Digital City Expo brings together “Minutemen” of community broadband
Before I report on last week’s Digital Cities Expo, a gripe about hotel broadband. Now that Wi-Fi’s ubiquitous (heh), everybody thinks they can stick a couple of Wi-Fi access points on the lobby ceiling and charge $10 per day for “broadband” access.
Of all the Hyatts, Marriotts and airports I’ve tried connecting from these past six weeks, the Hyatt Regency in Reston, Va. – where Digital City was held – was the worst. My room was on the third floor: 0% connection strength. On the second floor: 0%. (Talk that the events’ folks had masked the hotel connection are unconfirmed.) In the lobby, (just down the sweeping staircase), connectivity ranged from 8% to 100%. (It might be obvious, but 8% equals dial-up or worse speeds.) The folks at the front desk were apologetic, offering, “Oh, the reception on the upper floors is better.”
Digital City Expo brought together more than 300 community leaders, vendors and big thinkers – all in various stages of building municipal broadband networks (using fiber, wireless, power line) for public safety, education, and residential and business use. Many are battling their cable and telco incumbents for the right to do so. We heard stories from Philadelphia, Corpus Christi, North Kansas City, Utah (of course, everybody’s heard of UTOPIA), Iowa and others.
A few stand out, like Iowa. Forty-ninth in the nation in job growth, Iowa loses 9,000 college graduates per year. Of its 950 communities, 900 have fewer than 500 people. A non-profit group, Opportunity Iowa, is working to pass a state referendum allowing for the formation of a “fiber utilities entity,” the first step in getting fiber lines to everybody. As you’d expect, the incumbents are fighting to pass their own counter legislation, named “The Taxpayer Protection Bill.” Nice, guys.
The goal is to spur economic development. To illustrate how vital fiber-optic connectivity is to economic growth, Doris Kelley, business development director at Black & Veatch, presented a case study comparing neighboring Iowa communities Cedar Falls and Waterloo. Cedar Falls was a sleepy bedroom community. Waterloo had a vibrant downtown, more businesses and a higher tax rate.
In 2003, Cedar Falls took an “imaginative risk” by developing a municipally owned telecommunications network to serve its industrial parks. A year before the fiber infrastructure was completed, business began pouring in. In 2002, Cedar Falls counted 125 businesses in its parks; in contrast, Waterloo had 9, nearby Evansdale, 1. Cedar Falls’ new construction valuation rose from $32 million in 1996 to $101 million in 2002. In contrast, Waterloo’s declined from $58 million in 1996 to $53 million in the same period.
Cedar Falls also attracted retailer Target to build a 1,350,000-square-foot distribution center in its industrial park, bringing 900 full-time and 200 part-time jobs with an annual payroll of $25 million. Population has increased 5.3%, and land values have risen to as high as $70,000 an acre. The best part, by 2008, Cedar Falls will pay off the project and begin reaping a $2 million surplus that could rise to $10 million by 2010. Not bad, huh?
Even so, only 83 Iowa communities support the fiber utilities referendum, support among businesses is weak, and its chance of passing stand at 50/50, says Clark McLeod, the group’s founder and CEO of Fiberutlities of Iowa.
“Community apathy is the real enemy. The leadership needs to be willing to stand up against the incumbents. This is a local issue. Local communities need to take charge of it. You’re all the Minutemen of the telecom industry,” McLeod says.
