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Fiber-optic infrastructure spurring city economic development

While some municipalities are fighting AT&T about Project Lightspeed and others are looking at Wi-Fi applications, others are looking at major fiber-optic investments. While these fiber investments have paid off in Utah as we mentioned in last week’s column, there are others that we don’t hear much about in the Midwest. As one CIO in Jacksonville, Fla. wrote back in 2003:

Only 5 percent of buildings and homes worldwide have a broadband connection to the outside. Some forecasters believe the opportunities that fixed broadband metropolitan-area networks (MAN) present will reach all of us [at some point] in the future. Regardless of that reality, for some of us the payback can be much sooner with returns potentially far exceeding the faddish rush to Wi-Fi.

There are even some significant studies out there that support upgrading a municipality’s network infrastructure to fiber and broadband. One study, which was funded by Verizon, contends it would add $400 billion to the U.S. economy if every city deployed broadband services. By the way, let’s be clear that broadband is defined as 1 gigabit and beyond. It’s not 1.5 Mbps.

James Carlini

Full Story: http://wistechnology.com/article.php?id=3180

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