Case Study: Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
The Chronicle of e-Novations & Fred-eZone. The Fred e-Chronicles, No. 1. www.teamfredericton.ca/documents/Fred-eChronicles.pdf
“Our City Council realized that waiting for existing suppliers to “save” us from the Digital Divide was not an option. Something had to be done, done quickly and done by the community itself.” This document tells the story of how the city of Fredericton, New Brunswick (pop. 50,000) built its own fiber and wireless networks. Fredericton decided to look into building a fiber network because broadband service was not available to the community. In 2001 the city helped to bring together a group of anchor tenants – local organizations with sizable broadband services needs – to use and help finance a network. Notably, though, at first, the group was primarily served through rented fiber that had already laid by a private company, it “became apparent that the community was better served when e-Novations owned the fiber segments used by the membership.” This led the city to lay more its own fiber. In 2003 the city decided to add wireless services. Wireless is available free to the public in public spaces throughout the city. e-Novations (co-operative fiber network) http://www.teamfredericton.ca/e-novations-about.asp Fred e-Zone (wireless network) http://www.fred-ezone.com/
