Westchester County is one of seven communities worldwide in the running for the 2008 Intelligent Community of the Year award for its broadband network that now serves more than 3,500 companies in the county.
The Intelligent Community Forum, a nonprofit think tank in New York City that focuses on the creation of local prosperity and social inclusion in the broadband economy, recently announced the finalists from a semifinal field of 21 communities. The winner will be named in May at ICF”™s Building the Broadband Economy annual summit at Polytechnic University in New York City.
Chosen for the select group by academic researchers, Westchester government and County Executive Andrew M. Spano were cited for creating the Westchester Telecom Network, a multi-gigabit fiber-optic network that now extends over 800 miles through the county. The county also was cited for maintaining its quality of life by investing in promoting business growth, improving the skills of its workforce and fighting digital exclusion in a community in which new immigrants make up 35 percent of the population.
Prior to the county”™s broadband initiative, major telecommunications carriers “were far more interested in winning competitive battles in New York City than investing in Westchester,” ICF officials noted.
Working with 43 local governments, an independent library system, major hospitals and dozens of school and water districts, the county pooled communication budgets worth $50 million over five years, which led Cablevision Lightpath to build the network. Losing business worth $10 million a year, the region’s carriers subsequently built and lit three high-speed fiber optic rings within the county to create one of the best local telecommunication infrastructures in the U.S, according to ICF officials.
In addition to more than 3,500 companies connected directly to the Westchester Telecom Network, it is used by more than half of all municipal agencies in the county and all of its schools, libraries and hospitals. The network has permitted Westchester to create, attract and retain innovative organizations and played a direct role in attracting major employers to the county, including Nokia, New York Life Insurance and Morgan Stanley. Among others benefiting from the network is the Pace University Online Learning for Trade Unions, which creates distance learning programs in telecommunications.
Other ICF finalists are: Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada; Gangnam District, Seoul, South Korea; Northeast Ohio; Tallinn, Estonia and Winston-Salem, N.C.
ICF Chairman John G. Jung said of the finalists: “In these outstanding communities, the act of building a broadband network with a sustainable business model became a catalyst for efforts on many fronts to create economic growth, social inclusion and environmental stewardship. The network was the starting point, but the communities went on from there to develop a powerful culture of use, which proved transformative. They are inspiring models from which we all continue to learn.”
