BTOP Funding Criteria, Definitions, and Comments

Statement by Rob Billingsley, Cable Administrator, Arlington County

April 13, 2009

Broadband technology, much like other forms of information
communications technology, is an "enabling technology." The purpose of
this statement is to urge the RUS, NTIA, and FCC to apply the ARRA
funding effectively by the use of strategically determined model
projects. To advocate the spending of limited Federal funds for
broadband as a means of stimulating the economy with one-time "shovel
ready" construction projects underestimates the true economic value of
broadband technology.

An evaluation project of the Economic Development Administration,
concluded in 2006, "broadband access does enhance economic growth and
performance, and that the assumed economic impacts of broadband are real
and measurable." (*Measuring Broadband's Economic Impact,* Prepared for
the U.S. Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration,
February, 2006)

For the period 1998 to 2002, the EDA found that "communities in which
mass-market broadband was available by December 1999 experienced more
rapid growth in employment, the number of businesses overall, and
businesses in IT-intensive sectors, relative to comparable communities
without broadband at that time."

In a more specific indication of the enabling nature of broadband, the
EDA study also found that "the mean growth in rent, salaries,
employment, number of establishments, and share of establishments in
IT-intensive sectors were all higher in the communities with broadband."

In another recent study, the National Bureau of Economic Research
described with some detail the two-fold nature of broadband to serve as
an economic multiplier of the investment in such technology, and the
significant role of household use in contributing to GDP. The authors
found that while broadband accounted for \$28 billion of GDP in 2006
(out of \$39 billion in total for Internet access), approximately \$20
to \$22 billion of that was associated with household use. Of that
amount, the authors estimated broadband\'s deployment created between
\$8.3 and \$10.6 billion of new GDP. (NBER Working Paper No.
[14758](http://papers.nber.org/papers/w14758))

Naturally, one can only applaud the recent legislation making billions
of dollars available for broadband construction projects. Yet, the
percentage of the overall funding does not seem to recognize the full
benefit of broadband communications for the U.S. economy. With greater
frequency, we are hearing reports of the decline of America\'s global
broadband competitiveness. We need to recognize what that means for our
nation's global economic future. In providing less than one per cent of
the total ARRA funds for broadband technology, the value of what has
been a major \"economic engine\" in our service economy over the last 15
years has not been fully recognized.  It is easily the one technology
that has kicked the velocity of commerce into high gear with the
Internet, and will continue to do so.

At a funding level of \$7.6 Billion, this amounts to little more than
about \$65 per family in the U.S. to be spent on developing Broadband
with Federal funding.  The NTIA\'s portion of that pie is only about
\$40 per American family.  That\'s roughly the cost of one month of DSL
per household.  When applied to the current percentages of homes that do
not have cable or DSL, it would provide less than 2-3 months of DSL for
that group.

Clearly, these resources alone will not be enough to address the total
picture of broadband availability in the U.S. For that reason, the BTOP
evaluation criteria need to consider innovative demonstration projects
over simply installing cabling in an "underserved" or "unserved"
community, hoping that alone is enough to improve local economic
conditions, without looking at that community's future most beneficial
use of the technology.

Arlington County Virginia has been striving to improve access to the
Internet in a variety of ways for its residents with the following
multi-faceted vision:

Provide a communications network that:

-   enhances the County's ability to ensure safety of its citizens
    through improved communications,

-   enables Arlington County and Arlington Public Schools to communicate
    with surrounding local jurisdictions, Commonwealth of Virginia
    Departments, regional and federal agencies as they develop their
    fiber networks, 

-   promotes the County's environmental goals, including telecommuting
    and additional wireless hot spots,

-   strengthens the County's policies of smart growth by strategically
    leveraging the use of right of ways,

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-   presents greater opportunity for County/School collaboration on
    network and technology development, and

-   creates a competitive economic development advantage for Arlington
    County as educational institutions and other organizations seek to
    locate in communities with enhanced telecommunications
    infrastructure.

The County has developed a vision for how traditional infrastructure
investment can be leveraged in a manner that takes the concept of "roads
and bridges" to a new level. The Arlington Vision offers a model that
realizes broadband as an enabling technology, extending access to
residents, businesses and non-profits while furthering the environmental
goals of conserving energy consumption.

Arlington has pioneered the concept of private-public partnerships to
further the extension of broadband access to all regardless of economic
or social class. By using twenty-four strands of dedicated fiber
provided from a cable TV franchise, the County connected 55 government
and 40 public school sites into dedicated government network, call the
INET. Additional projects bringing Internet access to disadvantaged
students, non-profit social services partners, as well as to County
recreational facilities in the first half of this decade further
improved the overall communications environment.

Given the success of this partnership with the Cable Television
provider, Arlington has taken the initiative to the next level through
the development of partnerships with the Federal Government and the
commercial utility provider to begin the process of laying a wired and
wireless broadband foundation that will serve the community well into
the future. By leveraging a Department of Transportation grant to
refresh the aging copper cable that manages the traffic signal system,
and develop an "intelligent traffic system," County will lay an
additional 144 strands of dark fiber at its own expense into the same
underground pathways, thereby reducing installation costs significantly.

The possibilities and opportunities that will emerge by having fiber
points of presence across the County at and between all major
intersections are limitless. For instance, Wi-Fi Hotspots for County
field workers, and alternative public wireless access points can easily
become a reality with the ubiquitous availability of fiber
communications backhaul pathways.

The County envisions that the network could be leveraged to extend
intelligent building environmental, security and life/safety management
to both government owned and private buildings that embraced the concept
of intelligent building management.

The County can also leverage the refreshment of its 800 MHZ Public
Safety Radio system across this same fiber backbone to serve as an
alternative communications path in the event that weather related events
inhibited system. The fiber backbone will link (5) five distinct radio
microwave transmitters deployed at various points across the County.

Even further extending this vision, the County has developed two unique
initiatives. First, the County has negotiated an agreement with the
primary resident electric utility provider, Dominion, to similarly
co-locate communications fiber with the utility's current project to
refresh their underground power grid infrastructure. This County owned
fiber will provide yet another opportunity to extend the broadband
network that would have been previously much more difficult to afford.

Second, the County has been experiencing unprecedented new construction.
The County is leveraging this trend by developing language in its the
building ordinances that will enable the County to lay dark fiber
underground at any new construction site. This will further increase
opportunities to create dark fiber optic segments across the County.

To address these opportunities and other challenges, the County has
developed a Telecommunications Master Plan. The Plan will survey county
initiatives and lay out a plan for their documentation and integration.
Once documented, the Telecommunications Master Plan will describe the
potential applications that could utilize this high capacity broadband
network to further the services of the County.

Potential opportunities could include the creation of a 'community fiber
network' that could offer shared services to the commercial,
educational, governmental and non-profit entities in the Community.

The County expects such a high capacity, secure, wired infrastructure
could render significant economic benefits to the community for further
business investment, attracting workers, conducting research, training,
energy efficiency and public safety.

The imaginative, forward thinking vision of intelligent technology
enabled infrastructure investment that Arlington has created is a model
that easily could be replicated across the Commonwealth of Virginia as
well as the rest of the U.S.

Other demonstration projects with similar objectives, and that
incorporate partnerships like recent projects in Arlington will have a
greater chance of replicating future successful broadband development,
regardless of funding sources -- local, state, national, or
public-private partnerships.