Planning For Gigabits - www.nocplan.com

DELHI, India - Feb. 20, 2014 - PRLog -- The Internet and its underlying technologies will define and shape the society and the economy of the United States in the 21st century. Broadband connections to support high-speed Internet access will be vital to the success of the communities where citizens live and work. The nation’s commitments to equal economic opportunity, educational advancement and democratic participation can be realized only if everyone has high-speed access to the Internet and the information and services that it delivers. In the fiercely competitive global market, consumers and businesses can purchase a broad range of telecommunications services – voice, Internet access, HDTV, streaming video, online gaming and so forth – from a local telco, a cable system operator or any of several wireless operators. This doesn’t mean that high-speed Internet connections are available to everyone or that the ones that are available are fast enough for the demands of the future. The United States ranks 16th in the world in Internet penetration, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Many countries have better and faster Internet connections, and many international cities have Internet connectivity superior to any U.S. city. The United States needs high-speed Internet connections for homes, schools, hospitals and workplaces. In an Internet-driven world, the better the network, the better the prospects for economic development. Speed defines what is possible on the Internet and will be the measure of the 21st-century networks needed to create the jobs and support the innovation a growing economy requires. How much speed will we need? The consensus is that we need to build networks capable of delivering up to a gigabit to anyone who needs or wants it. In the 21st century, high-speed Internet access will be a critical resource that people and businesses consume just as they consume water, electricity and other public utilities. In the 20th century, cities and towns assumed responsibility for the public infrastructure for streets and sewers, clean drinking water, electricity for lighting, public safety and other utilities. In the 21st century, many cities will choose to take responsibility for the infrastructure that ensures that citizens, businesses and institutions have high-speed access to the Internet. The bottom line is that, in the future, fast and inexpensive Internet access will be a key determinant of a city’s economic health and quality of life. The infrastructure needed for citywide Internet access will take time to build Find out more at the Summit about planning for community fiber networks. and substantial investment, so careful planning is essential. The time to start is now.

THE CHALLENGES OF PLANNING

Planning a citywide network for highspeed Internet access is an enormous challenge. Many cities have neither the expertise nor the experience to do this planning in-house, so they need to invest in tools and/or outside consultants just to get started. Planning is critical, as even larger investments will be required for network engineering and construction. Any city should leverage investments it has already made wherever possible. Most cities have invested in GIS technology and software to convert maps and records, so existing infrastructure must be identified and integrated into the plan. Estimating and forecasting costs and revenues are also of major importance. Costs are often estimated based on rules of thumb or engineering judgment. These methods are seldom good enough to justify the substantial commitments a community must make to a project. A lot is at stake, and city leadership needs to know what a project will cost to build its business case on a solid foundation. Cities must plan for the long haul and build infrastructure to handle both present needs and future growth. Such planning may increase the overall complexity and initial investment for the project, but it will dramatically reduce the overall costs. City leaders and planners must also decide which network architecture and technologies to use. Any single technology is unlikely to suit all applications, as a citywide network serves a combination of residences, businesses and institutions, scattered across the GIS footprint, with varied needs for services and connection speeds. These early decisions about architecture and technology also add to the complexity of the planning process but will have profound and lasting effects on the costs and overall results of the project. For example, getting fiber into community anchor institutions – public buildings, schools, libraries, hospitals and so forth – is often the first priority. The fiber backbone that connects these institutions is then available as the jumping-off point for distribution networks to reach residences and small businesses throughout the community.

A NEW BREED OF PLANNING TOOLS

Thus, a city thinking about putting a broadband Internet access network in place has a set of complex and critical decisions to make, and it must make many of them very early in the project. Until recently, network planners had nothing but maps, spreadsheets and calculators to assemble the data to inform these critical decisions. Although software is available to design networks, manage projects and inventory assets, these systems assume that planners have already decided which architectures and technologies they will use, where fiber cables will be routed and where network nodes will be located. Now a new breed of software tools, developed specifically for planning highspeed Internet networks, is emerging. For example, Network Design Decisions Inc. recently released NOCPlan XS, a planning and decision support system for high-speed Internet networks. The planning process starts with assembling a set of data for the service area and loading this data into a project file. This data is organized and presented in layered GIS format, with roads and streets overlaying the geography. Some municipalities already have this data assembled in publicly available databases. Otherwise, it is readily available from the U.S. Census Bureau. Figure 1 shows a typical project file for a medium-sized city in the southern United States. The city’s population is about 65,000, with 29,000 households, 3,400 business locations and 100 anchor institutions and cell towers. The city is considering building an all-fiber network throughout the city to connect residential customers and businesses with GPON technology and Figure 1: A typical project file for a medium-sized city in the South Planning for the long haul may increase project complexity and initial investment but will dramatically reduce the overall costs.