The Line asks a great question…
If you wanted to use your garage for a high-tech startup, one that was going to require a gig of connectivity, where would be the best possible place for that garage to be located?
The answer provided by Institute for Local Self Reliance’s Christopher Mitchell is Chattanooga, Tennessee. Chris is a proponent of community-owned networks and makes the point that an investment in fiber does more than allow local teens to download videos faster – it provides a platform for better job creation.
From a local perspective the article also does a nice compare and contrast with Twin Cities communities. (And remember that in the big picture – none of the Twin Cities communities were the best place to start a garage start-up!)
On Minneapolis…
For [Minneapolis’ CIO, Otto] Doll, it’s all about what he calls “the value proposition,” and Minneapolis is currently placing a premium on widespread and outdoor availability that is reachable by city workers and services, including some police, inspectors, regulatory services, garbage and sander trucks, safety cameras, and city message and parking signage. “We want to be anywhere a connection is needed, not just fixed locations, so we have 117 free Wi-Fi hot spots across the city, and a lot of people are taking advantage of that,” he says.
He also suggests that a gig of broadband might be overkill, given the current technological situation in Minneapolis.
On St Paul…
In St. Paul, there is also a greater concern over digital literacy than with the need for high-speed access, at least for the present time. “The City of St. Paul and Mayor Coleman support access to high-speed connections, but, like Minneapolis, we are very much aware of the digital divide that exists, so right now we’re focusing our efforts on making sure that all St. Paul kids have access to the Internet this summer,” says Joe Campbell, communications director, City of St. Paul. …
As to what the technological future holds for the capital city, Campbell says, “The mayor and others in St. Paul are well aware that there is a digital divide, and we are beginning to find ways to address that. In the next couple of years, we will be making some investments in technology, but what exactly those investments will be, we aren’t quite sure. But we know that they’re needed, certainly.”
On Eagan…
Tom Garrison, Eagan’s Communications Director, says, “We are very focused on the need for speed.” He says that last November, Five 9s Digital, a North Carolina company, announced their intent to develop a “carrier hotel” data center in Eagan. (The Line covered the announcement here.) It would be only the second major carrier hotel in Minnesota, and it’s important because it will have a new redundant route out to the Internet that’s not subject to a single point of failure. So far, Garrison reports that expressed interest in the data hub tops more than 300,000 square feet, but he notes that the site will not be able to accommodate all that demand. …
An open-access fiber model like Eagan’s is relatively rare in Minnesota, but some experts say it makes more sense than the municipal ownership model cited in Mitchell’s study, given the nature of regulations that exist in the state.
I think there’s a fundamental issue with the premise here, at least as it pertains to technology startups.
Back in the olden days (can anyone say GoFast.net?), technology startups would buy hardware and host it themselves during the early startup phase, and then migrate to a colocation facility when they needed more data center infrastructure than they could afford.
Startups today are using cloud IaaS (infrastructure as a service) providers like Amazon, Microsoft, and many others, because it eliminates the need to make expensive capital investments to get a service up and running. Moving your workload into the cloud allows you to buy bandwidth and compute very cheaply — under $0.10/GB of outbound transfer and $0.30/hour for compute.
The actual location that houses the startup has relatively minor bandwidth requirements (something on the order of 1mbps / employee for a 10-20 person shop).
That’s a good point. Although you still need the bandwidth to upload and download info to the cloud as you need it. And suddenly there are other opportunities – such as telepresence meetings/training or uploading video for marketing (or whatever purpose) that we’re around in the GoFast days. Also the startup at home business owner maybe using downloaded videos or online gaming to keep kids entertained – while he/she works.
I think the cloud eliminates the need for much storage – but the need for broadband remains.