On the Cutting Edge - Citywide Broadband on Steroids

This particular panel on Tuesday afternoon featured Bjorn Sernhed - CTO, Affarsverken Municipal Utility, City of Karlskrona, Sweden; Joseph Franell - Director of IT at the City of Ashland, Oregon (and manager of the Ashland Fiber Network); Bill Hutchison - Chairman, i-Waterfront Advisory Council, Waterfront Toronto; and Tim Scott - Vice President, Marketing, PacketFront.

Karlskrona, Sweden

First up was Bjorn Sernhed - CTO, Affarsverken Municipal Utility at the City of Karlskrona, Sweden (For his pioneering work at Karlskrona, Bjorn won a Broadband Properties Cornerstone Award).

Bjorn described the unique situation of Karlskrona, an archipelago city at the tail end of Sweden, on the North Sea. A city of 62,000, Karlskrona is off-the-beaten-track when it comes to Internet backbone in Sweden. Faced with a need for better connectivity, Karlskrona was able to lean on its city-owned multi-utility authority, the Affarsverken Municipal Utility, to get the ball rolling. Acting as the lead anchor tenant, Affarsverken worked with PacketFront and leaders from the broader community, including a regional group, the Swedish Urban Network Association.

From the outset, these community leaders determined that they wanted a "future-proof" technology, so they choose an Open Access network approach, where they incubated a market of smaller service providers after the network was put in place. They attribute their success to three factors: 1) One unified network; 2) detailed, documented process and procedures; and 3) focus on quality network management.

Ashland, Oregon, USA

Next, Joseph Franell - Director of IT at the City of Ashland, Oregon (and manager of the Ashland Fiber Network) told a very compelling story. You'll remember, back in 2005, opponents of municipal wireless would cite the city-owned fiber network in Ashland as an example of a "failed city-owned network." Fact is, things were very rough to begin with, and the city officials and leaders working the network made many mistakes. But this is a story of persistence. An expensive story of persistence, but that's also life on the cutting edge, when there are no models for success - it's trial and error on the path to success.

Joe was brought in after many mistakes were made, and he's had the pleasure of helping to set the ship on an even keel, documenting the lessons learned. Now, in contrast to the municipal broadband opponents case studies from two years ago, Ashland represents a FTTH success story, recognized as a Smart 21 Community by the Intelligent Community Forum.

Among the Mistakes Made / Lessons Learned:
1. No Documentation of community buy-in
2. A Rush to Build Out the network, which resulted in very expensive construction costs
3. A Market Focus on Price - low-cost broadband pegged to 20% below market rates (instead of community development, economic development, etc.)
4. Rampant Optimism, which blinded the community to potential pitfalls and raised expectations
5. Underestimation of the Competition - cable and telco providers had many tricks up their collective sleeves

In particular, Joe stressed the Open Carrier Model as a key to success, highlighting the need to make room for smaller niche service providers, while acknowledging a downside of this model: the inherent conflict between the needs of citizens (best-in-class network over the long-term) and the needs of the smaller service providers (need to maximize profits in the short-term). It takes work to balance this inherent conflict, but the benefits are worth the trouble.

Joe's bottom line summary for Ashland Fiber Network:
Since the network has been in place, the city has documented a 30% annual net growth in licensed businesses - Ashland enjoys a more diverse local economy and better lifestyle because of the digital FTTH network. Joe believes that such quantifiable economic benefits should spur other cities to adopt this approach.

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Bill Hutchison - Chairman, i-Waterfront Advisory Council, Waterfront Toronto stressed the difference between a "redevelopment" project and a "revitalization" project - it's about a lot more than property development - it's about changing the lifestyle potential for a major world city. This world-class project, when completed, will represent the world's largest revitalization project. An RFP is anticipated for Fall 2007. (For their pioneering work in Toronto, Bill also accepted a Broadband Properties Cornerstone Award).

In this unique project, the national, provincial, and city governments came together to form a management corporation. In addition, a community advisory council has ensured that local stakeholder viewpoints are represented. The project will reclaim land and create substantial waterfront parkland.

My own AHA moment was underscored when Bill stressed that the project would feature BOTH a FTTH network AND ubiquitous wireless. After all, we need access to high-bandwidth applications not only when in the office or home, but also when mobile. The system must work together.

Key elements of their plan include
* Community Collaboration
* Integrated Economic Development, Marketing, and Inbound Investment
* Cooperative Leadership

Featured eApplications will include
* Digitized Museum
* eHealth Innovation
* eLearning

The Winning Approach of Waterfront Toronto, according to Bill, included these features
* Community Leadership
* Collaboration
* Digital Democracy
* Marketing
* Sustainability
* Broadband Infrastructure

PacketFront and the Open Access Model

Tim Scott - Vice President, Marketing, at PacketFront summarized the common threads of these three projects. They all have Vision, they all feature Partnerships, and they all rely on the Community as Facilitator.

Ashland's city leaders finally determined that the Open Network is the right approach, and realized that the network is not about retail rates and revenue. A Community Broadband network requires both FTTH to ensure access for residential and commercial consumers and Wireless Broadband for access to mobile applications, the Internet, and the LAN.

Toronto's leaders have had success by stressing planning and marketing. And like Ashland, they figured out that broadband access requires fiber for sufficient capacity and future-proofing as well as wireless for mobile access.