Digital Cities: National League of Cities

Sonja Reece, Mayor Pro Tem of Normal, Il, and Vice-Chair of the National League of Cities (NLC) and on the Information Technology and Communications Steering Committee, delivered a speech under the title"Another Role for Elected Officials: Advocate for Broadband."

The message of the National League is that there is strength in numbers. Ms. Reece is a hospital administrator and part-time elected official in her hometown, so she has a unique perspective. Her goal is to ensure that essential services are provided to her city.

Cities are coming up to speed quickly, but many cities are still very new to this field. It will be up to local officials to push for design and implementation of these networks. In terms of public v. private, Ms. Reece suggested that a better perspective for cities to consider is Public Private Partnerships. Some states, 14 of them, have limits on what public entities can do. That includes Texas, which dodged the bullet back in May last year, but still has constraints on the books.

The debate has shifted to the US Congress now, and congressmen are looking at the franchise issue. Texas passed a law for a state-wide franchise approach, and nation-wide franchise is being pursued by large private sector vendors, with the argument that avoiding franchise agreements with 18,000 cities will speed things up. It's important that local control of local land be maintained - its expensive real estate, estimated to be worth $7.8 Trillion in real estate value, if totaled up nationwide. Wow.

So, city officials have a dual role to play: 1) preserve the assets of the city (ROWs, Streets, etc.; and 2) ensure that cities' options remain open regarding broadband be kept open. The McCain Lautenberg bill (S 1294) remains on the agenda and is under discussion.

Why should elected officials be so interested? 1) Economic Development is an issue for cities of all sizes (Princeton, IL); 2) Higher quality of life (Loma Linda, CA); 3) Uses for core municipal services (Corpus Christi); and 4) Critical Needs during emergencies and disasters (Hurricane Katrina).

VisionGain has a Jan 26, 2006 Report that describes broadband as a city's Fifth Utility. Models to follow include 1) Public Utilities; 2) Public Private Partnerships; 3) New City Utility. Various technologies are available, wired and wireless.

Expectations of cities: affordability and dependability. Connectivity: 1) On average 45% of city employees work away from their desk - again, Wow! Mobile workers can stay in touch with these networks; 2) location-based services and GIS; 3) crime control via video surveillance. Schools and Health Care providers benefit from broadband availability. Other expectations include 911 compatibiltiy, customer service, Digital Inclusion, rural/urban parity for outlying regions, and competition (favored approach).

The Call to Action for elected officials is to become an educator - work on the rest of your elected officials, urge Congressional support for the NLC positions above, and involve both public and private partners. What's more: 1) Draft a Technology Master Plan - shows your level of seriousness about these issues; and 2) Prepare for open infrastructure and diverse systems - keep your head in the game regarding Last Mile access for your citizens and make provisions for requiring conduit to the home and ultimate municipal ownership of conduit to the home - if the city owns the conduit, that will keep the opportunity for various users to have access to the home.

It's a dynamic time: Ms. Reece detailed the state of municpal broadband projects from her perspective. Lots of activity and experimentation. Get out there and get busy is Ms. Reece's message. Exciting Times.

Finally, the issue of Texas regulations came up and it was clarified that there is no regulatory or statutory proscription for cities to lauch these networks, and the issue of grandfathering came up. Clearly, if a law is passed in the future, a grandfather perspective would protect those early birds who put a network in this year. So, Get Busy is the clear message of the day.

Posted on March 01, 2006 at 02:33 PM | Comments (0)

Digital Cities: Service Provider Perspective

Yesterday, we had a good discussion at the Digital Cities Service Provider Executive Roundtable, which was hosted by Yankee Group, rClient and W2i, and facilitated by Berge Ayvazian (Chief Research Officer, Yankee Group). This special seminar and roundtable (by invitation only) drew on the Yankee Group's extensive research on service-provider strategies for municipal and metropolitan broadband-wireless networks. It provided a forum for service providers to discuss business and market strategies and examine the potential for cooperation among emerging broadband-wireless service providers and existing cable, telco, cellular, and Internet service providers. As an experiment, it worked.

Berge asked for volunteers to present the findings and provide a perspective on the "Service Provider Diliemma." Here's a scoop on my opinions in advance of the panel.

First and foremost, I'd define the Service Provider Dilemma as follows: the industry, for all of its progress, is still in its infancy and to many observers, from large incumbents to enterprise service providers to city government officials, still in a Proof of Concept stage. No clear business models are yet proven out with quantifiable case studies. We're starting to see that, but frankly, until we start analysing some of the largest deployments, we won't have the hard data to communicate with skeptics.

Who's going to do the proving? That's the service provider dilemma - to build these networks in a speculative fashion is a risk that not many are not yet prepared to make. So, despite the incredible value that these new technologies provide, we have a plethora of small scale deployments - we're just starting to see large deployments mature, such as Corpus Christi and Tempe.

We're still in the experimentation stage, and that's frustrating for big service providers, who need to see a clear road to the ROI before their executives will commit resources to this space. Smaller innovators can take more risks, but they lack the deep resources of the big guys.

I believe that that puts a premium on all of us to help each other where we can. Can we focus on 1) learning and education; 2) on experimentation, trials and proofs of concept and pilots, and 3) collaboration, both Private/Private, Public/Private and geographic among regions? We'll see. If and its a big if because many are not ready to go there, but if we're able to work together in some coordinated fashion, we can get to our mutual goals sooner.

So my dream is that we see ourselves reaching our goals sooner than we thought because we find safe ways to work together and collaborate to collapse cycle times and learn more efficiently. I saw yesterday that there is significant interest to focus on common areas, such as customer service,, that we all can agree on and go from there. I'd urge you public sector guys to challenge yourselves in similar fashion, to identify what you can do to help each other.

Posted on March 01, 2006 at 02:29 PM | Comments (0)

Digital Cities: Houston Mayor White Speech

Back in Houston, it's afternoon and Mayor White has just shown up to speak to the 250 or so attendees at the W2i Digital Cities Convention. There's excitement in the room, because Mayor White is known as an innovative visionary among public officials, and the Houston RFP for Wireless Broadband Network is keen on everyone's mind, especially given that most attendees from the public sector at this convention are from Texas. This is probably the big moment at this convention, which has been a big success so far.

Mayor White opened with his personal background as a young computer programmer where he saw Bill Gates drop out (we know how that worked out) and he reminisced about the days of programming in Fortran...a while back.

When he was deputy secretary of DOE, Mayor White recalls DOE RFPs during the Cold War for Cray mainframes operating in parallel and the two (2) applications that required the most computing capability were weather and energy applications, like seismic forecasting, etc.

The message: Houston has a long history in IT, from those early days. On to the present, Houston has significant networking capability, but the addition of the wireless network will build on. The origin and driver for this initiative were the efforts of the Greater Houston Partnership, whose business leaders are looking out for the long-term economic health of the city.

Digital divide, economic development, and greater choice for users are key goals of this initiative. It's important that the city partner with private sector providers to accomplish its task. The GHP report in October led to a goal of an RFP process, where the city would be innovative and maintain a transparent process to build out a mesh network. Their draft RFP has been available for comments, out on the Internet, with the goal of public procurement to be one of transparency.

Continuing technology development will impact this process, probably to a greater extent than a wired system. Ongoing opportunities will be presented to upgrade the network during its deployment. Too often public entities, continued Mayor White, make a big deal about public announcements, but the mayor's goal is to get the network out there, not so much with fanfare as with a focus on business.

While small cities have been innovators in this space, large cities like Houston will offer the densities that will demonstrate economic success for these metropolitan broadband networks.

Houston is home to one of the greatest medcal centers in the world, home of the energy industry, and the aerospace industry -- all these industries are heavy consumers of IT, making Houston an important world center in IT application development. Finally, creating these new tools that support a more flexible workplace will address traffic congestion - a key issue in big cities like Houston.

Posted on March 01, 2006 at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)

Digital Cities: Metropolitan Network Survey

W2i/Yankee Group Local-Government Broadband-Wireless Deployment Trends Survey Results

Back to blogging again. This is hit and miss, but will give you a flavor of what's going on down here.

Berge Ayvazian, Chief Research Officer, Yankee Group, is up now and is talking about a recent survey focused on attendees here. Berge led a great service provider CEO roundtable yesterday, by the way, and he's now up talking about trends in the industry.

What are cities trying to do with broadband networks?

Increased productivity
Mobile worker efficiencies
Public safety enhancements
Digital Inclusion (need a network to deliver eGovt services)
Traffic management
Infrastructure (utility) management
Etc,etc

Existing Technology can be accelerated with new technologies, and there is a boatload of technologies to work with. For instance, networked home Wi Fi - FON initiative - is a 2nd generation technology that builds on an existing technology - and its emergent. Also, 3G cellular is out there. Wi Fi mesh holds great potential and that will only move forward faster with WiMax. Spectrum is a big issue, to be sure.

LIke Family Feud, "Survey Says:" Many priorities, see above. 23 respondents to the latest survey reflect the focus on Texas, given that 85% of attendees here in Houston are from Texas cities.

Mobility support, in vehicles as well as stationary.
4.9 GHz band for public safety draws a lot of interest

Focusing on the Role of Local Governments, the survey showed these things for a city to do
1. Anchor Tenants (fewer than nationally)
2. Incentives
3. Strucuture
4. Demand Aggregator
5. City owned network that leases space (more than nationally)

Financing? Balance between tax money and private sector funding.

Business Models are 1) Public Private Partnership model (Philly, Minneapolis); 2) Private owned and operated (small towns especially); 3) City owns and operates; 4) City owns and outsources management.

What can incumbent telecos do?
even split between partner, systems integrator, and managed service provider - they see a role for the incumbent - an interesting point to note.

Go to market pricing strategy?
17% Free, 11% Free with options to upgrade, 28% Free for low-income, tiered price for the rest; 28% Tiered pricing, 17% Other.

There will be more results, more final towards the end of this conference.

Posted on March 01, 2006 at 10:12 AM | Comments (0)

Digital Cities: 100 RFPs in cities with over 100K in 2006?

I'm at the Wireless Internet Institute Digital Cities Convention in Houston and just started blogging! Hold on to your hats - this will be fast and furious, a little raw, with minimal editing. What an adventure blogging is.

Paul Butcher from Intel, one of the most traveled and wise veterans in this new space, is up on the dais and he just issued a "challenge" or "prediction,' depending on your perspective. He anticipates 100 RFPs for municpal broadband in cities over 100,000 in population in 2006 - we're around 40 now, so this isn't too far a reach - this will be quite a year if this happens.

Open Network Standard has taken root - buisness model in which an operator would extend end customer connectivity to a number of competitors.

Licensed Spectrum - as networks are deployed, spectrum becomes a constraint and may impact on Unlicensed networks - will WiBro be enabled in licensed and unlicensed spectrum?

Paul's concerns looking forward? 1) Not enough VC capital to fund the deployments.What will it take to free up the capital needed? 2) Need more reputable Tier One service providers; and 3) Need an affordable wireless MANAGEABLE bridge so that the service provider can manage services remotely and efficiently.

Moore's Law ensures that the necessary technology to drive this business is available and affordable. The Intel Digital Communities initiative is a great resource for understanding the benefits that accrue from these projects: networked parking meters, automated vehicle location tools and other wireless asset management programs, focused industry vertical solutions, the list goes on and on.

Where are we now? Digital Divide has morphed into Digital Inclusion. This is my two cents worth here: We all benefit when we bring more people onto the Internet - that's Network Economics, not Philanthropy. Back to Paul - the conundrum of the Digital Divide is that every new adoption and move forward widens the gap as long as there are people lagging. Intel is launching programs, 18 in total, (as are Dell and IBM too), to address Digital Inclusion globally. Paul highlighted efforts in France, Brazil, Egypt, and the Phillipines. Its about network, network devices, financing, and training. Here in Corpus Christi, just down the highway from Austin, the city is dealing with Dell.

We are in a crisis now, as yet unacknowledged. The world is changing faster and faster. What will this all mean in 2010 (just a few years away, by the way)? Cities that get active now are gaining a seat at the table in 2010. They are gaining the experience and putting their communities at the front of the line. 2.5 GHz spectrum usage in this area is on the horizon.


Posted on March 01, 2006 at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)