BROADBAND PROPERTIES: DOES YOURS QUALIFY?
Filed Friday, May 16. 2008
If your commercial or residential building is lacking broadband connectivity, you might start seeing a lack of tenants.
Broadband connectivity is one of the top three criteria for site-selection committees looking to locate corporate facilities. Regional sustainability will be reliant on the ability to offer broadband connectivity to both commercial and residential subscribers. The definition of broadband connectivity is at least 1 gigabit – if not 10 gigabits per second – of network speed coming into your facility. Infrastructure is the platform for economic development. These were just some of the major points I made in my closing keynote address presented at the 2008 Broadband Properties Summit in Dallas two weeks ago. The conference had more than 700 attendees from around the world, and if you didn’t go, you missed a diverse mix of presentations. Who’s Concerned About This? Representatives of the real estate industry, the service provider industry and some people involved in various aspects of regional economic development all attended this conference. Special residential projects including triple-play amenities (phone, high-speed data and video) and those involved in the legal and local government aspects of this area were also featured. My keynote addressed both residential and commercial endeavors. We discussed the need to offer new amenities in order to attract tenants in both multi-unit residential projects as well as commercial buildings. The idea that the infrastructure is the platform on which to build economic development was discussed. Some of the people in the audience were members of the Illinois Broadband Deployment Council. They made the trip to Texas to hear what I had to say along with developers and service providers from the east coast, west coast, Florida, Sweden, Great Britain and a mixture of the rest of the country. When we discussed the importance of speed, the whole idea of establishing 1 gigabit as a minimum seemed very fast to some. Many of us have been inundated with commercial messages from various network providers that tell you getting a couple megabits is more than adequate. Another fallacy I pointed out was not to trust the traditional business advisors when it comes to understanding and applying technology. It used to be good enough to use traditional business advisors (lawyers and accountants) to look at contracts and deals. For the last two decades, I have been saying that anything to do with technology needs to have a technologist review it. Kamal Nath (India’s commerce and industry minister) discussed on CNBC this week his country’s need to improve its infrastructure. Roads, ports and other infrastructure need to be upgraded for India to continue to compete. While its economy is red hot, its infrastructure is very weak. It’s not a solid foundation to build upon and India realizes that. That’s why they’re earmarking $1 trillion. What are we earmarking to guarantee our future position in the global market? Some 300 million people in India are considered middle-class citizens. This is more than what China has and compares with the total population in the U.S. The middle-class base in the U.S. seems to be shrinking. Is our network infrastructure to blame? The Need For Speed The person from Sweden said they’re at 1 gigabit now in their metropolitan areas. That surprised some of the people who were skeptical that gigabit speeds were really needed in the U.S. Wake up. We’re truly behind. I’ve always been a proponent of installing as fast a network as possible. It can provide the platform for new applications that support regional economic development.  This chart provides an everyday example of what impact broadband connectivity has on defining new applications and understanding the real-time differences in network speeds. Another keynote speaker was a friend that I met in Fort Wayne, Ind. in 2007. Graham Richard is the former mayor of Fort Wayne. He elaborated on what he established in Fort Wayne by getting the incumbent phone company (Verizon) to make an investment to provide a fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) framework in the whole city. He pointed out:
They have seen some great payback from their investment in their infrastructure. He and I later discussed one of the issues I pointed out in an earlier column about Naperville, Ill. and its lack of having DSL in one-third of its community. He asked how they could be viewed as an affluent area when such a good portion doesn’t even have DSL let alone higher-speed network services. I told him that many municipalities have to understand where they are really at when it comes to being competitive to attract corporate facilities. My municipality has had 100 percent DSL coverage. It’s now starting to get AT&Ts U-verse network service, which will provide even a better level of connectivity. Am I satisfied? No. We need to have even more bandwidth to all users and 1 gigabit as a minimum should be rolled out today. We are making sure that multi-gigabit connectivity is available to industrial and manufacturing zones. We are worried about regional sustainability. Are you? Second- and third-tier cities understand the sense of urgency of building new network infrastructure because it’s a matter of survivability to them. They are more willing to listen than some of the larger cities. Economic development planners and directors think they can point to their municipality’s past and companies will automatically select their cities. In reality, all cities (both large and small) are being scrutinized before any site-selection committee will commit large investments to build in their region. If the three most important words in today’s real estate are “location, location, connectivity,” then master planning must include network and power infrastructure planning. One thing I walked away with from the conference is that there’s definitely a sense of urgency needed. Those pursuing a better economic environment for their region are looking at network infrastructure as part of that solution. Carlinism: There are no experts in this industry. The best you can be is a good student who’s always learning. Not modified Trackbacks
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