Experts Offer Advice for Communities with Gigabit Ambitions

Cities seem to be driving the broadband bus these days, with announcements of new city-level gigabit networks occurring almost weekly. As more and more cities forge their plans, some best practices are beginning to emerge. The initial impetus for high-speed broadband deployments can come from a range of stakeholders, panelists said. Other groups that may drive broadband initiatives include economic development organizations and local governments, panelists noted. Local governments may have powerful reasons for wanting to upgrade their infrastructure, as the experiences of panelist Lydia Murray, chief information officer for Cook County (IL) illustrate. Some other ideas for driving high-speed broadband deployments from the panel discussion fall into the category of out-of-the-box-thinking.

Among the most compelling of these were:

• Communities wanting a high-speed broadband network should leverage existing gigabit networks in places like Chattanooga, TN and Lafayette, LA, advised Rollie Cole, senior fellow for the Sagamore Institute for Policy Research.
• The state of Indiana helped drive broadband usage by requiring anyone filing an unemployment claim to do so online, noted Cole. To support this requirement, libraries agreed to reserve certain public computers for filing these claims.
• Murray offered an idea she is pursuing to gain the cooperation of individual cities within Cook County. The county previously invested in a geographic information system and is moving those tools to a municipal cloud so that individual cities can use them. “In return, we want data about zoning,” she said. Murray hopes that a central source of information about zoning requirements throughout the county will also be an asset the county can offer potential network partners.