The 10 Best Ideas from the Other Smart21 Communities of the Year

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Now that ICF has announced its Top Seven Intelligent Communities of the Year, it is a good time to reflect on "the other 14."  That is, the 14 out of the Smart21 Communities of the Year that were not selected by our analysts to be among the Top Seven.

These stages in the competition are my least favorite part of our yearly process.  So much innovation, inspiration and hard work are on display from October to January, only to be pushed out of the limelight by the Top Seven selection.  It's true that the Top Seven scored higher on our Intelligent Community Indicators, and on the annual theme of the Awards, than the other 14.  But those 14 deserve to be honored.  More important, the rest of us need to know about the strategies and practices that put them on the short-list of the world's most successful Intelligent Communities.

Three of our Smart21 - Danville and Bristol in the state of Virginia, USA, and Porto Alegre in Brazil - illustrate a really successful strategy for community broadband, one that has put them square at the center of growing regional economies. 

When local governments go into telecommunications, they have different priorities than do private companies. They need to deliver dependable, high-quality, cost-effective service, and to make money doing it, because otherwise there's nothing to invest in maintenance and growth.  (For all those who like to chant "people, not profits," I offer the wisdom of management consultant Peter Drucker, who pointed out that, contrary to popular belief, businesses do not exist to make profits; it's just that they just can't do anything else unless they do.)  But governments have other goals that are part of their special mission: economic development, improved public services, more equal access to opportunity.  Sometimes the pursuit of those goals distracts them from running the store properly, in which case they lose money and make voters angry.  But that's certainly not the case with Porto Alegre, Danville or Bristol. 

All three communities were starved for both broadband and economic opportunity.  They are in rural areas and long depended on agriculture and low-skilled manufacturing for employment. Not a recipe for economic success in the 21st Century.  The incumbent telephone or cable TV providers were not willing to make the investments needed to create a robust level of service.  So, all three communities decided to do something about it themselves. 

In Bristol and Danville, the cities owned their own electric utilities, and made these the basis for the build-out of a 100 Mbps fiber-optic network.  In Porto Alegre, a city-owned communications and IT company built a hybrid fiber and wireless network.  The original concept was to serve city-owned facilities as a substitute for paying the incumbent telephone carrier for service.  In other words, to save the taxpayers money.  But demand from businesses and citizens caused all three communities to aim higher.  Bristol fought in the courts and state legislature for 3 years, at a cost of US$2.5m, to win the right to compete with incumbents - and within a few years had over 60% of the market.  In Danville, community leaders were able to sidestep legal battles by making theirs an open-access network, in which the city provided the physical infrastructure that private-sector carriers used to deliver voice, Internet and video services.  Because of a different legal and political climate, Porto Alegre reported no major obstacles to its deployment of both infrastructure and services.

So far, these are community network stories like many others.  It was after the networks were up and running that things got interesting.  Bristol Virginia Utilities (BVU), the city-owned carrier, developed partnerships with neighboring counties, and became the prime contractor for a network build-out there funded in part by public grants.  The networks linked not only to homes and businesses, but also to a new technology park that attracted major IT employers.  In Danville, the city-owned electric utility services the entire region, and the third phase of the nDanville network is reaching outside the city limits to more than 20,000 rural businesses and homes.  It will support telework, rural schools and local business start-ups.  Porto Alegre is using their 350km regional fiber ring to connect rural health clinics with hospitals downtown.  That has reduced waiting time at the clinics from 4 months to 30 days, and missed appointments from 40% to less than 10% of the total. 

What's the point?  Each of these communities has leveraged its own hunger for broadband to make itself the hub of a fiber-connected region.  As Mayor Jim Rector of Bristol told me, BVU is generating income from places far outside the city.  The network is making possible high-quality jobs to which Bristol residents commute.  It has encouraged the state university system to build a satellite campus nearby - connected, of course, to the fiber network.  Senior executives of a Fortune 500 mining company headquartered in Bristol told me that they couldn't keep their corporate nerve center where it was without the connectivity provided by BVU.  Broadband-based services flow outward from the hub and prosperity flows back in, only to flood outward again like a spring tide. 

If your community has its own broadband network, you probably have opportunities to grow it beyond your own boundaries.  In fact, neighboring communities and counties may be clamoring for your help.  Should you give it?  The experience of the Smart21 suggests you should.  You have to get the funding and business model right, of course, but the rewards to the network owner and operator can be substantial.  And while you are building traffic on your network and incomes in your community, you will be doing a lot of good for your neighbors as well.

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My grandmother used to say that "idle hands are the Devil's playthings."  She meant that when you don't know what to do with yourself, that's when you are most likely to get into trouble.  I guess the lesson stuck with me.  On the rare occasions when I am exposed to reality TV, my first reaction is always the same.  "Those people have way too much time on their hands."

On February 12, Sam Dillon of The New York Times published a story that shows what a smart woman my grandmother was.  The article ("Wi-Fi Turns Rowdy Bus Into Rolling Study Hall") reported on the miracle that occurred when school buses in the town of Vail, Arizona were equipped with WiFi hubs.  Instead of teasing, texting, flirting, shouting at, climbing over or punching each other, the kids turned to the Web for entertainment, communication and help with last-minute homework.  As Mr. Dillon put it, "Wi-Fi access has transformed what was often a boisterous bus ride into a rolling study hall, and behavioral problems have virtually disappeared." 

The story shows a local government making creative use of broadband to influence the behavior of its citizens for the good of the community.  Going to school?  Good.  Getting into trouble because long bus rides are boring?  Bad.  Catching up on homework and practicing digital skills instead?  Good. 

As I read it, I was thinking of our Smart21 of 2010.  I realized that smart communities around the world are doing a lot more than just deploying broadband.  They are thinking through how broadband deployment can also be a policy tool.  By applying creativity to the "how" and "where" of broadband deployment, they are multiplying the positive impacts on community life and economic performance.     

Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada is a small city of 65,000.  If you jump in your car, no part of the city is more than 15 or 20 minutes away.  That makes it a tough place to run a municipal bus line, because travel by car will always be more convenient.  At least it was until Moncton decided to change the equation.  The city partnered with a local company, Red Ball Internet, to install Wi-Fi hubs on all city buses, linked to the Web at up to 45 Mbps.  I have watched full-motion video online (see photo) while traveling on a Moncton bus, and the performance in this demanding application was as good as I get at home.  Suddenly, the idea of commuting by bus looks a lot more appealing.  Instead of staring at the cars ahead of me in traffic, I can use the time to get a head start on my work or finish something left over from the day without leaving late.  Moncton credits Wi-Fi with boosting ridership.  That's important for two reasons.  Moncton is growing and traffic congestion could become a real problem, as it is in Silicon Valley, where it hurts quality of life and raises costs.  Putting more people on buses also keeps Moncton's carbon footprint under control as its economy continued to prosper.   

Taoyuan County, Taiwan is home to the international airport that serves the nearby capital city of Taipei.   The airport is an important economic center for the county.  But the blessing is decidedly mixed.  Think about what you do when you fly into an airport located outside the city of your destination.  At my regular hub - Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey - I get off the plane and head east for my office in New York City or north for home.  That's money leaving Newark, leaving Essex County, and going out of reach.

Taoyuan's answer is a plan called Aerotropolis, whose goal is to keep more of the airport's economic output within the county.  An important part of the plan is "M-Taoyuan," a WiMAX corridor it is building to improve connectivity across some pretty mountainous terrain.  But here's the real point.  When it is completed, it will form a seamless wireless broadband corridor connecting every traveler on every kilometer between the airport and downtown Taipei.  Like a physical highway that allows prosperity to flow out of major cities as well as inward, M-Taoyuan will transform that corridor into an entirely new economic center. 

When communities deploy wireless, they often look for the easy victory. They put wireless antennas on light poles in the city parks and celebrate.  Hey look!  We've got a brand new Wi-Fi Zone!  But let me ask you: when was the last time you went to the park to check your email?  When I go for a walk in the park near my office, it is to get away from email and instant messages and telephone calls, to feel the breeze and get some sun on my face. 

When communities go into broadband or develop policies to guide the private sector, it's an important chance to think about what users need and what social and economic goals they want to accomplish.  "Connectivity for all" is a good slogan,  but it's not enough to make communities successful in the 21st Century.