CONTENTS
What is FiberCity® Rockford? 3
Why is a Next Generation Infrastructure Needed? 5
Delivering FiberCity® Rockford 6
Constructing FiberCity® Rockford – Focus System 7
Project Efficiencies and Community Engagement 8
Managing a city-wide FiberCity Network 9
WHAT IS FIBERCITY ROCKFORD?
FiberCity® Rockford is an unprecedented private project investment of over $200 million dollars from SiFi
Networks into the City of Rockford. Through the investment, a new 1,100 plus mile fiber network will be installed within the streets of the city, allowing residential and business premises to receive fiber connectivity when the premise owner or occupier of such premise purchases service from one of the competitive Service Providers on the FiberCity® Open Access network.
Designed to remove the digital divide, and built as a next generation Smart City infrastructure, the fiber network is 100% underground and has a highly resilient and diverse architecture to support high dependency
applications, including data service between municipal owned facilities to drive municipal operational efficiencies and Smart City initiatives.
Symmetrical Gigabit internet service to the home and business is standard, including high-speed, low-cost broadband connectivity for qualifying low-income families and similar initiatives, which are identified with the direction of city staff and other public entities.
SiFi Networks (SiFi) will fund, build, operate and maintain a citywide fiber network past every premise that resides in the city today, within a short build schedule. Each premise will be connected to fiber when the owner of occupier of such premise requests service from a Service Provider on the network
There are no municipal taxpayer dollars required towards construction or operation of the network
100% private investment backed by SiFi investor partners such as, but not limited to, Whitehelm Capital and APG; APG is large pension fund who manages a total capital over $500 billion
Many new local jobs will be created, with people being trained to support the project
Dig once policy approach, with non-exclusive access to the public right-of-way
Prior to construction, SiFi begins to wholesale network access to multiple Service Providers so that such Services Providers have the ability to provide one or many services to every premise in the city, with such services being, but not limited to, Symmetrical Gigabit internet, TV, Phone, Home Security, Telemedicine, managed Wi-Fi
Every resident and business can choose to stay with their current incumbent ISP or purchase services from one or many of the new Service Providers on the FiberCity® Rockford network
The city can promote the network to Internet of Things and other such companies who wish to lease space at municipal owned locations to locate their electronics, as any location can be connected to the FiberCity® Rockford network, creating city-wide revenue generating opportunities for the municipality
City franchise fees structure stays the same for Service Providers who use the FiberCity® Rockford networkto deliver service to the community
The project investment will deliver immediate economic benefits by creating broadband competitionWHY IS A NEXT GENERATION INFRASTRUCTURE NEEDED?
A FiberCity® network is not only designed for today but also for the future, ensuring capacity is readily
available to support the expected demands from network subscribers, as well as fostering innovation and economic development strategies.
Under each FiberCity® model It is key for our team to work with city staff to understand your community’s
long term Economic Development plan, including areas you believe a fiber optic infrastructure can be leveraged i.e Smart City applications through connected community initiatives, as noted below:
■ Healthcare services have dozens of possible next generation applications and processes
■ Community public safety and high-quality video connections, including closed-circuit security and traffic surveillance
■ Library and community center facilities for on-line education courses intelligent meter reading and parking meters
■ Wastewater management SCADA connectivity Intra-building remote site training department Start-up, intelligent incubator business and hubs
■ Public Wi-Fi points to serve parks and other public spaces, including underserved and disadvantaged areas
■ Use of wireless and sensor technologies can be connected to any municipal network
■ Secure fiber network connecting any municipal and public facility to support remote workers, field operations, critical emergency services and SCADA and AMR services via a highly dependent, diverse and resilient network architecture
■ Traffic lights and intersection camera systems feeding back into the city’s command center
■ Educational facilities and providing secure gigabit connectivity from the facility into a student’s home
■ Secure 1st responder Wi-Fi
■ Interactive billboard and bus shelters
DELIVERING FIBERCITY ROCKFORD
For each FiberCity® project SiFi takes on all the construction and development risk to ensure a long term
financially sustainable project; ultimately creating a very high-speed multi-lane highway that many Service Providers can access to provide any IP based service to any premise throughout the city, while the government has the option to utilize fiber for municipal efficiencies and Smart City capabilities.
The roles and responsibilities of the partnership are per the below structure:
The only requirement from the municipality is granting SiFi citywide access to the entire public right of way via a SiFi Development Agreement, so the FiberCity® Rockford network can be installed on a ubiquitous basis for
everyone within the city. SiFi requests right of way access for a minimum of 30+ years so we can create a financially sustainable private model that does not require any municipal taxpayer investment towards the construction and operational success of the project.
Once the Development Agreement is approved by city council, this triggers many due diligence processes at the cost of SiFi, as detailed within the following example:
CONSTRUCTING FIBERCITY ROCKFORD - FOCUS SYSTEM
SiFi firmly believe in designing and building any network to be as fault tolerant as possible, delivering high availability of services through multi-ring topology configurations. With that in mind, we have applied our operations and maintenance expertise to create a construction and technology brand named FOCUS™. The FOCUS™ system allows SiFi Networks and our framework partners to approach each neighborhood within a community on a case-by-case basis, rather than being restricted to one construction technique and type of technology. This significantly reduces disruption to the community, increases speed of deployment and ensures capital spend efficiencies.
Public Rights of
Way Access Project Finance Smart City Fiber Locations Network Access Fee ConstructionDesign &
Operations, Maintenance &
Upgrades
Product
Marketing End User Services SiFi Networks
Municipality Service Providers
PROJECT EFFICIENCIES AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Construction Efficiencies
SiFi hold educational and efficiency workshops with municipal staff. These workshops cover a range of topics from construction techniques, permitting processes, build timelines, number of allowable build crews, local construction conditions and restrictions, digital divide initiatives, Smart City municipal requirements etc. The data gained from the community engagement period is paramount, as it not only shapes the network design but forms the commercial viability of the business case.
Key topics and discussion point’s that the SiFi team will be looking for agreement and direction on are:
Use of micro-trenching, where a narrow cut approx. 1.25 inch wide is created in the road or rear of curb for placement of the micro duct and fiber
Efficient permitting
Accepted location of the SiFi cabinets to support the citywide network
The above conversations are undertaken in parallel with SiFi completing a detailed project due diligence process that also covers financial structuring, Service Provider engagement, Smart City needs and an independent public outreach demand survey.
Market Survey
The demand survey is conducted by an independent broadband consultant that SiFi commissions on behalf of SiFi, our investors and Service Providers on the network. This company uses a scientific approach to determine how many of the available premises throughout the city will likely purchase one or many services from any of the Service Providers on the FiberCity® Rockford over the coming years, where such services includes T.V.,
Phone, Gigabit Internet and other tiered internet speeds, Service
The data derived from the survey feeds into a highly collaborative and targeted on-line and off-line marketing campaign that the FiberCity® team implement to educate, inform, and engage the community on the FiberCity® Rockford project. The FiberCity® marketing team will encourage your community, via on-line and
off-line methods such as mail outs, city specific web page, print advertising and social medial campaigns, to complete a survey to gauge the level of interest for a citywide fiber optic network.
MANAGING A CITYWIDE NETWORK
SiFi Networks’ Network Operations Center (NOC) capabilities are built upon the same award-winning management structure that our co-founder, Mike Harris, architected for Total Network Solutions (TNS) Managed Services. TNS were the winners of many awards prior to its acquisition by British Telecom, and operated networks and mission critical operations for banking institutions, airports and large-scale ISPs such as AOL and Carrier-1 data centers.
Our Network Operations Officer has over 35 years’ experience in the telecommunications sector and brings a unique level of expertise in the development and implementation of workflows for large service centers that specialize in the delivery of high-quality customer service. He previously worked at the world-renowned BT Central Operations Unit, where he was responsible for service development, engineering and customer operations at Carrier-1, which operated Europe’s largest telecoms and IP backbone serving over 13 countries. Our NOC assumes all responsibilities for the network, from responding to fiber breaks or faults in the electronics to the provisioning of services to new customers on behalf of ISPs. The NOC proactively monitors the
performance of the network on a 24x7x365, as well as backhaul and ISP contract management.
Our NOC is further backed by Nokia’s 24x7x365 advanced technology support team, who provide the next level of operations support.
Nokia currently provide Managed Services on behalf of telecommunication carriers to over 650 million subscribers and are the platform of choice for one of the most recognized U.S. Fiber to the Premise projects - Chattanooga, TN; a community that currently offers 10Gig internet connectivity to their residents.
Our network design allows subscribers choice over their symmetrical gigabit speed internet connection; they can select multiple services from different providers such as home automation, security, telemedicine, and e-learning. Business symmetrical services can be provisioned with high-level 99.999% SLAs, delivered over fully diverse paths, and ISPs are able to cater to specific business needs such as cloud device provision or inter-site connectivity.
Furthermore, the SiFi NOC can provision highly dependent and dedicated municipal services between any municipal location with such examples being, but not limited to, fire stations, police departments and libraries, as well as public safety cameras and other Smart City locations, all of which are independently managed over the secure FiberCity® platform.
ABOUT SIFI NETWORKS
SiFi is an infrastructure developer who designs and architect’s long term financially sustainable FttP projects through their FiberCity® brand. SiFi manages all facets of a FiberCity® project from implementation to
subsequent business operations, all supported with their team of engineers, network architects, financial analysts and developers that have decades of experience in the industry.
SiFi is influencing significant improvements in economically efficient solutions within the FttP sector such as micro trenching, blown fiber deployment, network architecture and innovative financing structures, all of which center around creating long-term sustainable fiber networks that do not you require any municipal taxpayer towards the construction and operation of a FiberCity® project.
SiFi recognize municipalities are becoming increasingly aware that next generation fiber optic infrastructure is a necessary utility, like water, sewer and electricity, yet municipalities have very little, if any, in-house expertise to deliver such infrastructures or wish to absorb the scale of financial burden and risk associated with such a
project; Therefore, municipalities are looking at ways to create environments and efficiency policies that attract private investment, like the FiberCity® offering, to their communities.
As no one company has all the experience and resource needed to deliver a citywide FttP and Smart City project within a short period of time, SiFi has entered in partnership’s with multiple leading-edge U.S. firms who are engineering and constructing fiber projects on a daily basis within the public and private sectors. These partners construct and maintain the network on behalf of SiFi and our institutional investors.
SiFi has partnered with APG, who manages over $500 billion of total capital, and their fund manager Whitehelm Capital, who are of the most experienced infrastructure managers within their industry with a track record spanning over 21 years and over €6 billion in direct infrastructure debt and equity investments made since their inception.
SiFi is working with Whitehelm to invest the funds made available through the first of its kind – Smart City
Infrastructure Fund – that was established by APG and Whitehelm Capital to provide long-term funding for
Smart City infrastructure projects enabling cities and communities to become more inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.
