Broadband Connectivity and Economic Development

In today’s commercial real estate market, corporate site selection committees are searching for a lot more than just office space.

They are looking for intelligent amenities which better be available if not already installed, in the potential buildings and business parks they review.

The two major intelligent amenities that can attract the corporate site selection committees are broadband connectivity (with speeds going into the multi-gigabit per second speeds) and redundant power (more than one primary source and not from the same power grid).

If these intelligent amenities are not present, corporate site selection committees simply move on and review the next geographic region on the list. As said in last week’s column about regional economic development: Economic development equals broadband connectivity and broadband connectivity equals jobs. This strategic paradigm shift needs to be recognised by those involved in all aspects of real estate development, economic development, infrastructure, technology, and global commerce.

More organisations are looking at applications to be mission critical for their success and once they make that determination, they need to have a much more redundant and resilient supporting environment for those applications.

Just like single-lane dirt roads which evolved into the multi-lane superhighways of today, the single-function copper-based voice network has to be updated to a multi-channel, multi-gigabit network that can deal with the explosive growth of video and other convergent data applications.

Wireless capabilities along with fiber optic-based backhaul facilities must be able to effectively deliver and route calls, text messages, and videos to both stationary and mobile subscribers.

Just as you can’t drive fast on a dirt road, you cannot transport information fast on copper.

Various groups have proposed to develop national broadband strategies in the United States as well as their implementations. One of the major flaws in these plans is that their target speed is too low. They are not setting the bar high enough within the planning stage. 100 Megabits per second is not what we should be aiming for as a standard speed.

Google has recently come out with a plan for 1 Gigabit per second as a baseline speed which is more realistic.

Many people do not know how to convey speed of transmission or what it relates to in everyday applications. This is part of the problem in trying to sell the importance of upgrading the network infrastructure to a much faster broadband connectivity where new applications would be created.

While consulting with the DuPage National Technology Park in Illinois on some planning issues, they had a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Everyone talked about super speeds, global competitiveness, and multiple network carrier connectivity. A reporter came up to me and asked what does all this “high speed stuff” mean? “How do I convey this to readers using everyday examples?” he asked.

He raised an interesting point and at the time. There were no good examples on the Internet that provided a comparison for downloading gigabytes of files and other “storage intensive” information like three-dimensional blueprints and Magnetic Resonance Images (MRIs) on various types of network services ranging from slow dial-up lines and DSL to wireless and fiber optic-based services running at gigabit speeds.

Below is the “Speed Chart” which I developed to use as a tool to convey an example of the differences in delivery time of a 90-minute full motion video based on what type of circuit was being used:



With several Intelligent Business Campuses like the DuPage National Technology Park (in Illinois within the United States) and Cyberport (in Hong Kong)having network access at 10Gbps and 40Gbps, a national standard for broadband connectivity should be at least one gigabit per second as the baseline subscriber minimum. Within these next-generation business campuses, the intent of upgrading to 100Gbps will probably take place in the next year.

If we look at power, most business campuses and industrial parks have one source of power coming into them as a standard approach. The new approach will be to insure redundancy and reliability by adding a second source for power as well as a second route for the power to be distributed into the campus.

These are relatively new concepts that have not been uniformly accepted. As the next-generation business campus concept becomes more accepted, watch how it will drive competition for corporate tenants.

We will discuss it in the next column.

* CARLINI-ISM: The old real estate adage of “Location, Location, Location” must be updated to “Location, Location, Connectivity”.

Email the writer: j.carlini@alrroya.com