Scott County betting on fiber's future

Scott County is laying the foundation for what could be a bright future. The county is in the midst of creating a 94-mile fiber-optic ring that will be the largest government-owned high-speed network in the state and one of the nation's biggest.

The 72 strands of fiber-optic cables being buried around the county will connect every police department, school, library and government agency at ultra-high speeds for transferring data or sharing information. "The possibilities are endless," said Gary Shelton, the deputy county administrator who had the idea for the network last year. "Fiber has unlimited capacity."

At some point, the county hopes to add direct connections for residents and businesses to the ring, if it can find private partners to take up the task.

Among the possibilities: video phones, video conferencing, virtual water coolers at work, tele-medicine in hospitals, long-distance college educations, high-definition video, electronic traffic tickets, maybe even a countywide WiMax wireless service so farmers in the far reaches of the county can access the Internet while working in their fields.

"From interactive video to tele-medicine, from wireless communications to video-on-demand, our citizens -- both taxpayers and residents -- may soon experience the direct benefits of 'lighting up' Scott County," said Lee Shimek, president of Scott County Association for Leadership and Efficiency, whose membership includes every city in the county.

Shelton said county leaders will meet this month to come up with a list of priorities of what they want to add to the new system. He believes one of the first things will be using the ring to provide telephone service.

Another high priority, maybe two or three years out, will be the wireless system, he said Wednesday afternoon.

The $3.5 million system, which is about 60 percent in the ground, broke ground in mid-June and is scheduled to be activated in late November or early December.

Spreading the word

Shelton, who has been going around the county this summer explaining the fiber ring, believes that the system will pay for itself through cost savings.

The county and the state expect to save almost $500,000 a year by eliminating payments for current Internet connections, the leases for high-speed T-1 lines and maintenance, which normally would cost the county about $150,000 a year.

That work will be done by Access Communications, the Minneapolis company installing the ring, in exchange for the company being allowed to lay its own fiber-optic lines alongside the county's, Shelton said.

Part of what sets apart the Scott County project is that it is financed and owned by a government. "I'm not aware of another one like it," Shelton said.

Adds Jim Campbell, the IT director for neighboring Dakota County, which also has a countywide fiber optic system but on leased lines: "It's a very aggressive move on their part, Their system is never going to get bogged down."

A moneymaker?

Scott County officials hope that the bandwidth capacity -- and the ability to connect with virtually every company, university or government agency in the world at high speed -- could be a catalyst for economic growth and give county businesses an advantage.

But that is a strategy that many counties and large cities across the country are using without much success.

Although more than 300 municipalities have WiFi systems in place, no one has been able to use bandwidth as a business incentive because of the "last mile" costs involved in hooking up homes and businesses to such fiber rings.

Also, an excess of "dark" (unused) fiber lines, especially in large cities, has made it uneconomical for governments to build their own systems and use them as business magnets.

Sheldon remains upbeat

None of this diminishes Shelton's enthusiasm for Scott County's project.

He points out that the primary goal was to connect governments, schools and police into one seamless operating system for better efficiency. "We've already accomplished that," he said.

He believes there is a market for what the county is doing.

"All we are doing is trying to create a little competition," he said. "We're taking this particular approach, which is different than most, because you have to lay the infrastructure. And the infrastructure has to be sufficiently broad that it can support everything you may try and build upon it.

"I can't imagine that this won't meet our needs 40, 50 years from now," he added. "This fiber will meet our needs long after you and I are dead."

Herón Márquez Estrada • 612-673-4280

Herón Márquez Estrada • hme@startribune.com