Guest MINDSETTER™ Jorge Elorza: Providence Needs to Develop a Citywide Broadband Internet Network

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Guest MINDSETTER™ Jorge Elorza

Providence’s economy is struggling, an unfortunate reality to which we’ve all become far too accustomed. It was not always this way. Our city was once an economic powerhouse, dubbed “the Beehive of Industry” due to its manufacturing might. This great industrial boom was enabled, in large part, because the city provided the economic engines of that era – the factories – with close proximity and ready access to the power source that drove their business: the rivers. And thus, Providence flourished.

We are now in the wake of an economic revolution on par with the paradigm-altering Industrial Revolution, and we are living in the era of the Knowledge Economy. Just as the factories of the industrial economy located near the rivers, the businesses that drive the Knowledge Economy will also locate near the power source that drives their work: fast and powerful information networks.

This is why, as a candidate for mayor, I am proposing the development of a citywide ultra high speed fiber optic network, and if elected, I will create the Providence Digital Rivers Project to achieve this goal. This will be an infrastructure of fiber optic cables capable of delivering internet speeds up to 100 times faster than the current average to every business, school, residence, office, library, etc. in the entire city. You can read the entire plan on my website, www.elorzaformayor.com.

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Several other cities have already successfully completed similar projects, and reaped the benefits. The best example is Chattanooga, TN, dubbed “Gig City” after it developed a municipal fiber optic network. This network has made the city one of the Southern hubs of the Knowledge Economy. Both Volkswagen and Amazon.com located new facilities in Chattanooga after this. The network also enables innovation in the private sector and large institutions, as they are able to develop apps that can only function with ultra high speed internet. For example, a group of Chattanooga radiologists developed its own app to allow doctors to view digitized scans anywhere, anytime. And the city is only just beginning to explore the possibilities. “Our fiber network is like having the first city that discovered fire,” said former Mayor Ron Littlefield.

Many of the benefits of Chattanooga’s Gig City project would be applicable to Providence: enhanced capability for the medical and tech sectors; better disaster recovery and emergency management capacity in a region that frequently experiences severe weather; and greater access to digital learning tools and cloud-based services for innovative higher education institutions. Imagine doctors at Brown’s Alpert Medical School able to teach classes all over the world through high quality video conferencing; Rhode Island Hospital able to perform remote diagnostics; RIEMA, first responders, and utilities able to coordinate sophisticated disaster relief efforts; the universities able to collaborate in high level research and learning through Internet2; K-12 schools able innovate their curriculum through cloud-based learning; libraries able to provide more internet-based services to more people; a startup community able to leverage broadband connectivity to grow and scale up more quickly; local businesses with greater capacity to connect to a complex global economy.

Of course, the first questions anytime an ambitious project like this is proposed are, What is it going to cost? And how are you going to pay for it? It can be expensive, but there are a number of options for both lowering the cost, and getting some of it paid for. There is also an existing broadband capacity already here in Rhode Island that may make it possible to achieve this without laying any new cable; we just need to leverage that capacity more fully. But, ultimately, Providence could never afford to do this on its own; there are a number of examples of comparably sized cities that have built similar networks through creative partnerships and funding sources. Chattanooga’s public utility took on most of the cost of building its network, and has made most of that money back through selling internet service. Kansas City partnered with the Google Fiber project to build its municipal broadband network. Right here in Rhode Island, a coalition of universities, libraries, schools, hospitals, government agencies, and other nonprofits just completed construction of Beacon 2.0, a 450-mile fiber optic infrastructure that connects over 100 institutions, including Brown, RISD, Rhode Island Hospital, the Rhode Island Department of Health, and the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency. This was financed through $21.7 million in federal grants and $10.7 million in private investment.

Perhaps the best model for Providence, however, is currently underway in North Carolina. A consortium of universities and municipalities, including Duke, NC State, UNC Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Durham, and Winston-Salem, issued a request for proposals asking a developer or private company to build a broadband network for them. As of June 20, AT&T had finalized an agreement to take on the project.  

Innovative partnerships like this are the way of the future for cash-strapped cities. As mayor, I will work to leverage these kinds of opportunities to solve our city’s problems, and strengthen our city’s economy. The Providence Digital Rivers Project would be a bold first step towards accomplishing that. Is this the silver bullet that will solve our economic woes? Hardly. But the importance of this project is twofold: In the near term, it is an ambitious and innovative way to help jumpstart our economy. Over the long term, however, this sort of technological infrastructure will be the basic standard for any city looking to take its place in the global Knowledge Economy.

Providence missed the tech and biotech booms of the past that elevated Boston as a center of innovation; we simply cannot afford to miss the next wave. Our city can already compete with the Boston-Cambridge nexus on both cost of living and quality of life, and Providence’s proximity to both Boston and New York makes it geographically appealing as a center of innovation. Furthermore, Providence’s small size means it is a highly networked city, where the accessibility of talent, mentorship, capital, and other crucial resources for startups and small businesses puts it at a competitive advantage with much larger cities. Now we must provide the critical innovation infrastructure to bring it all together and help Providence take its rightful place as one of the centers of the Knowledge Economy in the northeast. 

Jorge Elorza is running in the September Democratic primary for Mayor of Providence.

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