Page 12 - Microsoft Word - Connected City Blueprint - V1 (JPEG TABLES).docx
P. 12

By digitizing the government process, it's not just about adding conveniences to people, businesses and government
          officials who have smart devices and conveniences already. This will certainly be an outcome and it's a worthwhile
          one. However, the greater benefit is making government services more readily available to people who have less
          flexibility and less convenience available to them. One of the primary tools for making this happen is expanding
          connectivity for all areas of a city and for all members of it.
          Developing connectivity throughout a city varies from city to city. Many of them do include determining how to best
          use city-owned real estate assets for the deployment of telecommunications service. One of the most important
          questions in Connected City planning is to determine whether a particular city wants to manage its destiny and the
          time to market for broadband proliferation by utilizing its governance system and its real estate. An example of this is
          the approach that New York City is using.
          This allows cities to broker relationships with third-party operators, whether by cellular, Wi-Fi, or otherwise.
          Telecommunications Planning uses the city’s real property assets to support the growth of not only those incumbents,
          but all of those new entrants that are looking to provide services.
          Whether it's trenching new conduit to provision fiber across the city or whether it's locating fifty to five hundred to
          thousands of new small cells on buildings, street light poles, other types of city street furniture, such as kiosks, park
          benches, bus stops, etc., it is critical to determine where broadband needs to grow equitably across the city. This is the
          importance of the Connected City plan.
          One of the things that cities have to decide is: who is going to manage the operations of these networks? Does the
          city have an interest in investing and managing networks itself?
          If a city decides to become a network operator/communication site manager/lead agency for all telecommunications
          operations, then it is going to go through a massive culture shift. The interest of the government in terms of
          proliferating broadband is much different than that of a third-party consultant. The consultant’s interests may have
          higher margins or they may have an ability to oversee technical operations. However, they don't have the leverage
          that a City government has, subject to the use of infrastructure or the interest in proliferating broadband into mission
          critical locations. Nor does a third-party consultant typically care about equity.
          Creating a lead agency for all communication operations is very important, because it leads to leveraging all
          telecommunication services to all city agencies and the use of all real estate in that city. The city now becomes a very
          powerful broker subject to bringing in telecommunications services. To an extent, it owns some of these assets,
          whether its fiber optic or common antenna across the city resulting in it being in a great leverage position.

          Looking again at the example of New York, their plan is to proliferate broadband to everyone, everywhere, by 2025.
          By doing this in a way that is universal and equitable, they hope to be able to close their digital division. They have
          chosen some small scale pilots to begin with by investing in the proliferation of Wi-Fi services in public housing
          authority complexes, where they can directly those who don’t have connectivity and hopefully more quickly bridge
          that digital division. They anticipate being able to take those lessons learned and scale that across the entire city.
          Connectivity is important to cities because, in many ways, municipal government functions like a large conglomerate.
          Cities provide community services, utilities, public safety, engineering, human resources, finance, technology,
          regulatory functions and many other services. Much of what a lead agency in telecommunications does revolves
          around how they communicate and collaborate— and this means having an open dialogue with elected
          representatives and constituents, staffs operating an expansive infrastructure, and ultimately making the machinery
          behind our municipal services run.
          Cities now have a new view on how to support that infrastructure that's more holistic for the same reasons. They see
          how things are connected and how rendering exceptional municipal services requires a new level of communication.
          When they talk about the benefits of connectivity for cities today and in the future, the reality is that we're at a leap

                             Report title: Connected City Blueprint
                          9   Issue Date: 15 December 2016              Wireless Broadband Alliance Confidential & Proprietary.
                                                                        Copyright © 2016 Wireless Broadband Alliance
                             Document Version: 1.0
   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17