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V O L . X X I N O. X V J U LY 1 3 , 2 0 1 5 30 S O U T H E R N M A I N E F O C U S challenges what he describes as the major Internet companies' tendency to maximize "revenue from their infrastructure rather than upgrad- ing it. "[S]ince Internet service in most cities was supplied by either a near monopoly or a cozy duopoly in which the two players — typically a cable company and a major telecom provider — barely competed against each other, there was little competi- tive pressure to improve," he writes. "As long as all the players kept the status quo intact, it seemed, Internet providers could look forward to years of making sizable profits without having to put too much money into their networks." Fletcher says Surowiecki's analysis is "spot on" and believes the pioneering examples of Rockport and South Portland will be looked at closely by other Maine towns and cities — and possibly even munici- palities in other states. Open access Dumais says South Portland's long- term contract with GWI translates into roughly $500,000 in savings over 20 years, largely due to the $2,100 per » C O N T I N U E D F RO M P R E V I O U S PA G E I 've done my homework and already know that a "gigabit" is "one billion bits of data" and that it's "commonly used for measuring the amount of data that is transferred in a second between two telecommunication points." What I'm seeking, however, is an answer that will achieve the gold standard of journalism, otherwise known as "putting it in layman's terms." So, I present a hypothetical scenario to Chris Dumais, director of information technology for the city of South Portland, hoping he'll answer in simple concrete terms: Suppose an IT colleague has just sent you a 60-minute YouTube video touting ultra-high-speed broadband Internet as a job-creator and an infrastructure investment that is no longer a luxury but a necessity. How long would it take to download that video on your new gigabit Internet connection at the city's municipal office building? "Lightning fast," he says. It's a clear image that satisfies my curiosity — but back at my computer, I realize it lacks the kind of specificity busi- ness-savvy readers will demand, particularly those who will want to know how one-gigabit-per-second downloading might compare to the more commonplace "one megabit per sec- ond" industry standard used by Internet service providers that might also seem lightning fast to them. Luckily, Trevor Jones, vice president of business devel- opment at GWI, has compiled some quick at-a-glance com- parisons between the ultra-high-speed gigabit delivery of one billion bits of data per second via fiber optic and the one-million-bits-per-second delivery rates provided by tradi- tional cable or DSL telephone connections: Completion time for a high-definition movie download that started at noon? Five seconds for gigabit delivery, 10 minutes for regular broadband and "tomorrow" for dial-up. Number of high-definition movies you can stream on a gigabit connection: Up to 208 streams. On regular broad- band: Just under two streams. How much of a 60-minute video could you upload to YouTube in 10 minutes? 222 such videos via gigabit, only 20% of one video via regular broadband. How much of an 800-gigabyte computer backup can be completed in 14 minutes? Just under 100% with a gigabit ultra high-speed Internet connection, 0.2% with regular broadband. In a Feb. 19 blog post on GWI's website, Jones identifies several economic benefits of faster Internet speeds through- out Maine. They include: Ensuring that greater access to telemedicine health care is not limited to urban areas; sup- porting the state's creative economy through faster uploads of technical drawings, images, audio or video; and facilitating cloud-based backup services such as Carbonite by allow- ing new backups to be completed more quickly with higher upload speeds. Just how fast is a gigabit? To read Trevor's full blog post, go to gwi.net/253-vs-1010-which- broadband-standard-is-better @

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