The District of Columbia has turned up the first link of a 100 Gb/s network that is expected to connect every ward in the city by June 2013. Network construction was funded through a $17.5 million broadband stimulus grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
According to a project summary filed with the NTIA, the network construction project, dubbed DC Community Access Network (DC-CAN), ultimately will upgrade and expand an existing 293-mile network constructed in 2003 to connect government agencies. When completed the project will add 170 additional route miles and connect 190 anchor institutions including community colleges, public safety entities, schools, libraries and healthcare facilities. Much of the new construction is in economically distressed areas with broadband adoption rates below 40%.
The network initially was expected to support speeds of up to 10 Gb/s, but apparently technology advances that have occurred since the initial application was made have now enabled the District to support 100 Gb/s within the original budget target. Underlying the network is an optical transport platform with coherent optics from Ciena.
The project is being touted as “the first city-owned 100 G network in the country”—and it’s true that the 100 Gb/s speed outpaces that of some operator’s nationwide backbone networks. It’s important to note, though, that 100 Gb/s is the backbone or middle-mile network speed—and although the anchor institutions directly connected to it should be able to get speeds equal to or approaching that number, the network does not include last mile construction to homes or businesses.
That means it’s not directly comparable to high-speed networks such as the network Google is building in Kansas City http://blog.connectedplanetonline.com/unfiltered/2011/03/31/kansas-city-here-we-come-google-makes-good-on-first-fiber-pledge/ or the one that a local power company has constructed in Chattanooga (blog: Kansas City here we come: Google makes good on first fiber pledge) or an extension of Case Western University’s network in Cleveland that helped inspire the Gig U project (CP: Gig U project seeks university/ carrier collaboration to deploy ultra-high-speed networks). All three of those examples involve speeds of up to 1 Gb/s to individual homes.
Because the DC-CAN middle-mile network is an open access network, however, there is a strong likelihood that a last-mile provider will step in to provide high-speed services to end users—a result that we have seen as the result of some other middle-mile projects (CP: Broadband stimulus status report: Following up with four winners). And even if no one steps up immediately to deliver high-speed last-mile services, D.C. residents should benefit from high-speed connections to public computer centers, as well as improved public safety communiciations and new health IT applications such as telemedicine and in-home monitoring, all of which are described in the NTIA project summary.