Broadband advocates want Burnsville to be a ësmart cityí Posted 6/8/01 by John Gessner Staff Writer Is Burnsville a ìsmart city?î Not smart enough, lament some business owners and residents who lack access to broadband technology. City officials and others are taking steps to raise awareness of broadband needs and promote the full wiring of Burnsville. The City Council has adopted policy goals calling for the fullest possible broadband access. The city has assembled an ad hoc group of business owners and others to determine the communityís broadband needs. And from that could come a standing committee ó possibly with representatives of utility companies at the table, said Tom Venables, Burnsvilleís information-technology coordinator. ìI donít know how much direct impact the city can have, but weíre trying to investigate that,î said Ray Martin of the Burnsville Chamber of Commerce board of directors. Martin works for Burnsville-based Cuneo Communications Group, which owns the online used-car site carsoup.com. ìI do know weíre not operating as full-tilt as we would like to, and we canít until the capacity changes,î Martin said. Eden Prairie and Winona have been touted as ìsmart citiesî for their blanket access to high-speed technology infrastructures such as fiber optics, digital subscriber line (DSL), broadband cable and broadband leased line. Such cities are ìmiles ahead of most communities, and certainly miles ahead of Burnsville,î which needs to ìget the ball rolling so that 24 months from now weíre not still sitting here in the caboose of this technology train,î Martin said. Business Card Service Inc., which produces letterhead, envelopes and other products for several Fortune 500 companies, is doing ìa ton of e-commerceî through its three T-1 lines, said CEO Jim Marchessault. But the company, located in Burnsvilleís Southcross Corporate Center, has broadband access through Qwest Communications that some other businesses in the immediate area canít get, Marchessault said. ìThe future of trade and commerce is in the electronic age, and it all comes down to bandwidth and access to the information superhighway,î Marchessault said. ìIf we donít have that, itís like not providing electricity to somebody.î The broadband push started last year after the city received ìa lot of callsî from business owners and residents frustrated by their lack of access to high-speed communications, Venables said. ìThey werenít getting the answers from the local utility companies, or they werenít getting the answers they liked,î he said. Inequality of service across the city has emerged as a key issue, Venables said. ìNobody seems to know exactly whatís in the ground, where itís at and what it is,î he said. According to Martin, ìHere in Burnsville we have a situation where on one side of the street you can have people with the capacity to do almost anything, and on the other side of the street, those businesses donít because theyíre being served by different utilities. We need to level that playing field.î Complicating matters is the number of utilities serving Burnsville ó three phone companies, two electric companies and two gas companies, Venables said. The two major phone companies ó Qwest, which generally serves the cityís northern end, and Frontier Communications, which serves most of the south ó have DSL capability, but canít yet provide it to all their Burnsville customers, Venables said. Meanwhile, AT&T Broadband, which has the cable franchise in Burnsville and Eagan, has delayed a broadband upgrade in Burnsville that was planned for this summer. It must be completed by September 2002 under terms of the franchise agreement, Venables said. Eagan already has its upgrade. What influence can a city government have? ìI think the consensus is we can be a facilitator but not necessarily the ones to provide a solution,î Venables said. Getting utility-company representatives around a table would be a start, he said. Other steps could include streamlining the process by which utilities gain access to city rights-of-way. ìWe do see this as an economic-development tool for the city,î Venables said. ©Thisweek Newspapers