On May 2, 2013, Ramon Padilla, deputy CIO at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, gave a briefing on the NC Next Generation Project, an effort to bring one gigabit speed internet service to the Triangle. NOTE: On the last slide, the year 2012 should read 2013 and the year 2013 should read 2014.

1. Ramon Padilla Jr.
Associate Vice Chancellor for IT & Deputy CIO
UNC Chapel Hill
http://NCNGN.NET

2. Focus on University Communities
University communities are incubators of networked-
based innovations
Demand for
Bandwidth
=
Greatest
Positive Impact
of Network
Access Due to
Innovation
Culture and
Major Use
Cases (Health
Care, Startups)
=
Greatest

3. NCNGN – A Regional GigU Initiative
• Six municipalities, four universities
– Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Cary, Durham, Raleigh, Winston/Salem
– Duke, NC-State, UNC-CH & Wake Forest
• Started collaboration reaching out to local chamber of commerce
and governments.
• Worked with Triangle-J Council of Governments
– Group that promotes collaboration of municipalities
• Focused on economic development and digital divide
• Used an open RFP process to attract widest possible solutions and
vendors

4. NCNGN Goals
• Create a gigabit, fiber network to foster innovation, drive job
creation, stimulate economic growth, and serve new areas of
development in the community;
• Provide an open access architectural framework that maximizes
wholesale and retail service delivery and competition;
• Provide a flexible menu of optional retail services
• Use public-private assets to reduce the digital divide, enhance
workforce knowledge and skills, promote economic development,
enhance access for anchor institutions, and serve other targeted
social purposes identified by the participating municipalities;
• Provide high speed internet service over a wired or wireless
network at a substantial discount from current market prices.

5. NCNGN Supporters

6. Sharable Attributes
• This is a municipality effort, universities are facilitators
• Business community, community leaders and municipal administration are
key stakeholders
• Municipalities need to develop:
– Available assets (fiber, space rental, rights of way, permitting support,
connection to utilities, legal support)
– Demand aggregation (businesses, community anchors, business map,
municipal locations, community locations, etc)
– Agreed upon common pricing, unified negotiation & simplified
contracting
• Need a strong & representative core team
• Much of this work is completed – some still in the works.

7. Founding Principles
• Overall goals: fuel economic development; empower the next
generation of innovators; and deliver superfast, low cost
broadband services for North Carolina, beginning in the Research
Triangle-Piedmont region.
• Municipality and university “stakeholders” coordinate via
cooperative governance structure, ensuring stakeholders and
participants (e.g., businesses & individual subscribers) receive
the greatest possible benefit from the initiative.
• Consensus will be used to bring maximum value to the
stakeholders (consensus is general agreement to proceed and
need not be unanimous). A Steering Committee (SC) is the
primary body responsible for coordinating the effort and will
include one representative from each stakeholder.

8. Founding Principles (2)
• For aspects of governance that don’t include participation by all
stakeholders, representatives are empowered to act on behalf of
the broader group, but within designated operating parameters
established by the SC.
• The stakeholders are “in this together” rather than acting
independently, and agree to be transparent and share information
of any independent, additional offers or negotiations to achieve
uniform treatment and best pricing.
• It is assumed that all stakeholders will move forward after RFP
issuance to vendor selection and implementation; however,
municipalities that participate in the initial RFP issuance are not
bound to accept a subsequent vendor offer or proceed with a
project.

9. Founding Principles (3)
• We assume further growth beyond the initial stakeholders, so a
phased approach will enable additional communities in the future
(but initial community deployed commitments are met before
future phase communities are prioritized).
• The group will develop terms that benefit the broadest possible
regional community and avoid the inclusion of unique or special
requirements that may derail the process.
• The regional effort is likely to have maximal impact if it can
balance the need for economies of scale with the benefits of
competition. Given the diversity of geographies and local assets,
this is likely to be accomplished through the selection of 2-3
service providers as opposed to only one or many.

10. Project Timeline