The plans for Cochrane to beef up on fibre continue to light a fire with mayor and council – who are excited about the range of possibilities for the town’s enterprising technology sector and what the future holds.
“I would like Cochrane to become a Smart City,” said Mayor Jeff Genung, who is all for Cochrane developing a strategy and working with its tech players that are “already on the world stage” to go after the province’s Smart Cities Challenge.
The grant opportunity for communities that vie to develop smart technological innovations that improve municipal efficiencies comes with a top prize of up to $50 million, two prizes of up to $10 million each and one prize of up to $5 million.
Fibre infrastructure improvements are the means to vie for these grant opportunities, as was presented to council on Monday night.
Presenters included David Basto, lead fibre optic planner for the City of Calgary; Mike Korman, manager of economic development for the Town of Cochrane; and Stefan Price, manager of information services for the town.
Last spring, council approved $500,000 to cover the costs of a pilot project to connect participating Cochrane businesses into an improved fibre optic system connecting the town to Calgary.
Since the spring, the town has completed a number of steps in activating the town’s dark (unused) fibre network capabilities, including setting up a backhaul connection to Calgary and the midway construction of a server room for the new service at the town operations building site.
The Rotary Club of Cochrane has supported the town’s endeavours to make dark fibre available to the town’s business community. Through a survey led by the volunteers of the Cochrane Fibre Liaison Group, the business community has identified a number of service gaps including connectivity strength and range of choice.
“Imagine if Car X came out and everyone had to use that make of car to travel down the road,” explained Price, adding that the town’s goal is to “investigate solutions for the business community” and to focus on keeping businesses based in Cochrane, while attracting new employment centres to town.
The City of Calgary’s fibre network is predominantly used for municipal purposes – security, lights, cameras, sensors and streamlining of technological services; a smaller portion of their dark fibre is leased to private industry.
Town CAO Dave Devana emphasized Cochrane’s advantageous position, when compared to comparably-sized communities, as the base for global tech companies such as Garmin, 4iiii Innovations and MC Things.
“I can’t see a more exciting way to position ourselves economically,” said Devana, referring to the movement as “transformative.”
A strategic planning session with council on the fibre strategy is being planned for early 2018. Administration will bring back next steps for fall 2018.
Applications for the Smart Cities Challenge are due by April 24, 2018.
