Evanston Vies to Become Google's Choice for Pilot Fiber Network

Posted on Friday Mar 26, 2010

Google Us.jpgMayor Elizabeth Tisdahl recently announced that the City of Evanston will respond to Google's Request for Information (RFI) to build ultra-high speed broadband networks incommunities across America. Google announced last week its intention to launch ultra-high speed broadband internet networks in one or more trial locations across the country.

Google's vision of a fiber-to-the-home network with open access fits well with Evanston’s focus on making the community “the Most Livable City in America.”

The networks will deliver internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today. Google will incur the cost to build the network and will charge customers competitive rates for the service.

Mayor Tisdahl has asked City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz to convene a task force of City staff and interested community members to prepare a response to Goggle’s RFI by the March 26, 2010 deadline. The task force will meet each Tuesday through March 23rd, 2010 at 6 p.m. at the Lorraine H. Morton Civic Center, room 2402. 

“Once the Google initiative was announced last week, residents from throughout the community contacted me urging Evanston to compete for this opportunity,” Mayor Tisdahl said. “Evanston is a natural place for Google to locate its newbroadband network. The combination of the work of Northwestern University, the concentration of small innovative high technology entrepreneurs and two world class medical facilities will allow this network to be a magnet for further business development in the community.”

“In addition, an ultra-high speed broadband network would help bring the world to the students of Evanston supporting the efforts of our excellent K-12 schools in the community. Fiber-to-the-premise networks serve as an outstanding engine for economic development. Evanston would be an excellent place to construct such a network because we already have high tech industry and a computer savvy population equal to any in the nation,” Tisdahl concluded.

Evanston will tap the expertise of its residents, Northwestern University, Rotary International, Evanston Hospital, St. Francis Hospital, Evanston Township High School, Evanston/Skokie School District 65 and other agencies to respond to the Google RFI.

Google Day Press Conference

The City of Evanston and several of its community partners gave a public presentation streamed live on-line as to why Evanston would be an excellent fit for Googles trial launch of ultra-high speed broadband internet. Video presentations from the City, Northwestern University, Evanston NorthShore Hospital and Evanston School Districts highlighted in detail Evanstons desire to have the entire City wired to high-speed internet. Video presentations are shown individually below.

Google Day Press Conference

Northwestern University

Evanston / Skokie District 65

Northshore University Health System / Evanston NorthShore Hospital

Northshore University Health System / Evanston NorthShore Hospital

What would Evanston do with ultra-high speed broadband internet


Evanston's Case for the Google Broadband Network

1. Evanston Businesses Attracted to Open Access

Evanston has:

  • Successfully created an open access system that have attracted Evanston's entrepreneurs to plug in and pay to use it
  • Office buildings downtown with the potential for more businesses
  • Few industrial/commerical areas, although built and underutilized, indicate potential for commercial growth
  • Many residential ISPs who are interested in participating in the Google project
  • Storage and backup vendors who want to be in our network


2. Local Uses of our Local Network

One big difference with such a network is that the local speed is far higher than the internet speed and it's closer (service to customer) with fewer potential bottlenecks. if we come up with novel uses of this, it will not only be good for google to hear, it will attract businesses (we can look for them) to come offer these services and help make the whole project a success.
 

  • Community security/surveillance – The City of Evanston already uses security cameras around the City and the Google fiber would help further these efforts.
  • Commercial surveillance – There could be some business potential with security and camera monitoring. Today it is expensive to design networks with sufficient bandwidth to support these services. The Google network would have no such constraint.
  • Lifeline phone system – Evanston could very cheaply offer lifeline voice that ties into city facilities with no usage charges to any phone company (we already have an IP based phone system in the city). This service could be provided for seniors or offer it to low-income families that have reverted to cell phone (or none) only.
  • Local media distribution – Live (and on-demand) media can ride over this network like can only be dreamed of on the Internet. It would be very inexpensive to add high-def content to any TV lineup. The more we say we want to leverage this, the more it attracts more content because it will attract eyeballs. Every park could have permanently installed cameras for watching local games for instance. of course our own community media center will take advantage of this.
  • Telemedicine for our hospitals – Not only will this be great for our hospitals and citizens, it will attract new retirement communities and generally retirees (and the labor for them and others who benefit) to move to our community.
  • Very high speed gaming – Gaming is huge. there are more game consoles out there than computers. They are also becoming media deliver mechanisms to the tv (netflix, etc.). the online gaming networks are gigantic and while Evanston might not be big enough to attract the big gaming networks, we would spawn a good bit of local on-net gaming (yes, this is huge too) where people set up their own systems/game servers.
  • Telecommuting – Local file storage for telecommuters attracts not only the telecommuters, but the companies who want to keep their data stores on such a network.
  • Schools – It's a big deal on the local (non-internet) side of things. Student access to full, rich content (read - textbooks with video and such, documentaries, media projects, etc.) is a dream come true. Plus the schools save big money by moving their voice functions over a fast cheap network and stop paying the phone company for inter-school calling or private lines.
  • Centralized media servers – there might even be a market for centralized servers for people to store their music, video, pictures, more, onto a shared system and save the thousands they pay now for those system in their home because the speed they need to them isn't available on the Internet. Generally this is a very high end option but it may be able to go down-market if the speeds were available to centralize the systems.

Evanston could host a technology festival that is multi-site so that it leverages the very high local speed network. There are many technology artists that would come to take advantage of the network. It could be tied in with our new year festival since that can benefit from indoor events that tie into other indoor events for a feeling of a large combined event.

3. Technology Innovation Center

The Evanston 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.

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

4. Residential Users and Digital Divide

Evanston has the perfect demographics for Google. Not only do we have a good chunk of educated wealthy households, we also have tons of students (biggest bandwidth users), educated middle-class households (much more than most), entrepreneurs and home office people, tele-commuters, and last but really at the top, a good chunk of low-income households. What's great about low-income households are that they will benefit tremendously, many becoming new internet users. They will start Ebay businesses and other forms of micro-commerce as they quickly catch up with the rest of the community. It's part of the economic development picture and this isn't lost on Google or the many foundations (and government) eager to provide grants to help overcome the digital divide. Even better it's not the whole picture. We have progress to make for many, and markets to work in for the rest. It's the diversity that makes Evanston such an awesome test bed for Google.

5. Northwestern University

Northwestern University’s assets to working with Google are very strong on many levels. From the existing business relationships that Northwestern has with Google to Northwestern’s International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR), Northwestern will be

6. Assets and Buildout
 

  • The City’s stock of commercial property downtown and in other areas (west side) are a major asset. Conference facilities at Northwestern University, Hotel Orrington and Hilton Garden Inn would be major users of this network.
  • The City/NU fiber backbone throughout the community is a plus for the Google network.
  • Northwestern University brings major internet access and even faster research networks (internet2, canarie, etc.) coming through.
  • Evanston has a decent degree of density with both single and multi-family residences without stretches of unused land. This allows for big bang for the buck without it being too expensive to build.
  • Evanston has both aerial and ground path options. Many communities don't have alleys like we do.
  • Evanston has public access TV (ECMC ectv.com) with studios and serious media production technology. Many communities don't have such facilities.
  • The City of Evanston’s municipal utility uses will lend themselves to using the network as a smart grid to better manage our municipal operations.
  • Evanston is just north of Chicago with fiber runs into it already. Google already has a big data center here and other network presence, so our network could be easily tied in.