National Broadband Plan article
Mary Alice Ball
By Julius Genachowski
Sunday, March 14, 2010; A19
The Internet has transformed America with its power to generate innovation and opportunity and by its ability to connect, inform and entertain us like no technology in history.
But we are not even close to realizing the full potential of high-speed Internet, or "broadband," access. Universally deployed broadband networks can be America's engine for enduring job creation, economic growth and tremendous improvements and savings in education, health care and energy conservation.
This vision of world-leading 21st-century broadband networks and their benefits will not occur spontaneously. While the United States invented the Internet, when it comes to broadband we have fallen behind as other nations have raced ahead. Some studies show us to be as low as 15th in the world in broadband adoption; others have us higher, but none puts us even close to where we need to be.
Our nation is at a high-tech crossroads: Either we commit to creating world-leading broadband networks to make sure that the next waves of innovation and business growth occur here, or we stand pat and watch inventions and jobs migrate to those parts of the world with better, faster and cheaper communications infrastructures.
This, of course, is not a choice -- which is why, this week, at the behest of Congress and the president, the Federal Communications Commission is delivering the first National Broadband Plan: a comprehensive strategy for dramatically improving our broadband networks and extending their benefits to all Americans.
The bad news is that we have a long way to go to meet this generation's great infrastructure challenge:
-- Millions of Americans can't get broadband today. Period. With so many of our daily interactions moving online -- including job listings and job training during the worst recession in decades -- that's unacceptable.
-- Tens of millions of Americans with access to broadband have not signed up. Our surveys show that they aren't connected because they can't afford it, don't know how to use it or aren't aware of its potential benefits.
-- The vast majority of us don't have broadband that's fast enough to take advantage of remote video learning or medical diagnostics, or dozens of other existing and emerging applications.
-- An entrepreneur can't run a small business today without broadband, but 26 percent of rural business sites don't have access to a standard cable modem, and more than 70 percent of small businesses have little or no mobile broadband.
-- Just as mobile broadband becomes ever more important, we face a looming shortage of spectrum -- the electromagnetic oxygen on which our mobile networks run.
The starting point to solve these problems is a set of goals that are ambitious but achievable with a national commitment.
-- First, to ensure opportunity, every American should have access to all essential broadband services at home.
-- Second, to ensure that we have the advanced networks we need to empower American businesses, we must substantially increase the capabilities of our networks. This means driving toward one gigabit to every community in America, through libraries, schools and community colleges; and creating the world's largest market for affordable, very high-speed broadband -- a "100 Squared" initiative of affordable 100 megabits per second to 100 million households -- so that inventors around the world will flock to our platform.
-- Third, to ensure that we capture the next wave of change, we must lead the world in the speed and reach of our mobile networks.
-- Fourth, to ensure the safety of Americans, every first responder must have access to a nationwide, wireless, interoperable broadband public safety network.
With smart policies, we can enable and accelerate the private investment necessary to achieve this future. If we have the political will, we can reclaim the licensed and unlicensed spectrum our wireless networks need to thrive. We can transform the multibillion-dollar fund that supports the universal availability of traditional voice communication to one that supports universal broadband. We can promote competition, for example, by removing barriers, encouraging investment and empowering consumers with the information they need to make the market work. And we can offer every American the tools to be digitally literate -- a prerequisite to participating in the new economy.
If we adopt these and other good ideas, we can harness the power of a technology with the greatest potential to advance our economic and social welfare since the advent of electricity.
Imagine a world where children in low-income neighborhoods can have access in their classrooms to the best teachers in the world and access at home to the most up-to-date e-textbooks. Picture a time when diabetic seniors living in rural areas without ready access to doctors can get nutrition counseling on home computers.
History teaches us that nations that lead technological revolutions reap enormous rewards. We can lead the revolution in wired and wireless broadband. But the moment to act is now.
The writer is chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
Tim Lavengood
TIC Part One - Tim Lavengood
http://www.evanstonroundtable.com/main.asp?SectionID=30&SubSectionID=74&NewsVideoID=11
http://s791.photobucket.com/albums/yy196/EvanstonRoundtable/?action=view¤t=RT10.flv
TIC Part Two - John Brassil*
http://www.evanstonroundtable.com/main.asp?SectionID=30&SubSectionID=74&NewsVideoID=12
http://s791.photobucket.com/albums/yy196/EvanstonRoundtable/?action=view¤t=RT11.flv
Part Three - Paul Nordine
http://www.evanstonroundtable.com/main.asp?SectionID=30&SubSectionID=74&NewsVideoID=14
http://s791.photobucket.com/albums/yy196/EvanstonRoundtable/?action=view¤t=RT13.flv
TIC Part Four - Alex Arzoumanidis
http://www.evanstonroundtable.com/main.asp?SectionID=30&SubSectionID=74&NewsVideoID=17
http://s791.photobucket.com/albums/yy196/EvanstonRoundtable/?action=view¤t=Incubator4.flv
The Technology Innovation Center would use the proposed Google fiber optic network as a backbone to launch a series of initiatives to promote the attraction, retention and growth of technology-based start-up businesses in Evanston. To leverage the new world-class broadband capicity, we will draw on:
the wealth of comparative advantages of this community for this type of business development
the 23-year track record and credibility of TIC in this field
a coordinated set of economic development strategies outlined below to be implemented by TIC in collaboration with other area economic development agencies.
Background
The Technology Innovation Center is not-for-profit technology incubator in operation since 1991, serving more than 350 entrepreneurial ventures by providing them with space, services, access to the resources of higher education and promoting entrepreneurial learning through peer networking. TIC currently houses 38 clients in 30,000 feet of office, laboratory and light manufacturing space in Evanston at 820 Davis Street and 825 Chicago Avenue. Voted Incubator of the Year in 1997 by the National Business Incubator Association, TIC has produced graduates that are responsible for more than 2000 jobs in Chicagoland. Evanston has retained 27 of these companies in the downtown and other business districts of the City. These firms employed more than 250 people as of March, 2009. In the past two years, TIC graduate companies in the Chicago area have attracted more than $45 million in equity investment. Over the last two years, TIC success stories would include:
Aginity, founded by Doug Grimsted, former Cooper and Lybrand “Chicago Entrepreneur of the Year” which recently graduated to long term space in the Chase Building
Current tenant Tula Foods, named the most innovative new company in Illinois for 2009 by the Department of Commerce and Economic opportunity
Current tenant Taichon Works, which this summer organized a global Lotus User conference at IBM's Chicago office
Current tenant CRI sold a revolutionary high temperature processing technology for making rare earth glass to a major U.S. materials company for application in fiber optics
Graduate company Vibes Media, which received $15 million in venture financing from Fidelity and now includes Verizon and Disney among its customers
Graduate Leapfrog Online, which received $30 million in equity financing in late 2008 and reached 100 employers in its downtown Evanston location
Graduate 360 Facility, which now employs 18 people in its downtown Evanston location and includes Jones, Lang, LaSalle, the world's largest office property manager, among the users of its property management software
Graduate NextChem, which has exported its water quality analysis equipment to Saudi Aramco, Petrobras, and to Anhauser-Busch facilities in China
TIC provides 4 types of resources to its client companies that our experience has shown translate most directly into growth:
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Space and infrastructure – TIC rents small office, and manufacturing spaces to to pre-creditworthy start-ups on a month-to-month basis. Under these same terms, TIC provides fixed-cost telephone service, basic internet, furniture, meeting spaces and business services (described below). This arrangement enables entrepreneurs to focus on their business from day one and avoid making long term commitments while they market-test their product or service. Should the business fail, this arrangement allows entrepreneurs to avoid the costs and legal exposure of long term contracts, leaving them in much better shape as they move on with their careers.
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Services – TIC provides no-cost services to client companies, and in certain instances to small businesses in the community at large; in the areas as finance, business law, marketing and corporate structure. The mechanisms for services delivery include counseling by TIC staff, volunteers and professional networking. TIC staff work directly with companies in the areas of business planning and finance. We maintain relationships with most area banks and assist in an average of $3 million in debt and equity financing for small business per year. Volunteers include the lawyer that staffs our legal clinic, which is available to TIC companies and other area entrepreneurs and small businesses referred by TIC staff. This clinic, which TIC has offered for more than 13 years, provides 150 to 200 free legal counseling sessions per year, covering any topics the companies choose, but with a focus on areas of crucial importance to business startups, including corporate structure, intellectual property, technology licensing, international commerce, partnerships, investment and shareholder agreements. Because TIC continuously maintains a strong and ever-changing client portfolio of promising early-stage firms, we are able to attract a number of highly qualified professionals willing to defer compensation in order to conduct seminars or to accept deferred payment in order to establish relationships. In this way, TIC is able to “pull” high quality professional services further back in the startup process.
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Access to resources of higher education – Technology-based startups use their ability to innovate as their primary differentiator in penetrating markets already dominated by better funded and better branded competitors. Access to university faculty and students that are defining the cutting edge are therefore an invaluable resource. Last year, TIC facilitated 14 internships and student projects involving clients companies and students. Most were from Northwestern, specifically from the fields of engineering and business. Other institutions we work with include UIUC, UIC, U of C, De Paul and DeVry. When we are able to achieve faculty agreement, these projects are designed to earn students' grades, meaning that cash compensation from companies is reduced or eliminated. As student interest in entrepreneurial business continues to explode on campuses across the country, this service model creates win-win opportunities for all parties and is likely to grow rapidly in the coming years.
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Access to an entrepreneurial peer group – With 23 years of continuous operation, TIC is one of the deepest reservoirs of technology startup experience in the nation. Even the most successful entrepreneurs spend relatively little of their careers in the difficult early stages of business building. TIC has worked with clients in the first 36 months of building a business for 23 consecutive years. We have an extensive network of “graduate” companies and individuals in the Chicago area, and an in-house community of 38 startup technology firms in various stages of development, pursuing varying strategies of financing, sales development and R&D, all communicating with one another on a daily basis. To facilitate this process, we monitor each client company, identifying opportunities to make introductions for purposes of collaboration (often based on barter), and to discuss financing, potential customers or for mentoring. We also host a weekly “Face to face” event at our 820 Davis facility to encourage interaction between TIC clients, graduates, service providers and interested community members. When leaving TIC, many clients relate that the most valuable resource for them was simply the opportunity to interact every day with others willing to risk their livelihoods on their technical creativity - because only those who have done it can truly understand.
Rationale
Technology-based entrepreneurship is the ideal growth strategy for Evanston. Nothing else has equal potential over the near or long term. Evanston shares or exceeds the community characteristics that served as the drivers in making Cambridge, Massachusetts and Palo Alto, California global centers of technology entrepreneurship. No other community in North America enjoys these characteristics in the abundance that Evanston does. These factors include:
home to a major research university with strengths in science, engineering and businesses
near/collar suburb of a major metropolitan area
highly educated, professional population
“24 hour environment” (a real estate term referring to a community that is attractive for work and play for the young professional, and that has the schools and other resources for this population as it matures, marries and has children)
a metropolitan area that has a diverse economy with particular strengths in finance and a wide range of industries that use emerging technology.
Only these three communities share all of these characteristics. Unfortunately, Evanston lags far behind in leveraging them with a technology-based business development strategy. On the bright side, this means our potential to achieve significant grow with a relatively modest infusion of resources is very high. No other strategy has as a higher ceiling. While Evanston will continue to be strong in retail and in residential real estate, other Chicagoland communities can aspire to an equal status. In our potential for technology-based business development we stand alone.
Should Google choose to bring fiber to Evanston, TIC will design and seek private funding for the first high-end IT network facility located north of the Loop catering to early stage businesses. This facility will enable TIC to attract data- and bandwidth-driven startups from throughout Chicagoland. The plan will also incorporate new 4G technology to provide state of the art internet connectivity and telecommunications. With sufficient capability and upgrading, we could continue to be the most convenient, “legacy” ISP alternative for our companies as they grow, thus providing them a strong incentive to remain in this community and to foster an expanding relationship with the TIC/NOC. Based on prior estimates, we project the total cost of the facility to be between $200,000 and $250,000 to be acquired as equity investment.