiber could be deployed to the
schools and then to the rest of the community. Electric utilities’ smartgrid facilities could also serve as anchor institutions. There are substantial
unmet opportunities for collaboration.
digitally excluded,” he said. “We’re
building a community to do great
things on a bigger, broader scale.” v
AFFINITY
MARKETING FOR
FIBER NETWORKS
Craig Settles, Gigabit
Nation: A network’s marketing
dollars go further when the
operator collaborates with
organizations that can drive
successful marketing campaigns.
A partner may become an
anchor subscriber, recruit other
subscribers, donate funds or
help obtain grants from others.
For example, a school system
may be an anchor tenant;
market the network to teachers,
students and parents; and may
be eligible for grants that would
help finance the network. Health
care providers can fill similar
roles. In Ottumwa, Iowa, a health
care provider will provide new
telehealth applications for
patients, making that facility a
conduit to new subscribers.
Similarly, a county
government that wants to
provide e-government services
might have an incentive to
get residents to subscribe. A
large employer might want its
employees to telecommute.
A local chamber of commerce
can be a conduit to small
businesses. One network uses its
relationship with a data center
company as a way to recruit
business customers.
Did you 2014
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Bad Broadband Equals
Low Population Growth
An original Broadband Communities study shows a startling, 10-fold difference in
population growth between broadband haves and have-nots.
By Steven S. Ross / Broadband Communities
G
ood broadband is even more closely
related to economic opportunity
than has been realized. An exclusive
Broadband Communities analysis of census
data and National Broadband Map (NBM)
data for all 3,144 counties in the 50 states and
District of Columbia reveals that counties in
the bottom half of their state rankings for access
to 25 Mbps download speeds had a population
growth of only 0.27 percent from 2010 through
the end of 2013. The top half enjoyed growth of
2.79 percent – more than 10 times greater.
In actual numbers, counties in the bottom
half of their state rankings added just 134,390
people, and those in the top half added more
than 7.2 million.
The differences are even more stark when
the top 10 percent of counties in each state is
compared with the bottom 10 percent. The
counties ranked in the lowest 10 percent for
Counties that lag other counties in their
states in access to good broadband are
actually losing population; counties with
the best broadband in their states are
growing quickly.
Get more details about this
population study at the
broadband access lost 0.55 percent of their
population on average. The top 10 percent gained
3.18 percent. The single top-ranked counties in
each state grew even faster – 3.61 percent.
Again, in actual numbers, the top county
in each of the 50 states added more than 1.1
million to their populations in the aggregate – a
quarter of the total population gain experienced
by the top 10 percent.
A recent Commerce Department study
highlights the relative lack of broadband in rural
areas compared with urban areas, and new census
data shows that, between 2010 and 2012, for the
first time in U.S. history, most rural counties lost
population. The Broadband Communities study
confirms a strong association between these two
phenomena. The methodology used in this study
overcomes many of the shortcomings of studies
released by the Commerce Department.
COUNTY RANK
WITHIN STATE FOR
25 MBPS COVERAGE
2010 POPULATION
2013 POPULATION
POPULATION
CHANGE
PERCENT CHANGE
Bottom 10%
5,420,347
5,390,628
-29,776
-0.55%
Bottom half
49,586,078
49,720,525
134,390
0.27%
Bottom county
1,318,114
1,322,720
4,549
0.35%
Top half
258,559,871
265,761,865
7,201,994
2.79%
Top 10%
131,229,210
135,396,793
4,167,583
3.18%
Top county
31,225,768
32,351,828
1,126,060
3.61%
The 1,500-plus counties in the top half of their states in terms of access to at least 25 Mbps broadband enjoyed 10 times the percentage population
growth of the bottom half. The bottom 10 percent in each state, in aggregate, actually lost population.
• This study defines broadband as 25
Mbps, which FCC Chairman Tom
Wheeler recently said was “fast
becoming ‘table stakes’ in 21stcentury communications,” rather
than as the 3 Mbps speed that the
NBM rural-urban comparison
uses. Access to 25 Mbps service is a
realistic indicator that a household
or business can use most available
broadband applications.
• Using countywide data sidesteps the
issue of “if it is available anywhere
in a ZIP code or census block,
everyone in the area is assumed to
have access” because each county
contains multiple census blocks and
ZIPs. The percentage of households
with access is rated across multiple
ZIPs, which allows a meaningful
ranking system within each state.
• Aggregating by county is preferable
to aggregating by state, as many
NBM studies do, because almost all
states have wide variations among
counties.
• This study does not require
identification of counties as “urban”
or “rural,” categories that are
notoriously difficult to define at
the county level. Exurban counties
often include some areas that are
functionally urban and others that
are functionally rural.
• By using population change as the
key economic metric, this study
can access more current and more
accurate base data than studies
that rely on employment change.
Population change both drives and
reflects changes in employment and
income.
• This study extends the population
data beyond 2012 and lays the
groundwork for more refined
analyses that include the number
of premises and road miles for each
county; the number and size of
multiple-dwelling-unit buildings,
business premises and households
(to determine the percentage of
premises actually occupied); and
population age profiles.
• The study uses percentile rather
than absolute ranking of counties
because states range in number of
counties from three in Delaware
to 254 in Texas. The District of
Columbia has just one “county” by
census rules. Obviously, the eighthranked county in Texas would differ
competitively from the eighthranked county in Connecticut
(which has only eight counties).
Rural counties suffered population decline in every region. This is the first time in U.S. history that
population declined in a majority of rural counties.
There is a clear relationship between percentage population gain or loss and the percentage of the population in a given county with access to
at least 25 Mbps download speed. Nevertheless, the availability of broadband at that speed accounts for only about 10 percent of the variance in
population change. In these charts, each of the 3,144 counties in the United States is represented by a dot, no matter what the county’s population
actually is. Counties on the left side of the chart (low broadband availability) tend to be much, much smaller than counties on the right. Regression
error is very small; there is almost no Working-Hotelling effect, and n is very large. Source: Broadband Communities, from census data April 2010–
December 2013, and National Broadband Map, data mainly from December 2013.
WHY DO GROWTH
RATES DIFFER?
The reasons for county growth
disparities go far beyond access to
broadband, of course. In fact, many of
the most sparsely populated counties
added population after 2010 even
though the majority of counties that
the census defines as “rural” lost
population. When population is very
low, construction of a single new
business premises or small subdivision
can add several percent to population
in a single year.
The scatterplots (which, in the
interest of clarity, omit a few counties
with post-2010 population growth
greater than 15 percent or less than -10
percent) show the wide variations in
percentage growth at any level of 25
Mbps (and higher) access speeds. Still,
counties with little or no broadband
access at this level tend to have much
lower populations, and those with nearzero broadband access tend to have the
lowest populations of all.
Two possible relationships between
broadband access and population loss
or gain were tested – a linear (straightline) relationship and a second-order
polynomial (curved-line) relationship.
A polynomial relationship suggests
that broadband’s effect on population
change is stronger when broadband
is more available. The polynomial
relationship turned out to be a slightly
better fit (R 2= 0.09 versus 0.07) and
does not cross into positive population
growth before 60 percent access to at
least 25 Mbps. The linear regression
goes positive before 40 percent. This
suggests that access to good broadband
could account for nearly 10 percent of
the population changes seen – quite a
lot for a single variable.
But is it lack of broadband that
causes the population loss? Or does
This National Broadband Map graphic shows the difference in access between rural and urban
areas in each state for low access speeds (at least 3 Mbps down, 768 Kbps up). The deep blue
states have a disparity of greater than 12 percent, and the very lightest blue states have a disparity
of only 2 to 4 percent at these low “broadband” speeds. Source: National Broadband Map.
population loss, with its bad prospects
for turning a profit on broadband,
limit broadband availability? Last
year, for example, CenturyLink listed
metropolitan population growth as
a criterion in its choice of locations
for gigabit deployments. The data are
not adequate to definitively answer
this question, and conversations with
county and state officials suggest that,
in some cases, population loss was
already ongoing, and in other cases,
lack of broadband seems to have caused
population loss.
The shape of the “scatter” in the
scatterplots suggests that for at least
half the counties, population loss was
an effect of poor broadband, not the
cause. However, answering the causeand-effect question is not a purely
statistical exercise. To arrive at a strong
Which comes first, population loss or
inadequate broadband? It seems likely that
population loss comes first in some instances
and poor broadband in others.
conclusion in any one county requires
considering many variables – the age
and education profile of the population,
incomes from government transfer
payments and pensions as well as from
current economic activity, job creation
and so forth.
The stimulus program (which
reduced deployment and operating costs
by cutting backhaul prices), emerging
technologies for cutting deployment
costs, and increasing revenue potential
also put their thumbs on the scale.
By using the state rankings, this
study essentially compared counties
with nearby counties that have better or
worse access. This is an especially good
technique when population migrations
are considered. The easiest migrations
are short – to the next county rather
than to the next state or the opposite
coast.
Often, of course, the nearest county
with good prospects is in a nearby state.
The next iteration of this study will
check that effect as well. See us at the
Broadband Communities Summit in
Austin next April for an update! v
Editor-at-large Steve Ross can be reached
at steve@bbcmag.com.
here!
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER
The Killer App for Local Fiber
Networks
For a community fiber network, economic development may be the killer app –
the application that validates the use of the platform.
By Jim Baller, Joanne Hovis and Ashley Stelfox / Coalition for Local Internet Choice and Masha Zager / Broadband Communities
N
early every U.S. community that has
developed a fiber optic broadband
network or partnered with the
private sector to acquire one has put economic
development at the top of its list of reasons for
doing so. Communities increasingly recognize
that fiber networks also provide critical
benefits for education, public safety, health
care, transportation, energy, environmental
protection, urban revitalization, government
service and much more. But only in revitalizing
and modernizing local economies and creating
meaningful, well-paying jobs do community
leaders, businesses, institutions and residents
consistently find common ground. In short,
economic development and job creation can
fairly be called the “killer app” for local fiber
networks.
Despite the central role of economic
development and job creation in any discussion
of fiber networks, there is still much to learn
about the relationship between them.
WHAT IS ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT?
Let’s begin with definitions. According to the
U.S. Economic Development Administration,
Economic Development creates the
conditions for economic growth and
improved quality of life by expanding
the capacity of individuals, firms, and
communities to maximize the use of their
The Summit economic
development track will present
more FTTH success stories.
Austin, April 14–16.
talents and skills to support innovation,
lower transaction costs, and responsibly
produce and trade valuable goods and
services. Economic Development requires
effective, collaborative institutions
focused on advancing mutual gain for the
public and the private sector. Economic
Development is essential to ensuring our
economic future.1
Similarly, the World Bank defines economic
development as follows:
The purpose of local economic
development is to build up the economic
capacity of a local area to improve its
economic future and the quality of life
for all. It is a process by which public,
business and nongovernmental sector
partners work collectively to create better
conditions for economic growth
and employment generation.2
Many economic development
strategies and options are available
to communities. They can focus on
increasing the profitability of local
businesses, increasing the number of
local jobs, increasing the quality of
local jobs or striking a balance among
these goals.3 They can seek to attract
or retain a relatively small number of
large companies, a larger number of
small to medium-sized businesses or a
combination of both.
Communities can concentrate on
their local economies, cooperate with
neighboring communities or involve
themselves in larger regional initiatives.
They can attempt to support the
growth of all local industries or target
particular industries – high-tech, health
care, data centers and so forth – with
the best prospects.
Once communities decide what
they want to do, they typically
have a wide choice of development
tools available. They can offer tax
incentives or loans and other financial
enticements. They can establish
improvement districts, enterprise zones,
and other kinds of development areas.
They can improve roads, sewers, water
facilities and other infrastructure. They
can offer favorable terms and accelerate
approval of franchises, permits and
other necessary authorizations.4 They
can support workforce development
and training. They can use local
government purchasing power to
increase a targeted company’s sales,
thereby reducing its risks. They can
help aggregate demand within the
community. They can also seek grants,
loans, and other support from federal
and state agencies, foundations, and
other organizations.
One development tool is to improve
broadband infrastructure, and even
here, communities usually have multiple
options. They can work with willing
incumbents, enter into public-private
partnerships with new entrants, establish
advanced communications networks of
their own or develop other innovative
approaches that work for them.
Making advanced broadband available is
only one of many economic development
tools, but studies show that broadband
appears to have a positive effect on a range
of economic indicators.
THE LINK BETWEEN
BROADBAND AND
Although the availability of advanced
broadband networks is only one among
many tools for economic development
and only one of several factors an entity
takes into account in deciding whether
to move to or remain in a particular
community,5 several formal studies
have been done on the relationship
between broadband and economic
development.6 The first wave of these
studies, which focused on firstgeneration, low-capacity broadband
networks, suggests that there is at least
an association and probably even a
causal relationship between broadband
and economic development.
Other studies indicate that “the
Internet plays an integral role in
helping small businesses achieve their
strategic goals, improve competitiveness
and efficiency, and interact with
customers and vendors.”7 Studies also
confirm that broadband expansion
can dramatically increase state GDP
and tax receipts.8 Site selectors report
that locations are now routinely
eliminated because of inadequate
telecommunications infrastructure.9
For example, in a 2005 study,
George S. Ford and Thomas M.
Koutsky concluded that “broadband
infrastructure can be a significant
contributor to economic growth ...
[and] efforts to restrict municipal
broadband investment could deny
communities an important tool in
promoting economic development.”
The study “quantif[ied] the effect
on economic development resulting
from a community’s investment in a
broadband network” by looking at
Lake County, Fla., which developed a
municipal broadband network in 2001
and provided access to the network to
private businesses.
In comparing Lake County with
similar communities in Florida that
did not have municipal broadband
networks, Ford and Koutsky found
that Lake County had “experienced
100 percent – a doubling – in economic
growth relative to its Florida peer
counties” since the deployment of the
municipal network. The study points
out that this doubling occurred despite
the fact that these other counties “no
doubt” had private broadband networks
during the evaluation period.
In another 2005 study, analyzing
data from 1998–2002, Sharon Gillett,
William Lehr, Carlos Osorio, and
Marvin Sirbu found that communities
in which mass-market broadband
became available by December 1999
“experienced more rapid growth in
employment, number of businesses
overall and businesses in IT-intensive
sectors.10 Likewise, in a 2007 study,
Robert Crandall, William Lehr and
Robert Litan concluded that broadband
not only increased nongovernmental
employment by 0.2 to 0.3 percent but
also had a positive impact on GDP.11
In 2010, Jed Kolko found a
“positive relationship” – one that
“leans in the direction of a causal
relationship, though not definitively”
– between broadband expansion and
local economic growth. Kolko’s study
revealed that almost all industries
showed a positive relationship between
broadband expansion and local
economic growth, particularly in
industries that rely on information
technology, such as utilities,
information, finance and insurance,
technical services, management
of companies and enterprises, and
administrative and business support
services.12
In their 2013 study, Brian
Whitacre, Roberto Gallardo and
Sharon Strover focused on the impact
of broadband on the economic health
of rural areas. They found that “high
levels of broadband adoption in rural
areas do causally (and positively)
impact income growth ... as well as
(negatively) influence poverty and
unemployment growth. Similarly, low
levels of broadband adoption in rural
areas lead to declines in the number of
firms and total employment numbers in
the county.”13
FIBER NETWORKS
AND THE ECONOMY
Given the relatively recent emergence of
fiber networks, there is not yet a large
enough database to support statistically
rigorous statements about the
relationship between high-bandwidth
broadband connectivity and economic
development. It is clear, however,
that fiber networks enable hundreds
of thousands of individuals to work
from home, adding tens of billions of
dollars annually to the U.S. economy.14
In addition, fiber connectivity adds
between $5,000 and $6,000 to the
value of a $300,000 home in the
United States.15
A series of studies conducted at the
Chalmers University of Technology
in Gothenburg, Sweden, specifically
addressed the effects of broadband
speed. In their first report, published
in 2011, the researchers concluded
that increases in broadband speeds
contributed significantly to economic
growth.16 In a report published in
2013, the same researchers concluded
that, in developed countries, the
threshold level for broadband to have
any impact on household income was
2 Mbps; gaining 4 Mbps of broadband
increased household income by $2,100
per year.17 Given that fiber networks
are capable of nearly unlimited speed,
it appears that their potential economic
impact is higher than that for lowercapacity broadband.
A recent study commissioned by the
Fiber to the Home Council Americas
compared economic activity in 14
metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs)
in which gigabit-speed connectivity
was widely available (to more to than
50 percent of the households) with
economic activity in 41 similarly sized
MSAs in the same states in which
gigabit speeds were not available.
According to the study’s investigators,
“our model suggests that for the MSAs
with widely available gigabit services,
the per capita GDP is approximately
1.1 percent higher than in MSAs
with little or no availability of gigabit
services. These results suggest that the
14 gigabit broadband communities in
our study enjoyed approximately $1.4
billion in additional GDP when gigabit
broadband became widely available.”18
Although this study focuses on “early
evidence” and is far from conclusive, it
is consistent with the field experience of
many communities.
What formal studies do not yet
reveal is how many units of economic
development a community can expect
from a specific dollar investment in
a fiber network under the unique
conditions present in that community.
Neither the data nor the analytical
tools to do this will be available in the
foreseeable future.
As Graham Richard, former mayor
of Fort Wayne, Ind., observed, “From
the point of view of retaining and
gaining jobs, I can give you example
after example [of the impact of
broadband]. … What I don’t have is a
long term, double-blind study that says
it was just broadband.” But, “as a leader,
sometimes you go with your gut.”19
THE VIEW FROM THE
TRENCHES
A huge and rapidly growing body of
evidence confirms that, at least in
some localities, advanced broadband
networks can indeed spur economic
development and create jobs. The
communities cited here have taken
differing approaches based on their
individual resources and economic
development needs. Some make
fiber available to businesses; others
serve households as well. Some are
more concerned with increasing the
availability of broadband, and others
focus on reducing its price. Some try
to retain existing large employers, and
others aim to attract new startups.
The common thread is that
economic development officials are
working closely with existing and
potential employers to identify,
understand and meet their needs for
advanced communications capabilities.
• Cedar Falls, Iowa: In the 1990s,
Cedar Falls Utilities built a
citywide municipal hybrid fibercoaxial network and provided fiber
connections to commercial and
industrial customers in both the
city and the industrial park.20 Over
the years, Cedar Falls watched
businesses from neighboring towns
relocate to the area, in part because
of the need for more bandwidth and
greater Internet capabilities.21 Cedar
Falls has now made the transition
to all fiber and became the state’s
first gigabit city in 2014. Jim Krieg,
general manager of Cedar Falls
Utilities, noted the growth fiber
optics had generated: “Twenty years
ago, [Cedar Falls] had 27 businesses
and $5 million in taxable valuation;
today, there are 160 businesses and
$270 million in valuation.”22
• Chattanooga, Tenn.: With its
fiber-to-the-home network offering
gigabit speeds throughout the
city, Chattanooga has attracted
several major companies, including
Volkswagen, which has already
spent more than $1 billion building
factories in the area and created
12,000 new jobs, as well as
Homeserve USA and Amazon.23
Chattanooga’s innovative, highspeed fiber network has also created
an entrepreneurial boom in the
city.24
• Cumberland, Md.: Cumberland,
Alleghany County and the county
board of education have partnered
for 15 years on an innovative
wireless infrastructure program
that delivers high-quality services
to government users and makes
available both middle-mile and
last-mile wireless capabilities for
private ISPs that serve residential,
business and health care customers.
The availability of these services,
particularly in the most rural parts
of the county, distinguish the
county from other rural areas. It has
enabled the development of homebased businesses and attracted
second-home buyers who otherwise
would not have chosen to locate in
the county.
• The Dalles, Ore.: The Dalles,
a city of 11,873 residents in the
picturesque Columbia River Gorge,
operates a 17-mile municipal fiber
optic network. In 2005, as a direct
result of The Dalles’s municipal
networking capabilities, Google
decided to purchase an industrial
site there for $1.87 million to
house high-tech equipment that
would be connected to the rest of
the company’s network. According
to the man who coordinated
the deal with Google, “It was
visionary – this little town with
no tax revenues had figured out
that if you want to transform an
economy from manufacturing to
information, you’ve got to pull
fiber.”25 The project was expected
to create “between 50 and 100
jobs over a matter of time, earning
an estimated average of $60,000
annually in wages and benefits.”26
The Dalles succeeded so well that
it recently paid off its network debt
well ahead of schedule.27
• Danville, Va.: In contrast to The
Dalles, Danville did not have a fiber
network when AOL came looking
for a site. As a result, AOL struck
Danville off its list of potential sites
for a new data center and located the
center in Prince William County,
Va.28 After this setback, Danville
developed a fiber network of its own.
Now known as the “Comeback
City,” Danville used its fiber
network to revitalize its economy,
once the worst in the state with
a 19 percent unemployment rate,
and made the city a site of robust
economic development, attracting
Microsoft, IKEA and many other
new, high-tech businesses.29
• Kendall County, Texas: A
cooperative telephone company,
GVTC, began building out FTTH
in the Texas Hill Country in 2004.
It works closely with the Kendall
County Economic Development
Corporation to promote the
network to businesses. As a result,
the region’s growth has outpaced
the rest of Texas by 4 percentage
points. Corporate site selection
committees no longer reject sites
in the county. An economic
development official said, “If I don’t
have fiber, I’m eliminated – not just
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Multiple Solutions. One Source.
Lafayette, La., is becoming a technology
hub, with many companies relocating to
the area because of its excellent, affordable
Internet connectivity.
•
fiber to the business, because the
executives are commuting to San
Antonio and want to work from
home because of gas prices. Fiber
allows throughput and security.”
Software companies, medical
companies and aerospace companies
have relocated to or stayed in the
area because of the fiber network.
Even Hill Country wineries, which
constitute a small but tenacious
local industry dating back to early
German settlers, are now putting
towns such as Fredericksburg and
Boerne on vintners’ maps.
• Lafayette, La.: “When NuComm
International needed to locate a new
call center – one that would add
1,000 jobs ... to the local economy
– it chose Lafayette, La., because
the city is building a massive fiber
network to connect everyone.”30
Lafayette has garnered attention
in the tech sector, with many
companies relocating to the area
because of Internet connectivity.
In one example, “Scott Eric Olivier
moved his tech startup firm,
Skyscraper Holding, from Los
Angeles to Lafayette when he heard
of the speeds and service offered by
LUS Fiber.”31 Olivier says the same
100 Mbps connectivity that costs
him $200 per month in Lafayette,
enabling him to move large files
across the Web, would cost him
several thousand dollars a month
anywhere else. In the past few
months, Lafayette attracted three
new employers that will bring 1,300
jobs into the city.32
• Martinsville, Va.: Martinsville’s
fiber network enabled it to attract
major businesses, such as defense
contractor SPARTA Inc.’s research
center, Mehler Texnologies,
American Distribution and
Warehousing and ICF International
(500+ jobs).33
• Mesa, Ariz.: In the early 2000s,
Mesa started placing conduit in
its rights-of-way during capital
construction projects and any other
time a road was open. The city
built a critical mass of conduit and
fiber over a decade and a half, and
it partners actively with private
entities seeking access to conduit
and fiber. Apple located a silicon
research lab in Mesa, and the city
credits the direct fiber connection to
that facility as a significant part of
the inducement for Apple and other
entities to locate in Mesa.
• Montgomery County, Md.:
In the mid-1990s, Montgomery
County developed a sophisticated
revitalization plan for downtown
Silver Spring, which had seen
steady economic deterioration
and high retail and office
vacancy rates. Important to the
revitalization was attracting
Discovery Communications and
the American Film Institute (AFI)
to locate as anchors; a key to
attracting those anchors was that
the county provided dark fiber
resources to the locations where
they committed to build. This
revitalization has been enormously
successful, and Discovery and the
AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural
Center have proved essential to the
redevelopment of Silver Spring.
• Powell, Wyo.: In anticipation
of the construction of a fiber-tothe-home system in rural Powell,
a South Korean venture capital
firm agreed to pay up to $5.5
•
•
•
million to engage 150 certified
teachers, working from their homes,
to teach English to students in
South Korea using high-speed
videoconferencing.34 The FTTH
system has been so successful
that the city was able to buy out
its investors 18 years ahead of
schedule.35
Princeton, Ill.: Princeton built a
fiber network to retain IngersollRand as a major local employer; it
now has more than 75 commercial
customers, and most banks in
town are connected with fiber. The
broadband utility is regarded as
attractive for potential employers.36
Pulaski, Tenn.: Local economic
development leadership has begun
marketing Pulaski Electric System’s
services to nearby Huntsville, Ala.,
home to a large number of defense
and space industries. Before PES
built its network, the community
had never attempted to approach
the defense or aerospace companies
because it had little to offer that
met their special needs. The FTTH
network has allowed several existing
industries to receive superior service
at much lower prices than they paid
previously. The system has become
a focus of community pride and
an example of the community’s
willingness to invest in the future.37
Reedsburg, Wis.: Reedsburg’s
FTTH system “has allowed Lands’
End to develop a kind of virtual call
center, with many of its customer
service representatives working out
of their homes.”38
San Leandro, Calif.: San Leandro,
located in the San Francisco Bay
area, competes with such tech giants
as Silicon Valley for local businesses.
In 2012, with the goal of attracting
modern, technology-based industries
to San Leandro, the city established
a partnership with a local business
owner to create an ultra-highspeed fiber broadband network.
The network, Lit San Leandro, is
largely privately funded but utilizes
the city’s conduits to run the
underground fiber network. After
only two years, Lit San Leandro is
already attracting businesses to the
area. For example, a 3D printing
firm moved from San Francisco
to a factory in San Leandro after
considering more than 50 other
locations. Similarly, a Kaiser hospital
was built on the site of a former
grocery distribution center, and
the Westlake/OSIsoft Technology
Complex, which includes three
six-story, 300,000-square-foot tech
offices, located in a former Del
Monte cannery.39
• Santa Monica, Calif.: Santa
Monica’s Information Systems
Department mapped out a plan
for the creation and expansion of
its broadband network in 1998.
Since then, the city has been slowly
and methodically implementing
its plan, saving city government
$700,000 a year in communications
costs as well as making advanced
communications capabilities
available to private entities. In
2014, the city upgraded its fiber
optic network speed to 100 Gbps.40
According to the city’s chief
information officer, Jory Wolf, the
network has already contributed
significantly to the city’s economic
growth, and he expects the business
sector to leverage the upgraded
network for service models, content
distribution and telemedicine
initiatives.41
• South Bend, Ind.: In the
early 2000s, South Bend began
researching how to improve its
telecommunications networks.42
South Bend had fiber networks in
place, but it was not in a position to
develop and operate the networks
itself. Because no existing providers
were interested in establishing
vendor-neutral fiber services
through the city’s infrastructure,
South Bend worked with local
partners to establish Metronet, a
nonprofit dark fiber network that
serves government, educational
and other nonprofit entities. Its
for-profit subsidiary, St. Joe Valley
Metronet (SJVM), provides fiber
access to banks, manufacturers and
other businesses. The profits from
SJVM are paid to Metronet through
dividends and help subsidize
Metronet’s continued operations
and expansion. SJVM has helped
draw technology businesses to South
Bend, from the GramTel data center
in 2009 to the 2013 launch of a new
coworking and meeting/conference
space in the downtown area.
These are a small handful of the
many projects across the country
that use advanced communications
capabilities to support economic
development and at the same time use
the benefits of economic development
to fund their networks and make them
sustainable.
NEXT STEPS
More information about the economic
benefits of advanced broadband will
continue to come to light. For one
thing, the federal broadband stimulus
programs invested billions of dollars in
hundreds of middle-mile and last-mile
projects across the United States. Most
of these projects were completed only
recently, and once they have a few
years of operating experience under
their belts, they will produce a wealth
of information about what worked
well and what did not in stimulating
economic development.
The growing interest in gigabit
networks is also likely to increase the
understanding of how widespread
availability of gigabit speeds affects
economic development. Google Fiber’s
entry into the market, the gigabit
projects of numerous community
networks, and recent gigabit
announcements by such private players
as AT&T, C Spire Fiber, CenturyLink,
Cox Communications and others have
made “gigabit” a household word. In
many communities, organizations
such as the Mayors’ Bistate Innovation
Team (formed by the mayors of Kansas
City, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo.) are
emerging to analyze and stimulate
economic development and other uses
for the new gigabit connectivity.
Useful analytical approaches
and devices are emerging to help
communities reap the economic
benefits of advanced broadband. For
example, Strategic Networks Group
has developed tools to measure and
analyze broadband utilization and
benefits to businesses, organizations
and households.43 These tools, backed
by a growing database that currently
covers more than 16,000 businesses
and 12,000 households, can provide
detailed analyses of the economic
impacts of broadband utilization and
enable businesses and organizations
to compare themselves with other
entities of comparable size and other
characteristics. As the databases grow,
they will become increasingly valuable.
In addition, communities that have
advanced communications capabilities
are increasingly talking to one another,
sharing resources and lessons learned,
and collaborating when possible.
Broadband Communities has sought
to facilitate such exchanges by hosting
a series of national and regional
economic development conferences.
Over time, the path from broadband
investments to economic development
should be faster, more efficient and less
costly to navigate. In short, as Graham
Richard suggests, we should have ample
information to let our instincts lead us
to sound decisions. v
Jim Baller is president of the Baller Herbst
Law Firm, Ashley Stelfox is an associate at
the Baller Herbst Law Firm, and Joanne
Hovis is president of CTC Technology
and Energy, a consulting firm. They are
among the founders of the Coalition for
Local Internet Choice, which supports the
authority of local communities to make
the broadband Internet choices essential
for economic competitiveness, democratic
discourse and quality of life in the 21st
century. See www.localnetchoice.org for
more information. Masha Zager (masha@
bbcmag.com) is the editor of Broadband
Communities.
The endnotes to this article will
appear in the digital edition,
online at www.bbcmag.com.
here!
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER
2014 SUPPORTERS
2014 Supporters:
Champions of Fiber Networks
For Community Broadband
AFL
800-235-3423
www.AFLglobal.com
Clearfield
763-476-6866
www.clearfieldconnection.com
Comcast
1-800-xfinity
www.comcast.com/multifamily
Calix
707-766-3000
www.calix.com/gigabit
877-588-1649
www.bbcmag.com
NiSC
866-999-6472
www.nisc.coop
BEC
972-422-0877
www.bectechnologies.net
OFS
888-342-3743
www.ofsoptics.com
$)XUXNDZD&RPSDQ\
Corning
800-743-2671
www.corning.com/opcomm
FTTH Council
202-524-9550, ext. 3
www.ftthcouncil.org
Crownduit
718-619-6965
www.crownduit.com
®
Power & Tel
901-866-3300
www.ptsupply.com
Pavlov Media
800-677-6812
www.pavlovmedia.com
Finley Engineering
417-682-5531
www.fecinc.com
Cox
404-269-3979
www.cox.com
RVA, LLC
918-592-3100
www.rvallc.com
CLIC
TECHNOLOGY
Nontraditional PON Architectures
Fiber-to-the-home network designers need creative solutions for areas with limited
fiber and those that have long distances between neighborhoods.
By Tom Anderson / CommScope
A
s the deployment of FTTH solutions
increases, real-world network
topologies are challenging the abilities
of traditional passive optical network (PON)
architectures. PON technology was conceived,
and standards were developed, by the Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and
International Telecommunication Union
around a centrally located optical line terminal
(OLT) that delivered services over a singlefiber architecture to 32, 64 or 128 optical
network units (ONUs, also called optical
network terminals, or ONTs) at a 20-kilometer
range. Standards-based optics have been
developed to extend that range to 30 and 40
kilometers, providing good solutions for simple
range extensions while keeping the optical
distribution network (ODN) truly passive.
Those traditional PON architectures are quite
suitable for delivering the benefits of PON to the
majority of network operators’ subscriber bases;
however, there are situations for which those
solutions are not a perfect fit. For example, areas
with limited fiber availability and deployments
that need to provide service beyond the range
of traditional PON are driving the need for
alternative answers. This challenge demands
a solution; here are three ways CommScope is
actively engaged in solving these problems.
PUT THE OLT IN A NODE
For brevity, let’s call this approach a node-based
OLT or an N-OLT. The OLT can be placed
practically anywhere in the outside plant (OSP),
with traditional PON distribution from that
point on. By using available Ethernet-over-fiber
technologies, an N-OLT uses its fiber feeds
efficiently, requiring as few as one fiber to serve
the OLT. Those same technologies also allow
the N-OLT to be located at long distances
from the headend and close to subscribers,
where short drops and high split counts can
optimize the network. Trade-offs include the
challenges posed by active elements in the OSP,
such as powering, back-up power and increased
maintenance logistics.
TEMPERATURE-HARDEN A
SMALLER, REMOTE OLT
Let’s call this approach a remote OLT
(R-OLT). This can be deployed outside
an environmentally controlled headend
environment in a rack-mounting form factor.
Hardening enables R-OLTs to be installed in
equipment rooms, OSP cabinets and similar
locations in which temperatures are not
controlled as they are in a headend but that are
protected from rain and snow.
This accomplishes several things. Like
an N-OLT, an R-OLT is closer to end users,
allowing for shorter drops and less fiber from
the splitter to ONUs. And, as with an N-OLT,
feeds from the network are fiber-efficient
and have a great deal of range flexibility.
Deployment locations are more limited than
with N-OLTs and require external enclosures,
but power is typically available where R-OLTs
can be deployed, accessibility can be limited
(for example, when R-OLTs are in customer
premises) and the expense and complexity of a
weather-sealed housing is avoided.
How a PON extender works
THE PON EXTENDER
This design leaves the OLT in the headend; however, instead
of standard PON optics with fixed wavelengths, multiple
wavelengths are used to multiplex a number of PON
streams onto a single fiber. That single fiber connects to the
PON extender where the PON streams are recovered and
retransmitted from the extender to ONUs using standard
PON optics. This approach could easily be termed a “PON
concentrator” because of its ability to carry multiple PONs on
a single fiber between the OLT and the PON extender. The
benefits of this approach are
CommScope’s broadband optical solutions product strategy and
portfolio. For more information, see www.commscope.com.
• Good fiber utilization between the OLT and the PON
extender because only a single fiber is needed for every
eight PONs
• Less complexity than an OLT, with reduced maintenance
and increased reliability in the OSP
• Ability to place the device virtually anywhere in the
OSP (just like an N-OLT) because its OSP-friendly node
enclosure allows it to be placed close to power and/or
subscribers.
There are trade-offs with this architecture as well, such as
distance limitations due to timing requirements for the OLTto-ONU PON circuit. A PON extender doubles the number
of optical transceivers in the PON ODN. In addition, like the
N-OLT, it is an active device with powering and maintenance
logistics challenges.
All these solutions have a place in FTTH and FTTB
networks and expand the ability of PON to be a universal
service platform. Do they have a place in your network? v
Tom Anderson, who has more than 25 years’ leadership
experience in the telecommunications industry, is responsible for
here!
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER
BROADBAND COMMUNITIES MARKETPLACE
To reserve space in this section and LEVERAGE the power of your advertising via print, digital, and multimedia exposure in
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866.638.6066
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800-422-2537
Verizon FiOS services not available in all areas. ©2009 Verizon.
®
ADVERTISER INDEX / CALENDAR
ADVERTISER
3-GIS
PAGEWEBSITE
30www.3-gis.com
AFL Telecommunications
32, 102
www.aflglobal.com
Advanced Media Technologies
31, 99
www.amt.com
AT&T
106www.att.com/communities
BEC Technologies
Calix
21, 32, 102
www.bectechnologies.net
61, 68, 91, 102, 103
www.bbcmag.com
Inside Cover Flap – 13,
33, 69, 79, 84, 106
www.bbcmag.com
33, 85, 102
www.calix.com/gigabit
Clearfield
19, 33, 102, 106
www.Clearfield
Connection.com
CLIC
80 – 81, 102
Comcast
15, 33, 102
www.comcast.com/
xfinityccommunities
Corning
33, 102, Back Cover
http://cablesystems.
corning.com/CentrixBuzz
COS Systems
28, 34
www.cossystems.com/
service-zone
Cox Communication
29, 34, 102
Crownduit
www.cox.com
34, 75, 102
www.crownduit.com
DASAN Networks
35, 74
www.dasannetworks.com
DrayTek
23, 35
www.draytek.com
Finley Engineering
102
www.fecinc.com
FTTH Council, NA
70, 102
www.ftthcouncil.org
Fujitsu
36www.fujitsu.com/telecom
Great Lakes Data 36, 105
www.glds.com
Maxcell
36www.maxcell.us
Multicom, Inc
106
www.multicominc.com
NiSC
17, 37, 102
www.NiSC.com
OFS
37, 102
www.ofsoptics.com
Pavlov Media
Power & Tel Supply
25, 37, 102
www.pavlovmedia.com
38, 102, 106,
Inside Back Cover
www.ptsupply.com
38
www.preformed.com
RVA, LLC
102
www.rvallc.com
Spot On Networks
38
www.spotonnetworks.com
ViewTEQ
38www.viewteq.com
Verizon Enhanced Communities
106
www.verizon.com/
communities
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JANUARY 2015
13 – 15
Gigabit City Summit
Henry W. Bloch School of Management
Kansas City, MO
www.gigagbitcitysummit.com
913-475-9885
FEBRUARY 2015
10 – 12
FTTH Conference 2015 – Europe
EXPO XXI
Warsaw, Poland
+33 6 2590 2860
www.ftthconference.eu
22 – 26
2015 BICSI Winter Conference &
Exposition
Orlando World Center Marriott Resort
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MARCH
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JUNE
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SEPTEMBER
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+ 33 (0) 169 81 6574
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THE GIGABIT HIGHWAY
Future-Proof Communities
A next-generation network is a prerequisite for a flourishing community.
By Heather Burnett Gold / FTTH Council Americas
R
ecently, in Chattanooga, Tenn., elected officials and
local leaders from around the United States gathered to
discuss a topic familiar to all of them: how to build a
flourishing, sustainable community. This group is confronting
the fact that the global economy has fundamentally changed
in recent decades and the unit of production has shifted from
atoms to bytes. So when they talked about the future of their
communities, they focused on infrastructure – in particular,
access to next-generation broadband networks.
Chattanooga has begun to reorganize and thrive in part
because of its gigabit-to-the-home fiber network. Community
leaders, investors and entrepreneurs have seized on the
infrastructure and used it to support a thriving local startup
scene and the relocation of businesses. For instance, IT
service firm Claris Networks moved its data center operations
from Knoxville to Chattanooga to take advantage of its
fiber network. City leaders nationally and internationally
look to Chattanooga for guidance to build a Big Bandwidth
community.
Though Chattanooga is one of a kind, the benefits of
the deployment and use of its next-generation fiber network
are not. The FTTH Council’s recently released research
found a 1.1 percent boost in GDP in communities where
gigabit services were widely available. In dollar terms, the 14
communities where gigabit Internet services were available
enjoyed approximately $1.4 billion in additional GDP more
than other, similarly situated communities. That’s about the
same amount eBay paid to acquire PayPal in 2002.
In 2013, the ratings agency Fitch upgraded the bond
ratings for Kansas City, Mo., from “negative” to “stable,”
contending that the city’s growing gigabit offering was
“already attracting a number of smaller Internet and data
companies to the city and has the potential to make a
significant economic impact.”
Next-generation networks can be crucial in rural areas.
Communities can compete on a level playing field to
attract new businesses, schools can create distance-learning
opportunities, medical professionals can provide cost-efficient
remote diagnoses and care, and business owners can expand
the market for their products beyond their neighborhoods to
better compete in the global economy.
However, building in rural areas can be cost prohibitive
and may require pooling of resources and in-kind assets. Last
summer, the FTTH Council made this case to the FCC,
which agreed, launching its Rural Broadband Experiments
program. Community and private interest has been high, as
expected, and provisional awards were just announced.
Broadband is not a panacea – even a gigabit, though
it’s pretty great. It should be part of the toolbox that
communities have available to build livable, sustainable,
attractive communities. However, in too many places, for
many reasons, lack of bandwidth is a barrier to innovation.
The FTTH Council applauds the communities around
the United States that are taking charge of their bandwidth
destinies and finding ways to attract private providers, establish
new models and in some cases build their own next-generation
fiber networks. Over the past few years, it’s become evident that
there is no one-size-fits-all solution. There are as many models
for bringing bandwidth home as there are U.S. communities.
The FTTH Council has long supported local choice –
the ability of communities to take charge of their futures.
Who knows better what they need to grow than the elected
leaders, business interests and community members in a
given place? Unfortunately, some states have outdated laws
that prohibit certain models of building these networks and
providing service. They don’t let communities explore creative
partnerships with private companies, make use of underutilized
assets or take advantage of models that have been incredibly
successful in such places as Chattanooga, Kansas City and
Wilson, N.C. The FCC is currently considering how, under
existing laws, to foster efforts by municipal FTTH providers
to bring the same benefits to surrounding communities. The
FTTH Council supports this FCC initiative.
The United States needs a critical mass of communities
with world-leading bandwidth for economic development,
job creation and global competitiveness in the 21st century.
We at the FTTH Council want to assist the creation of
empowered, FTTH communities in whatever way we can and
look forward to more such communities sprouting up across
the nation. Like Chattanooga, they will be communities with
competent support systems that make life better for all. v
Heather Burnett Gold is president of the Fiber to the Home
Council Americas, a nonprofit association whose mission is
to accelerate deployment of all-fiber access networks. You can
contact her at heather.b.gold@ftthcouncil.org.
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2014
•
AUSTIN SUMMIT
EXPOSURE TO PEOPLE
ACROSS THE INDUSTRY
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across the industry and industry information.”
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SPEAKERS WERE AWESOME
“All the speakers were awesome and the presentations
were great.”
— Donna Sullivan, Technical Assistant Director
NC Department of Commerce – NC Broadband
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© 2014 Corning Optical Communications. CRR-222-AEN / November 2014

april 14 – 16, 2015 - Broadband Communities Magazine

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