The Smartest Cities Leave No One Behind

And yet, three years ago when Internet Service Providers started announcing plans to expand high-speed service in North Carolina, Greensboro didn’t make the cut. I began to call around to CIOs from our neighboring communities and educational institutions. They were as concerned as I was. We understood how critically important this kind of fiber network can be. Five years ago, Greensboro began an effort to lay some 150 miles of fiber optic cable to connect that city’s extensive, 500-signal traffic system. Simultaneously, we put down 29 additional miles to ensure that all 93 city facilities were connected to our network and added 54 video cameras to critical intersections. It was a needed upgrade that made our system more reliable, resilient, and easier to control and monitor remotely.

There are endless uses for this type of infrastructure. Our neighboring communities of High Point and Burlington, UNC-Greensboro and NC A&T universities, and Guilford County all make use of fiber networks. It’s as essential to our future as water pipes and roads. Without it, we knew that our region, our residents and industries, would be left behind— especially those areas at the biggest economic disadvantage. From this need, we launched the Tri-Gig High Speed Broadband Initiative. Our IT department stepped outside its traditional internal support role and into the role of advocates for our community. Under the Piedmont Triad Regional Council partnership, we sought an Internet Service Provider to lease our dark fiber and provide one-gigabit service to underserved portions of our community.

It’s been a complicated process, as most private-public partnerships are. We’ve had to manage a multi-agency partnership and learn how to engage the private sector in a new and creative way. We are now partnering with North State Communications on our pilot project, which will provide services to a local nonprofit agency that serves families in need. Future phases will focus on filling in the gaps that limit access for all our residents and business.

We’re also busy thinking about what comes next. Late last year, my IT department launched an open data portal that provides free and easy access to a wide range of City datasets, including reports from our housing, inspections, police, and fire departments. The portal is already being regularly used to provide a quick response to residents’ requests for public documents. Now, we’re working to add more City datasets to the portal and expand our outreach efforts to ensure people know what is available and how to use the portal. We envision university researchers or app builders making use of the data in many different ways that could further improve our city.

We’re also considering what it takes to make that smart corridor happen along Gate City Boulevard, a grand entrance into our city and an important thoroughfare for tourism. We participated in the Envision America 2017 workshop, spending three days of intense collaboration with academic and industry experts to evaluate options like adding sensors that provide up-to-the-minute traffic information or creating an app-based bike share program.

We’re still in the early stages of these three projects. But we are confident this is what we have to do to ensure our economic future, to retain top talent, and be a progressive and innovative city.

See Also: Top Smart City Technology Companies