Closing the Digital Infrastructure Gap to Keep Cities Connected
Date Posted: May 4, 2021
Posted In: Discussion,
by Brion Sargent, Gensler
The pandemic has underscored the urgent need for affordable, reliable high-speed internet access that millions of businesses are currently lacking. Broadband is a critical piece of infrastructure for municipalities to attract new capital investment, and to drive economic growth. So why has the gap between broadband infrastructure investment and access to connectivity persisted, and what solutions can we put forth to help cities create robust information services pipelines to bring broadband internet to more Americans?
Investment outside of major cities from telecommunication carriers offering broadband internet has been hampered by the requirement to share with competitors. Carriers have not had sufficient incentive to reach beyond the major metropolitan areas and big cities continue to grow in fiber connectivity density. This is leaving secondary and tertiary communities to struggle economically, due to limited efforts to attract new businesses because of insufficient internet infrastructure.
Corporate site selectors and consumers expect broadband (optical fiber). Specifically, a company is likely to require a direct fiber connection and redundancy (diverse optical fiber connection), not just logical diversity (same fiber different carrier) to ensure connectivity.
In addition, multiple carriers are usually demanded. As with electric service, reliability is heavily scrutinized to minimize the risk of being without service, especially for information-intensive operations like data centers. Sites with numerous providers are more attractive because competition will help drive down cost and improve transmission speeds and bandwidth.
Most small communities may have internet service. However, it is usually limited, provided by ILEC’s and/or CLEC’s (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier and Commercial Local Exchange Carrier) pursuant to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and initially intended for telephone services. These services are usually limited to a single carrier and by route diversity, bandwidth, and speed.
Some municipalities have invested in their own broadband to provide service to the private sector. Lake County, Florida began offering private businesses access to its publicly owned broadband networks in 2001, and by 2005, it experienced a doubling in economic activity relative to comparable Florida counties.