Dublin, Ohio’s Dublink has been saving public dollars and spurring economic development since 2002. The gigabit fiber network is on the verge of a 100 gigabit upgrade. The Dublin Villager reports that in early May the City Council voted to implement the 100-Gigabit Dublink Ignite program.
According to the Villager:
The city has budgeted $865,000 over the next six years to complete the project, [City Manager Dana] McDaniel said, and will also use $300,000 in state funds and $360,000 from the Ohio Academic Resource Network for use of additional fiber optics for the project.
Increasing the city’s fiber capability will allow the Dublin to provide fiber optics to older office buildings and make then more attractive, McDaniel said.
In addition to bringing fiber to a greater number of office buildings, the project may even lead to “fiber to the cubicle.”
As we reported in 2014, Dublin collaborated with the Ohio Academic Resources Network (OARnet) to create CORN, also known as the Central Ohio Research Network. This new 100 gigabit initiative plans to encompass those partnerships so companies can potentially access OARnet and CORN.
Dublin operates a “meet me” room at a local data center and anticipates using that facility as a place were a number of ISPs can compete for commercial customers.
According to a detailed memo from Dana McDaniel [PDF], the city has calculated significant benefits for local businesses. Here are just a few (emphasis ours):
- Backhaul to the local data center (Metro Data Center). This represents monthly cost savings to the company in the form of avoided carrier costs. Such cost savings are estimated to be $400/month or $14,400/3 year for 10 Mbps level of service; $800 /month or $28,800/ 3 year for 100 Mbps level of service; and $2000/month or $72,000/3 year for 1 Gbps level of service
- Provide server space, at not cost, to local companies so they can create a presence in the local data center. Average cost per month for this service is estimated to be $1,013 per month. The company not only gets free space in an N+2 data center environment, but it also would get a value of $1,013/mo or $36,468 /3 years
- Once a presence is created in the data center, companies and institutional users can choose among internet service prices. It is not yet known the effect of choice and increases capacity for a company. It is anticipated to lower the cost by $20-30/mo per Mbps which would save a small business with 10 Mbps on Internet services and additional $200/mo or $7,200/3 years.
The city will also increase connection speeds for Dublin City Schools and Washington Township Schools and connect them to each other. Institutional users will have connectivity to the data center, which will allow them the opportunity to connect with OARnet. They will be able to choose from ISPs and can avoid carrier costs with the connection to the “meet me” room provided by the 100-Gigabit Dublink Ignite Program.
McDaniel told council. “We think that we will be off the charts for incentives we can offer to our businesses.”
Places like Dublin are thinking ahead. Their foresight years ago positioned them so they are already able to offer connectivity to attract potential employers. This program takes Dublin to the next level ensuring their competitive edge.
This article is apart of MuniNetworks. The original piece can be found here
