Solutions Leadership and Collaboration The City needs to be responsible for the overall execution of the Broadband Plan in Ottawa. Only the municipality has the interest of the entire community as its mandate. This will include not only addressing the needs of the community as a whole, but also integrating the City's internal telecom needs as a part of the planning process. Successful implementation of this broadband plan will require the active involvement and cooperation of all interested parties, particularly the competitive telecommunication firms. The involvement and buy-in of these firms will be key to the success of the strategy. Mechanisms must therefore be created to incorporate the telecommunication infrastructure planning process within the City, as well as to engage the appropriate stakeholders. Sustaining Momentum in Rural Ottawa To date ORCnet's broadband connectivity efforts in rural Ottawa have been successful. However, a lack of resources is making it difficult to expand the program to achieve wider connectivity results throughout the rural area. The City of Ottawa is to provide the resources to establish a sustainable governance model and program for ORCnet. Reaching Out Beyond Ottawa Through Ottawa's Broadband Plan, the city will encourage telecommunication carriers to reach out with their high-speed services into Ottawa's vast rural area and beyond. Every attempt will be made to collaborate with adjacent municipalities to secure high-speed services throughout their respective jurisdictions. Collaboration and partnership with these surrounding municipalities will help remove the barriers facing these various stakeholders. Municipality, Universities, Schools, and Hospitals (MUSH) Sector Opportunities Many of the current MUSH Sector organizations in Ottawa are founding members of ORAN (Ottawa Regional Advanced Network). Through OCRI, this membership has formed a partnership with Telecom Ottawa, which is currently extending connectivity to this group via its new fibre optic backbone. Where possible the City is to promote membership in ORAN as this will result in more collaborative initiatives amongst the membership and the expansion of the fibre optic backbone in Ottawa. This in turn will bring broadband connectivity that much closer to a wider audience of MUSH Sector members some of which are located in rural communities away from where broadband services are currently being offered. The City is to encourage ORAN to allow OTTIX to connect to its MUSH sector membership via the point of presence at City hall. This in turn will allow the membership to access the Internet more efficiently and at a lower cost. OTTIX is an association of Ottawa inter-exchange service providers (i.e. Internet Service Providers's) whose mandate is to keep Internet traffic generated in Ottawa from being sent to other large telecommunication hubs in the United States. Routing Internet traffic through these hubs requires bandwidth, which raises the cost of Internet connectivity. Should ORAN agree to this connection point with OTTIX, the convergence point or PoP with this service at City Hall will be managed by Telecom Ottawa. City Tower Use The City's current telecommunications towers are to be made available to wireless providers as base locations for their antennae. Allowing wireless providers access to these rural towers will help to facilitate the extension of wireless broadband services into sparsely populated areas where no business case currently exists. The fees29 charged for this type of tower space can be adjusted based on the traffic generated by the wireless antenna. In this way, low traffic areas would pay less for use of the tower while higher traffic areas would pay more. Where fibre or a wireless link is available through Telecom Ottawa, a similar arrangement is to be made for backbone/wholesale services. This will make the business case more compelling for a wireless service provider. Telecom Ottawa is to negotiate a "base" fee to recover costs of providing these services. The City of Ottawa is to replace existing City owned towers with higher towers where possible to extend the reach of Broadband coverage in the rural area. There are existing tower locations where a higher tower could provide wider broadband services. In these locations, if wireless service provider(s) are willing to use the higher towers to extend broadband coverage, the City is to consider replacing the towers. The City can minimize costs by leasing the new towers to wireless carriers. Existing towers can be redeployed and possibly provide coverage to a new un-served area. The option of leasing verses acquiring new towers from an independent tower firm is to be explored. The City, together with OCRI (Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation) and ORCnet, will prepare a business case analysis for eight new towers (see Figure 5) that will complete the wireless broadband coverage for rural Ottawa. This analysis will evaluate ownership scenarios, funding models, including accessing provincial and federal government infrastructure programs and other sources of revenue to best offset the requirement for direct funding from the Municipality. The City needs to coordinate the installation of all new towers in the City. Towers are currently regulated by Industry Canada. Municipalities can request building permits be obtained for their installation but cannot prohibit or regulate where they are to be located. To date City staff have only been able to keep a record of new towers that are placed on City owned property. In the future the City is to keep track of all new towers including those that are placed on private property. With the cooperation of the carriers, staff are to coordinate new tower installations and where possible attempt to avoid towers being duplicated in a particular area of the City. New Technologies New technologies to extend the reach of broadband are being developed on a regular basis. In the future it is possible that a new, low cost method of extending broadband connectivity to every resident and business in the City maybe developed. OCRI is well positioned to coordinate the research and testing of new technological solutions for Ottawa and prepare the appropriate business case should the City want to consider endorsing a new broadband connectivity solution. As new technology is developed, broadband services can be delivered faster and for more Ottawa residents and businesses. Development and Promotion of Broadband Applications Support for the Development of Broadband Applications With permission from OCRI, the City together with its partners are to continue to use the Sm@rtCapital logo and name to develop the next generation of broadband applications in Ottawa. The Sm@rtCapital name was registered by OCRI and is being used to describe a 3-year program involving multi-party funding to advance Internet access, application development and connectivity in Ottawa. Various projects that have been initiated under the Sm@rtCapital banner have included SmartSites, Edunet, and the web-cast of Ottawa's 20/20 Planning Summit in 2001. Funding from this program will also be used by City staff in 2003 to develop e-democracy and e-government applications at City Hall. Funding for this program runs out in 2003. OCRI is to prepare a new business case to extend where appropriate the on-going Sm@rtCapital initiatives and enhance the effort in the area of broadband application development. The new business case will identify new partnerships and sources of funding for a multi-year effort. By rolling out these new applications, efficiency gains will be realized and the demand for broadband connectivity will accelerate. Support for the Promotion of Broadband Service and Applications Through the Sm@rtCapital program approximately 160 Community Access Sites (Smartsites) have been located throughout the City at libraries, community centres, etc. These sites consist of computers with free internet access and have the ability to showcase the speed and efficiency of broadband connectivity as well as new applications such as video on demand, telecasting, etc. Smartsites are to be connected with high-speed service and are to showcase new broadband applications, when developed. This initiative will help raise awareness of broadband technology and extend new services out into the community. ORCnet is to lead an awareness program to inform residents of applications over broadband networks and the technical options and opportunities for connectivity as they become available. This will include providing information kits to the Community on these opportunities and options for connectivity. As well, the program will include identifying new and existing applications that will make broadband connectivity attractive to various community sectors such as the farm community, home office workers, tele-workers, students and residential users. Provisioning New Growth with Broadband Connectivity Each year in Ottawa, many kilometres of new roads are built in the City. Several million square feet of commercial, institutional and industrial space is developed along with several thousand new residential dwelling units. Over a 20-year period this growth will be dramatic and must be planned for appropriately. Communities around the world who are planning for advanced telecommunication networks are now considering broadband installation requirements for new development. Approaches vary with communities such as Montreal requiring that empty conduit be installed in new or existing road allowances that are being rehabilitated. Palo Alto has gone the way of fibre optic cabling being installed in all major road allowances. Other examples of what various communities are doing are provided in Appendix D. In Ottawa, most of the new residential growth is provisioned with telephone connectivity by Bell Canada and with coaxial cable services by Rogers Cablevision. Broadband services can be made available via both of these infrastructures with the necessary networking equipment. Wireless services are mostly confined to the rural area due to the general lack of line of sight capabilities in built up areas. Studies have indicated that in the future, as various governments, institutions and private sector enterprises roll out new broadband applications, the demand for bandwidth and transmission capacity will increase dramatically, requiring incumbent carriers to scale up their networks. The National Broadband Taskforce Report suggests "the volume of data sent over the Internet will approximately double each year for the next decade (resulting in a 1600 percent increase by 2005)."30 In some instances this maybe difficult and costly for the incumbent carriers to do and could result in the price of connectivity services rising or bandwidth not being available. A Business Case for Competitive Broadband Connectivity for New Development To ensure that Ottawa achieves its vision of universal, low cost broadband connectivity to all residents and businesses in the City within a 5-year time frame, the City needs to consider provisioning all new developments with broadband services. Various approaches have been adopted by other jurisdictions with mixed success. In some of these cases the carrier community has been off-side with the approach and has taken the municipality to court to argue the new telecommunication infrastructure conditions that have been imposed by the municipality. A case that is currently before the appeal courts should decide this year (2003) whether it is the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) or municipalities who ultimately will have control over telecommunication services in the road allowances. To properly sort out jurisdictional issues and the best approach for provisioning new development with broadband services, the City is to undertake a business case analysis that would determine the following:
This analysis would be lead by a steering committee of stakeholders (i.e. staff, telecommunication carriers, developers and builders, broadband users, etc.) who would report back to Council within a reasonable period of time with a preferred approach. A more detailed discussion of land development and infrastructure installation issues is provided in Appendix C. Existing Development and Roadways Telecommunications carriers are to use installation techniques and processes that minimize disruption to municipal streets. Where less invasive installation techniques are used, the City can save on the life cycle costs of roads and services. Examples of these techniques are:
An example of an innovative installation technique recently approved in Ottawa's central business district was the Stream Sewer Pilot project. This technique involved a robot installing fibre optic cabling in the roof of sewer lines under existing roads. Unfortunately this company had financial trouble and did not undertake the project. However this technique may have saved approximately 4000 linear metres of busy roads in the centre of Ottawa from having to be dug-up to install this service. 29 The fees to be charged may be subject to CRTC review and/or regulation. Next: Strategic Directions |
Official site of the City of Ottawa
