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Pipe
is Cheap
Virginia
could accelerate the deployment of broadband if
people
got in the
habit of laying cable conduits every time they
widened a road or dug a ditch.
Wouldn’t
it be cool, Mark R. Warner frequently asked
audiences on the campaign trail, if the Virginia
Department of Transportation ran a pipe for
fiber-optic cable wherever it built or expanded a
road? By saving the expense of digging trenches to
lay the conduit, suggested the governor-to-be, the
state would make it cheaper for telecom-
munications
companies to extend broadband connections to regions
they can’t afford to reach now.
The
governor has tried to make good on that campaign
promise. Pierce Homer, a deputy secretary of
transportation, has taken on the task of identifying
projects – such as the U.S. 58 upgrade and the Springfield
bypass – where conduit can be installed for a
nominal investment. “We got very clear direction
from the governor, and we’re in the process of
executing it in a rational way,” Homer says. The
first contracts could be executed by early 2003.
Warner’s
initiative clearly will advance the state’s
proclaimed goal of extending broadband everywhere in
the Commonwealth – but not very quickly. Progress
will be measured in tens miles of conduit buried, while thousands of miles are needed. If Virginians are serious about
wiring the state, they can’t expect the state to
do it alone. Everyone needs to pitch in.
In
the hope of gaining some insight into the problem, I
chatted recently with George Cumming, a project
manager for a California-based telecommunications
deployment firm, who may know better than anyone else in Virginia
about where the cables are buried. Cumming spent the
better part of the 1990s negotiating on the behalf
of companies who put fiber in
the ground.
The
telecom industry laid loads of fiber in
Virginia,
Cumming says, but they left the job largely
unfinished. The telecom bubble burst, capital
spending tanked and the last mile connections from
the fiber-optic trunk lines to the customer
frequently were never completed. The problem isn’t
limited to remote rural areas, he says: There are
numerous suburban office parks where fiber and
wireless service is still not available.
What
can Virginians do to accelerate deployment of
broadband, I asked him. Cumming offered two
suggestions:
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Any
time anyone builds a new road, widens an old one, extends a water or
sewer line, or digs a gas line, they need to lay
a fiber conduit. Localities don’t have to put
in the fiber – just the plastic pipe. Telecoms
can string the fiber at their leisure. The
conduit is ludicrously inexpensive; the cost to
the developer or locality is negligible.
The
result of such activity, if applied diligently,
would be a rapidly growing patchwork of conduit
around the state that telecom companies could run
their wire through. In the early phases, the conduit
network would be fragmented, unconnected and of marginal
utility. But over time, as the pieces connected, the
system would grow in value.
The
obvious problem is that
Virginia’s
100-plus localities would carry out the plan
100-plus different ways. It would help immeasurably
if some official body could set standards ensuring ensure that
conduit laid by VDOT,
utilities, private developers and assorted public
works departments all could interconnect. It also
would prove valuable if someone compiled a map to keep track
of all the activity and made it available to anyone
willing to string cable.
The
Warner administration’s strategic plan for
technology calls for appointing an entity in the
near future to act as a central clearinghouse for
broadband initiatives around the state. Perhaps this
entity could take on the job of setting standards
for the burying of fiber-optic cable conduit as
well.
Taking
the idea one step further, the as-yet-unnamed entity
could organize itself as a public service authority,
assume rights to the pipe, market the rights of way,
and lease capacity to telecom companies for a
nominal fee. The revenue would recoup the modest
cost associated with installing the pipe and
administering the program. Meanwhile, the authority
could apply for federal and community grants to fill
in gaps in the network.
It
might take 20 to 30 years to build out the
entire state
with conduit this way. But such an initiative would
cost the state and localities virtually nothing. In the meantime,
as the conduit network grows, participating
localities will look increasingly
attractive to telecom
companies as they ponder where to allocate their
limited capital investments.
-- November 4, 2002
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