Tuesday night Joseph Freddoso, who recently moved to Wake Forest, laid out a vision for the town to take a leadership role in providing high-speed, state-of-the-art broadband for all its businesses and residents.
Freddoso is the president and CEO of the Microelectronics Center of North Carolina (MCNC), which in the last five years has expanded beyond its initial exclusive communications network that linked UNC, Duke and Wake Forest University to each other and to the world. Using public grants and private investments, MCNC is spending over $140 million to build statewide network infrastructure that serves 58 community colleges, all the schools, and most of the state’s colleges.
This is broadband for the future, Freddoso said. “We built the interstate highway (of broadband communication) and built the exit and entrance ramps.”
Sitting in the audience were two men whose firms represent the future in Wake Forest: Dan Holt with 3 Phoenix and Larry Steffan with the Wireless Research Center of North Carolina.
Within five years every school child will have a wireless device – laptop, tablet, or other device – to use in place of individual textbooks, Freddoso said, but not every child in Wake Forest will go home where there is broadband. This will put them at a great disadvantage.
“MCNC does not serve consumers and businesses,” Freddoso said, but the Town of Wake Forest could be able to leverage its assets and interest to provide incentives to existing companies – Time Warner, Century Link, Windstream – to build the broadband network to cover the town.
The town has great assets, he said, including its own power company. Rather than bury the fiber network cables in the ground, the town could allow the companies or company to hang the cable on power poles.
Other assets include high population density and “great demographics” with a young population. It is the third most popular zip code for inflow, Freddoso said, “the demand would be strong for new services, there is leadership support and one of the providers (Century Link) has a regional headquarters here.”
There is an untold number of telecommuters in town, but Freddoso said one indication is that he is the only person in his Crenshaw cul-de-sac who regularly leaves home to go to work.
There was agreement by the town board members that this proposal will be one of the topics at their annual planning retreat in February.
