In Chicago, Blair Levin reflects on Gigabit Garden

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A number of individual communities, such as Chattanooga, Lafayette, Louisiana, and Longmont, Colorado, have deployed next-generation networks and now a number of other communities, from Missoula, Montana to Baltimore, Maryland, are started working on bringing new investment in faster, better, cheaper networks in their communities. And now, Los Angeles announced a plan for a Gigabit RFP that looks like it builds on RFPs done by a number of Gig.U communities. From these Gigabit pioneer communities, three strategies have emerged that any community can use to improve the economics of next generation deployments:

  1. Asset utilization and improvement. Every city has assets that, if better utilized or improved, could lower the cost of deploying next generation networks. Communities should inventory assets that affect deployment costs, including rights of ways, ducts and conduit and building access, as well as procedures making that information available to potential providers.
  2. Regulatory flexibility to accommodate new business models. Essential policies that enabled private capital driven Gigabit projects include letting individual neighborhoods determine where the service is offered through pre-commitments and expediting permitting and inspections.
  3. Demand Identification. The pre-commitment tactic noted above also serves to identify demand as does using web sites that both pushes and pulls information, and targeted transparency efforts to aggregate demand for higher bandwidth.

In Chicago, Blair Levin reflects on Gigabit Garden