Reso 2018-116 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

Exarnple - City oj� Palo Alto, CA In 1996, Palo Alto built a 33 -mile optical fiber ring routed within the city to enable better Internet connections. Since then, the City has been licensing use of this fiber to businesses. For the past decade, this activity has shown substantial positive cash flow and is currently making in excess of $2 million a year for the city. Palo Alto now has that money in the bank earmarked for more fiber investments. GOVERNMENT SERVICES PROVIDER Municipalities that become a government service provider will utilize a fiber-optic network to interconnect multiple public organizations with fiber-optic or wireless connectivity. These organizations are generally limited to the community anchors that fall within their jurisdiction, including local governments, school districts, higher educational organizations, public safety organizations, utilities, and occasionally healthcare providers. The majority of these anchors require connectivity and often, the municipal network provides higher capacity at lower costs than these organizations are able to obtain commercially. Municipal and utility networks across the country have been built to interconnect cities, counties, school districts, and utilities to one another at lower costs and with long-term growth capabilities that support these organizations' future needs and protect them from rising costs. In these cases, government service providers may be cities, counties, or consortia that build and maintain the network. The providers utilize inter -local agreements between public agencies to establish connectivity, rates, and the terms and conditions of service. Exarnple-Serninole County, l" I Seminole County owns and operated a 450 -mile fiber-optic network that was installed over the past 20 years by the County's Public Works department primarily to serve the needs of transportation. Since that time, the network has grown to connect the majority of the county's facilities, five cities within Seminole County, Seminole Community College, Seminole County Schools, and other public network to a common fiber-optic backbone. The network has saved millions of dollars in taxpayer dollars across the county and has become a long- term asset that enables the county and the other connected organizations to meet their growing connectivity needs. OPEN -ACCESS PROVIDER Municipalities that adopt open -access generally own a substantial fiber-optic network in their communities. Open -access allows these municipalities to "light" the fiber and equip the network with the electronics necessary to establish a "transport service" or "circuit" to service providers interconnecting with the local network. Service providers are connected from a common interconnection point with the open -access network and have access to all customers connected to that network. Open -access refers to a network that is available for any qualified 201