If it is successful, the plan, which was unveiled at a press conference Monday by New Haven Mayor Toni Harp and Connecticut Consumer Counsel Elin Swanson-Katz, would begin bringing affordable ultra high-speed Internet to homes and businesses around the state starting about three years from now. Katz said the data networks the plan is hoping to deliver would offer speeds of 1,000 megabits per second, more than 100 times faster than the average home speed of 9 megabits currently available to residential customers in the state.
“Internet access is now a necessity,” Katz said. “It’s like electricity.”
But telecommunications and cable television companies have failed to deliver on the demand for affordable, reliable and ultra-fast Internet service, Katz said, forcing businesses to use other, more costly data network offerings. Both industries offer ultra high-speed offerings in a number of areas around the country, but have virtually ignored Connecticut and the rest of New England, according to Katz.
Zack Beatty, director of media partnerships at SeeClickFix, which produces a web tool that allows citizens to report non-emergency neighborhood issues to local government, said the New Haven-based company is paying $1,200 a month to get the ultra high-speed, reliable Internet service it needs to serve its customers.
“For a start-up, that’s a lot of money,” Beatty said.
Ted Yang, founder and chief executive officer of Stamford-based MediaCrossing, said the effort is worthwhile because it will “level the playing field” between Connecticut technology companies and their counterparts in more prominent technology centers. MediaCrossing is a start-up digital media trading company.
“The entrepreneurial spirit is here in Connecticut,” Yang said.
Connecticut Comptroller Kevin Lembo said the role of the state in the process is to act as “a convener of communities.”
“Our infrastructure is old,” Lembo said. “This is the piece that we’ve got to get right.”
Harp agreed that the time has come to stop waiting for the marketplace to meet Connecticut’s needs and that the state and communities must act on their own.
“We are part of a world economy,” she said. “The time has come to move forward.”
New Haven is leading the effort, which also includes Stamford and West Hartford. But other interested communities can participate in the request for qualifications that the three communities put out Monday, simply by contacting New Haven officials.
The next step in the process is for all interested communities — and interested providers of ultra high-speed service — to submit questions by Oct. 15, with the deadline for responses to those questions Nov. 18. After that, the next step will be to develop a request for proposal, in which interested providers would detail how they would go about deploying ultra high-speed around Connecticut.
New Haven was selected, in part, because it was one of 1,500 communities around the country that sought in 2010 to have technology giant Google wire their cities at no charge with ultra high-speed Internet capability. Kansas City, Missouri, was selected by Google in 2011 and the company offers ultra high-speed service at a cost of $70 per month.
Katz said officials in Kansas City “were so upset they weren’t selected that Google cut a deal with them” so that both cities are now wired with Google’s fiber optic cables.
Blair Levin, who advised the Office of Consumer Counsel, said he is bullish on the state’s chances of making this happen. Levin is executive director of Gig.U, a group of over 30 leading research universities around the country seeking to expand broadband Internet service into adjoining communities. Levin said the regulatory environment in the state, where lawmakers voted two years ago to make it possible for public private partnerships to use utility poles for their networks, is considered very favorable among ultra high-speed Internet providers.
“There is no downside to trying to make this happen,” said Levin, a graduate of Yale College and Law School. “And the alternative is doing nothing, in which case we’re dead.”
©2014 the New Haven Register (New Haven, Conn.)
