06-28-11 Redevelopment Commission Minutes

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South Bend Redevelopment Commission Regular Meeting—June 28, 2011 5. OLD BUSINESS (CONT.) A. Proposal from Radiant Networks continued... Ms. Hedman responded that the Metronet model has always been that whatever subscription fees Metronet earns are plowed back into continued infrastructure expansion. So we build up that network all the time in an effort to connect more businesses. There are a number of customer testimonies that businesses are able to do things today on the Metronet that they were not able to do before. In terms of job retention and tax-base retention, there is a very critical benefit to these organizations. Mr. Gilot noted that the original Metronet agreement was a reciprocal agreement where there were traded benefits. The City of South Bend agreed to make available its conduits and handholds. The city made an investment of $4,000,000 over time, including local money, federal grants, state grants. Building on a network of traffic signals, we spent some money to loop our system. Metronet put on the order of 144 to 288 fibers in each of those conduits creating nearly fifty miles of fiber rings (self-healing rings). The City of South Bend gets reciprocal benefit in the form of 36 fibers everywhere it goes. We have been able to provide redundant fiber connections to the County-City Building building, the police station, our fire stations, our park buildings, our utilities and that gives us a reliability to move data. The city is looking to move to a Voice-Over Internet Platform (VOIP) for telephony. We are able to take data processing at Notre Dame over the Metronet fiber and get a free source of heat to keep our conservatory greenhouse at Potawatomi from closing. There are other neat applications we can do because there's a self-healing 36 fiber loop that the city gets the advantage of We're going beyond simply interconnecting city buildings with 9