If we build it, they will come: That was the hope and vision of Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano and his top staff when taking office a decade ago. By building a high-speed telecommunications network throughout the county, they hoped to attract companies here and lay a foundation for economic development.
Although the Westchester Telecom Network built by the county”™s private partner, Optimum Lighpath, a division of Cablevision Systems Corp., is still a work in progress in reaching potential customers with its Ethernet-based fiber-optic connections, as Spano recently noted, that vision has come a long way in reality in the last eight years. In Brooklyn last month, proof of that was evident at the annual summit conference of the Intelligent Community Forum, a nonprofit think tank that focuses on job creation and development in the broadband economy. Westchester County was among seven international finalists for ICF”™s 2008 Intelligent Community award.
Though the county did not win the top honor ”“ officials of the Gangnam District of Seoul, South Korea flew home with it instead ”“ ICF officials called the county”™s broadband economic engine  “one of the most robust and sophisticated telecommunications networks in the world.”
Spokespersons for Optimum Lightpath, which outbid about 20 competing carriers for the county contract a decade ago, said the company”™s fiber optic ring in Westchester extends 450 route miles. The network spans 56,982 fiber miles and provides services to nearly 60 percent of the municipalities in the county. It links to the Internet nearly 225 government buildings and more than 3,500 companies in 200 commercial buildings as well as the county”™s public schools and library system, hospitals and public safety organizations. Lightpath officials said the network is able to reach more than 75 percent of the approximately 30,000 companies that operate in Westchester County.
As county officials had hoped, the high-speed network has helped attract major companies to Westchester, including Nokia, New York Life Insurance and Morgan Stanley. And its success
has spurred rival carriers to build their own fiber-optic rings in the county, adding to its telecommunications infrastructure that makes the county business-friendly.
That success did not come easily at the outset, as Spano recalled in a presentation at the ICF summit. He recounted how he and the county”™s former chief information officer, Norman Jacknis, were spurned by Verizon when they first approached the telecommunications company with their county network proposal.
“It was very discouraging,” said Jacknis, who now works from his connected Cortlandt Manor home as a consultant for Cisco Systems Inc. “The guys from Verizon headquarters said, our concern is not Westchester but our dominance in lower Manhattan.”
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Spano and Jackson were not deterred. With the county government”™s $5 million yearly business for data and telephone services as a base, they pooled municipalities, school districts, hospitals and other public-sector users to form an aggregate customer base of $50 million over five years. Twenty interested companies responded to the county”™s request for proposals.
“The basic idea” of pooling a customer base for telecommunications services, “I really think we were the ones who invented the idea,” Jacknis said. “When you buy in bulk, you can negotiate a better price, you can get a better deal.” County officials told interested providers, “You”™re not going to make any money off of us” ”“ rather, the county wanted more service at the same cost ”“ but would reap future profits from private businesses linking to their network, he said.
“And that”™s actually what”™s happened,” Jacknis said. “They”™ve managed to provide really good broadband connectivity to businesses in parts of Westchester County that have never had any before,” such as Peekskill, Ossining and Mount Vernon. “Aside from White Plains, the cities were in pretty bad shape in terms of being able to compete” for businesses. “It”™s hard to imagine now, but when we started doing this it was only Platinum Mile offices that had whatever telecommunications there were,” Jacknis said.
In the first year of Lightpath network operations, the county saved about 40 percent on its telephone bills and more than 90 percent data per-unit costs, Jacknis said.
Nicholas Mitarotonda Jr., vice president for information systems at Mack-Cali realty Corp., said Optimum Lightpath provides its Metro Ethernet service to tenants in about 50 Mack-Cali-owned buildings in metropolitan New York and New Jersey. The realty company subscribes to the fiber optic service for its disaster recovery site at 100 Clearbrook Road in Elmsford, he said.
“The cost is less than $100 per month on a site-by-site basis,” Mitarotonda said.
“Because of the fact they”™re in all of our buildings, it really gives our tenants a true competiveness” for Internet services. “They don”™t have to be force-fed their telecommunications options for their offices. Lightpath has really championed that effort. They”™re offering that diversity that tenants are looking for these days. No one likes going to a one-horse horse race.”
David Strauss, Optimum Lightpath vice president for marketing, rooted for Westchester at the recent broadband summit in Brooklyn. “In the last eight years, having built the foundation that”™s been built, the county and us in a strong partnership role, I think the county is extremely well-positioned for realizing the vision that Andy Spano and Norm Jacknis laid out 10 years ago,” he said.
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