San Francisco Bay Area Public- and Private-Sectors Band Together to Strengthen Regional ICT Infrastructure

Leading San Francisco Bay Area employers, including Apple, AT&T, Cisco, Comcast, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Nortel, Oracle and Verizon Wireless; plus the region's largest governments -- including the cities of San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland and the Association of Bay Area Governments -- will meet on Monday July 9, 2007 at the Tech Museum of Innovation to begin charting out a major rework of the Bay Area's information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, to increase the region's global competitiveness and ensure that the next wave of technology companies can grow in the Bay Area. The effort will be led by the Bay Area Council, the public policy organization for the region's largest employers.

According to the World Economic Forum's "The Global Information Technology Report 2006-2007," the United States ranks only 7th in the world in its readiness for adoption of information and communication technologies. A recent study by the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that in terms of percentage of homes connected via broadband, the United States ranks 24th, behind countries such as Estonia. In addition, many other countries have broadband speeds that are 10 or even 50 times faster than what is generally available in the Bay Area.

These company and city leaders will discuss how to overcome current regional challenges to building a telecommunications system worthy of the region many consider the technology capital of the world. The meeting will be guided by a keynote presentation by Scott McNealy, chairman and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, plus a report by the Bay Area Council, prepared by Bonocore Technology Partners, that reviews what other countries or regions have done to improve their infrastructure, and recommends Bay Area actions.

"The Bay Area's telecommunications infrastructure has not kept pace with that of other regions, such as Korea and Japan," said Jim Wunderman, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council. "Many of the next-generation technology companies require graphically intense applications, like video, remote health care, multimedia or even videoconferencing, and need ubiquitous and much higher broadband speeds. If we can't build a better telecommunications backbone in the Bay Area, these new companies will start somewhere else. We also risk losing our current clusters of technology companies, plus financial services and others, who are increasingly locating their operations at superior worldwide telecommunications hubs."

The report called "Global Lessons on Regional ICT Strategies" finds that other regions have built long-term successful telecommunications economies based on three building blocks: a foundation of advanced physical telecommunications infrastructure; a drive to upgrade e-business and e-government applications and capabilities to reduce cost; and, an international information and communication technology business attraction effort.

"As the 'New Economy' emerges, and globalization and interdependence spread, a new set of information technologies that integrate computers, telecommunications and media together in digital form are dramatically altering the economic calculus of production and distribution throughout the industrial economies," said Joe Bonocore, President & CEO of Bonocore Technology Partners. "While the Bay Area still has significant strengths in this marketplace, our report shows that other regions are gaining ground quickly. With the rapidly evolving digital world, it is time for the Bay Area to choose to lead, follow, or get out of the way."