City Seeks Leap Onto Information Superhighway

William MacMullen discovered an unused underground conduit — and came upon a way to spread free wi-fi in the heart of New Haven.

MacMullen’s discovery led to one of two plans hatched by the Harp Administration to up New Haven’s public Internet game.

One plan would spread free wi-fi along the Green. The administration also announced that it is seeking proposals from private companies to create a new network for ​“super-fast” home web access for the whole city, as part of a new statewide initiative. In an interview Tuesday, city Controller Daryl Jones said that it will take 35 seconds, say, not the current 35 minutes, to download a movie, and it will cost less. And research companies will be able to email reams of data across the ocean rather than have to mail CDs.

Mayor Toni Harp likened today’s efforts to broaden the information highway to 19th-century efforts to develop canals, and then railroads — a crucial way to connect people and do business in a new age.

Poles Beckon

MacMullen (pictured at the top of the story), the city’s architectural capital projects coordinator, plays a behind-the-scenes role in all this from his office in the fifth-floor city engineering department office at 200 Orange St.

Reviewing documents with an engineering firm one day, he ​“found a conduit under the street” leading from the main public library branch on Elm Street to under the Green. The conduit, no longer in use, was in good shape.

MacMullen figured the conduit could contain fiber optic cable to extend the library’s free wi-fi service through a transponder on a streetlight on the Green. He thought some more: The city could then do that with every third light or so all along the Green, and create a complete free wi-fi zone. He wondered if that plan could then extend through the city.

That could probably work on the Green, but not throughout the city, concluded Controller Jones, because the cost would be prohibitive.

He noticed that Yale has been working on a similar effort to extend wi-fi out of dorm rooms into the courtyards of its residential colleges. So, he said, he will now start doing ​“due diligence,” checking first with Yale to learn what they’re up to, then figuring out how to pay for doing it on the Green. He estimated that each transponder on a street light could cover 200 to 300 feet.

“We have these great concerts. People are always on the Green,” Jones observed. People increasingly use the web while there. ​“The question is: Can it be done cheaply?” One idea might be to find a corporate sponsor whose logo could appear on the screen of wi-fi users, he said.

Big Gig

While free wi-fi might not work citywide, an exponentionally ​“super-faster” broadband system might.

That’s the idea behind a request for qualifications (RFQ) the city is issuing. Companies have until Nov. 18 to respond with a plan to build ​“a world-leading gigabit-capable network” in New Haven along with two other cities, Stamford and West Hartford. At the request of the state Officer of Consumer Counsel, New Haven is handling the project, with the hope of including other communities as well. New Haven is following the lead of other cities, like Austin, Seattle, and Chatanooga, in seeking to propel its businesses and citizens on the fastest lane of the information superhighway.

The goal is to have a private company build a high-speed fiber-optic network that transfers data at up to 1,000 megabits per second and make that available to everyone in town, largely at discounted prices. That’s 100 times faster than the speed customers in town can now get, according to Jones.

The goals listed in the RFQ include ​“provid[ing] free or heavily-discounted 10 – 100 MB (minimum) Internet service over a wired or wireless network to underserved and disadvantaged residential areas.” The winning company would also be asked to offer the discounted or free service to ​“urban anchors” like libraries, community centers, and cops and firefighters. Other customers might end up paying up to, say, $70 a month (the ceiling in Chatanooga) for the ultra-fast service, he projected. Among the targeted potential users are home-based enterprises, new-generation research and tech companies.

Click here to read the RFQ.

Jones said the project will not cost taxpayers money. In fact, it would bring in permit fees. The winning company would win the right to build a new network in town and do business with a huge new market.

The New Railroad

At a press conference in Hartford Monday, Mayor Harp put the project in an historical context.

“Two days ago in New Haven we dedicated a new site on the Connecticut Freedom Trail – it happens to be along the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail – to honor William ​‘King’ Lanson, a runaway slave who built New Haven’s Long Wharf and the southernmost portion of the Farmington Canal,” she stated in prepared remarks. ​“This happened 200 years ago. New Haven thrived as a direct result of these improvements. From Long Wharf, ships could unload directly onto carts and wagons without having to be ferried in on smaller boats; likewise, goods could be floated and towed inland on barges in the canal without having to roll them over hill and dale.

“The history of America follows a similar pattern: development and prosperity bloomed first along the coasts, then along the rivers, then along the railroads, and then last century, along the interstate highways. Today our state – and the United States, for that matter – needs a dramatic infrastructure upgrade to accommodate commerce and transfer data – the currency of this information age.

“Is anyone else in the room frustrated by the time it takes to communicate by e‑mail or simply schedule a group of people for a meeting? And this frustration is with near saturation of e‑mail, Outlook, and Google. We have to move forward. Gig networks deliver internet speeds of up to 1,000 megabits per second, something close to 100 times faster than what is now the average home speed of internet service. With this capability at our fingertips, telephone calls, video conferencing, and the transmission of so much information will glide almost effortlessly around Connecticut and beyond.

“And just as technological improvements enabled more goods to reach more people at reduced rates throughout our nation’s history, by boat, by rail, and then by truck, so will the ultra-high speed Gigabit network deliver more data to more destinations at what we expect will be lower cost.”