Best Practices and Strategies for Broadband Deployment - Adoption, Usage, and Global Impact of Broadband Technologies - page 137

to ensure that citizens and enterprises will
keep on being successful and competitive
in the 21st century, by securing access to
advanced telecommunication services.
For this reason, they established the Utah
Telecommunication Open Infrastructure
Agency (UTOPIA). UTOPIA will develop
the infrastructure and will install fibre optic
connections to every house and enterprise.
Private contractors will undertake the con-
struction of the network and will participate
in its operation. All important parts of the
network have been funded by government
contributions. The UTOPIA business mod-
el is classified as an open access/wholesale
provider model, which becomes feasible
through the interlocal agreement between
the participating communities. Apart from
the Utah project, in the USA, municipal fi-
bre optic networks are being developed in
fifteen (15) states, while wireless networks
have been realised in 30 states. The at-
tempt of creating a huge wireless network
in the city of Philadelphia presents special
interest. The Wireless Philadelphia Project
received both public and private funding
and its target was the provision of wireless
access in the whole city, so that the digital
gap would be surpassed and the quality of
living of all residents would be improved.
Steps have been taken towards the direc-
tion of establishing an organisation that as-
signs the network's planning, development
and administration to private companies.
The same organisation will provide net-
work access to service suppliers, who will,
in turn, offer services to subscribers.
• The case of Canada (CANARIE) . The
great majority of the current and proposed
initiatives for the encouragement of broad-
band infrastructure development in Canada
may be classified into two broad strategies:
the demand aggregation model and the
public infrastructure support model. The

former promotes collective regulations
that aggregate the demand for broadband
services, on a community or even larger
scale, so that the scale economies required
for the development and support of a
broadband network are achieved. The lat-
ter is based on direct public funding for the
construction of broadband infrastructures.
Although these two models can be applied
independently, it has to be noted that, in
many cases, they are often combined.
• New Zealand: The case of Wellington .
The CityLink company was established
by the Municipality of Wellington, New
Zealand, aiming at the development of a
low cost telecommunication network, in-
tending to offer a comparative advantage
to the local enterprises and governmental
organisations. This network provides the
citizens of Wellington with a variety of
services, but it also gives massive com-
pany users and Internet Service Providers
(ISPs) the possibility to lease part of the
network (dark fibre) at cost-oriented pric-
es. One of the innovative and most inter-
esting network features, which contributes
enormously in its viability, is that it uses
low-cost passive and active equipment (i.e.
Zebra on Linux), and not expensive com-
mercial network devices.

FTTH Deployment

The following list presents noteworthy efforts
concerning FTTH deployment:

• OneCommunity (Ohio, US, www.one-
community.org): The communities in
northeastern Ohio have long suffered from
deindustrialization and loss of population.
In order to revitalize the local economy,
OneCommunity, a nonprofit organisation,
was created in Cleveland in 2003 to serve
a variety of public and nonprofit organisa-