BROADBAND COMMUNITIES is the leading source of information on digital and broadband technologies for buildings and communities. Our editorial aims to accelerate the deployment of Fiber-To-The-Home and Fiber-To-The-Premises.
Issue link: https://bbcmag.epubxp.com/i/232134
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Bringing together major benefciaries of abundant bandwidth to support a gigabit network project gives providers the confdence to invest in better networks. Gig.U has developed an inventory to help communities determine their asset profles. As a next step, cities should consider policies that make rights-of-way and poles available to providers on a clear and reasonable basis though a rapid approval process. Cities should also ensure that make-ready work for pole attachments is done expeditiously, coordinate with providers to save costs and allow those providers to perform the work through approved contractors. Cities can also – with minimal cost – upgrade assets to substantially reduce the cost of new networks. For example, cities can install ubiquitous fber conduit or even dark fber that can be leased in exchange for agreements to provide certain services. By implementing a "dig once" policy that requires conduit or fber installation anywhere there is road construction, cities can reduce deployment costs along roadways by 90 percent while adding less than 1 percent to the cost of construction and minimizing disruption to neighborhoods. Indeed, Seattle's long history of doing so put that city in the lead among Gig.U communities in building out worldleading networks. Regulatory fexibility to accommodate new business models. Private capital–driven projects such as Google Fiber and some Gig.U eforts have found success by using a model in which neighborhoods determine where services will be built out frst by precommitting to buy service. Even if a provider ofers service over a broad area, it is obligated to build only in neighborhoods where a minimum number of buyers precommit to purchase the service. 84 Tough it is too early to draw any hard conclusions, in the most advanced case, Google's Kansas City project, 90 percent of eligible neighborhoods qualifed, resulting in nearly universal coverage of the community. By adopting a policy allowing this business strategy, a community can dramatically reduce capital expenditures by both lowering the investment risk and facilitating a more efcient neighborhood-byneighborhood build rather than a costly house-by-house build. Cities that have attracted nextgeneration networks have also been fexible in expediting permitting and inspections. In construction, time is not just money; it's a lot of money. Speeding these processes lowers costs. Demand identifcation. A third principal strategy is demand identifcation. Te precommitment tactic noted above serves to identify demand. Google and Gig.U communities have also experienced some success by creating websites that serve as one-stop shops for gathering those precommitments. New York City ofers another approach, relying on greater transparency and competition in targeted areas to bring together demand for higher bandwidth, thus improving the economics of deployment for those areas. Te city is assisting small and medium-sized businesses in unwired or underwired buildings by ofering them free, fast-track wiring. Whatever its choice of tactics, a city should approach the opportunity as if it were going after any important economic development project. When that happens, city agencies, anchor institutions such as universities and health care facilities, major business | BROADBAND COMMUNITIES | www.broadbandcommunities.com interests and other community institutions come together to pitch in and make the economics work for the project. In a gigabit network project, bringing together major benefciaries of abundant bandwidth helps providers have the confdence to invest in better networks. LESSONS LEARNED Te experiences of the last several years have also provided many lessons for all communities that wish to have improved bandwidth for their businesses and residents. Tese lessons include Organizing community resources and stakeholders is essential for making gigabit projects economically viable. Communities that have moved forward are similar only in that they have decided to make improvement of available broadband a high priority. Any community has the ability to organize its resources to lower capital expenditures, operating expenditures and risk and to raise revenues – the key to making gigabit projects economically viable. Start with a clear understanding of how your city's rules and assets afect deployment costs. An organizing efort starts with a detailed understanding of how a community's policies and assets afect the economics of network deployments. Gig.U, the Fiber to the Home Council and others have developed tools for this exercise, and the public documents from the Google Fiber project also provide a road map for how cities should think about the impact of their rules and assets on network economics. As planning and deploying a network takes a long time – and it always takes longer than you think – today is the right time to start thinking about how to improve the economics. Every day, cities make decisions that can afect the cost of deployment. Every time a street is dug up, every time an area is developed or redeveloped, there is an opportunity to lower the cost of a future deployment. Tough success depends upon broad support, it also depends on | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013