Technology

Fiber’s the Thing

By Dan Richardson, 1-12-06

You need your fiber, people. Highspeed fiber, of course. That's one lesson that might be drawn from a couple recent developments.

Right now, Portland is considering spending $470 million to build a high-speed fiber-optic network. The idea is to make Portland competitive with other tech-oriented communities. Like The Dalles.

In it's December issue, Broadband Properties Magazine has an article about Google building what the mag says will be a "giant server farm" in The Dalles. The usual question about this project: Why The Dalles? Reliable power, for one, plus water for cooling its servers, and, critically, the town's new highspeed fiber network.

This isn't the first tech site to make that assertion: "The Googles of the new economy have to have fast, cheap broadband. Communities that want to attract them have to have fiber," said blogger previously.

In the past, it was rivers and railroads and interstate highways that made a community competitive as a business location. Is it highspeed fiber today? And is that worth $470 million?

No, says Brant Wolf of the OregonTelecommunications Association. Wolf told The Oregonian that Portland's fiber pipe dream is “ill-advised. ... I just don't know why the city of Portland would invest that kind of money.�

Why would the city spend that kind of money? You gotta put it in some perspective, friends. $470 is only like, what, the cost of five or six aerial trams to OHSU.

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