Broadband Communities

NOV-DEC 2013

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.

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quick decision-making. One reason Google chose Kansas City, Kan., as its initial project was that the unifed government structure gave Google the confdence that it would get quick decisions on a variety of issues as the project proceeded. Other projects have not gone as quickly as hoped because multiple decision-makers were involved. For a project to be successful, a broad coalition of interests must support it, and that coalition must have enough confdence in local leadership to enable that leadership to act quickly on behalf of all. Otherwise, there will be delays that ultimately raise project costs and injure the project's long-term prospects. Tere is no one-size-fts-all solution; there are multiple solutions to diferent community needs and multiple trade-ofs. However, all eforts improve the situation relative to the status quo. As one can see from the multiple ways in which Gig.U communities have approached the opportunity, there are many diferent ways to accelerate the deployment of a next-generation network. Each has advantages and disadvantages relative to alternative approaches. What is common to all, however, is that the cost to the community of such eforts is negligible and the benefts are signifcant. Tere is no cost to asking questions; indeed, simply asking the right questions causes incumbent providers to become more interested in how the city is thinking and more responsive to future needs. Competition – even the threat of competition – tends to improve performance. Scale matters. As these projects are not cookie-cutters, there is a signifcant startup cost. In that light, scale is an advantage; the larger the ultimate addressable market, the more a provider is willing to risk that startup cost. It is unlikely, for example, that each of the eight respondents to the NCNGN project would have been willing to respond to six diferent RFPs. Tough the regional approach appears to be working for NCNGN, it is important to remember the prior rule that quick decision-making also matters. Larger eforts must ensure that the desire for scale does not result in complicated, lengthy decision-making. Experiments don't always work the frst time. Tat's why they are called experiments. Make sure community leadership understands this, and build a path to learn from experiments and improve performance in successive iterations. Pioneers don't have the advantage of a clear and certain map. In each of the eforts to date, mistakes have been made. Te key is not to let a mistake determine the fate of a project but rather to fgure out how to correct the error and continue to move forward. Local leadership is the single most important ingredient for success. If local leaders put this at the top of their agenda, it can happen. If not, it won't. Gig.U can be proud of what it has done over the past several years. It has provided a national platform for communities to help each other chart a path whereby every member community benefts from the eforts of others. However, the single most critical variable for success is local leadership. In every community where an efort has moved forward, strong local leadership has made it a priority for local political, business and civic leadership. THINKING AHEAD TO THE BANDWIDTH-DELIVERED ECONOMY In looking back over the last several years of Gig.U activities, we see two big changes. First, more cities recognize the importance of upgraded broadband networks for economic development purposes. Tis is diferent from having a phone network, which was a binary; either one had dial tone or one didn't. It is diferent from cable, which in its early decades was fundamentally about entertainment. Broadband networks are diverse and have a wide spectrum of capabilities, but in an information-driven economy, the better the network, the better the economic development prospects. Second, more cities recognize their roles in the economics of investing in networks. Both within the Gig.U membership and in many other NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 | www.broadbandcommunities.com communities we have talked with, city leadership recognizes that it has to adopt new strategies to make the math for upgrades work. Not all cities have adopted this view, but Randall Stephenson's comment about cities becoming more interested in improving the investment climate is no small thing. In approaching this opportunity, no two cities are identical. But just as a century ago, when all cities had to start thinking diferently about common infrastructure – land for an airport, roads that could handle cars and trucks, access to water and inputs for electricity for manufacturing and growth – so today, all cities have to be prepared for an economy that will increasingly be delivered over bandwidth. Tis will mean diferent strategies for diferent cities, but the bottom line for all is this: In 10 years, whether a city has faster, cheaper, better broadband networks will afect everything it does. Today, many things a city does afects what kind of broadband networks it will have in 10 years. In this light, every city can be a gigabit-ready city. A few years ago, that seemed like a distant vision. Tanks to the eforts of local leadership in communities all around the country, that vision is now within view, no longer beyond the horizon. Tis is not the moment to pop champagne corks. Te tipping point at which gigabit networks will inevitably become commonplace has not occurred; indeed, it is very early in the process. Some current eforts will no doubt face setbacks. But enough progress has been made over the last two years to justify optimism that early seeds will sprout and point the way for all communities that wish to have faster, better, cheaper broadband to take action to make it so. v Blair Levin, the architect of the National Broadband Plan and a fellow at the Aspen Institute, is executive director of the Gig.U project, and Ellen Satterwhite is program director for Gig.U. Tis article is adapted from a report issued by Gig.U in November 2013. | BROADBAND COMMUNITIES | 85

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