Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1386104
42 I ICT TODAY With any fiber plan, ongoing management is neces- sary to ensure that dark strands are always available for failures, new projects, and testing. It is also critical that the fiber is fully documented and that documentation remains accurate in real time. Where innerduct, tubes, or other pathways are in use, it is vital to contractually mandate how access is granted, the owner's expectations of the installer/contractor, ingress/egress, leave behinds for subsequent installations, and all city expectations for terminations and dark strand management. Most fiber contractors will want to install as many strands as pos- sible at one time, whether they terminate them all or not. Pulling 144 strands instead of 24 multiple times saves on overall labor costs even though the fiber is incrementally more expensive. Multiple strands can be pulled and installed with a single set of labor hours. For more information about wireless, IoT com- munications, and optical fiber connectivity, consult relevant sections in ANSI/BICSI 008-2018 and ANSI/BICSI 007-2020, Information Communication Technology Design and Implementation Practices for Intelligent Buildings and Premises. Funding Options There are multiple means of funding to consider at the onset. Many grants, both public and private, are worth evaluation. The CARES Act, American Connection Project, Rural Cloud Initiative, BroadbandNow, state funds, and private funds are just some of the earmarked funds available. Part of the municipality's master plan document should be an evaluation of the many possible funding sources. Some communities prefer to hire con- sultants that can both source and petition for funds under grant proposals. Others work through partner- ships with colleges and universities. In fact, some prefer this model as they can also provide educational resources and use students to model, test, and create on behalf of the community. Some communities set up IoT labs for device vetting and testing. With the industry needing more talent, college and city partnerships are a great way to provide apprenticeships and trade skills training for ongoing R&D and support. States and communities are each different and so are their funding needs and sources. Some cities may choose to provide services via While 5G is hyped as the solution, quite frankly, it will be some time before that technology is accessible everywhere. a monetized model. They offer the in-city fiber, data center(s), communications, and development envi- ronments. While the city/community itself occupies part of the facility, the spare capacity becomes a revenue generation center in a "colo on premise" model. In rural areas, communities can spin up a small colo onsite and provide data center space for healthcare or smart agriculture in the region and broadband for rural occupants. BUILDING AT THE EDGE Data centers are coming to many edge locations. Machine to machine communications in Iowa simply do not need to travel to Virginia. The latency can cause a communi- cations failure even if there were a gateway to the fiber backhaul. Distributed computing is inevitable due to the demands of applications and users at the edge. Whether these EDCs support cloud onramps, city/community services, some local compute, or provide primary local storage, the EDC market is projected to be over $20 billion by 2026 according to Global Market Insights. 6 This capacity is driven mainly by artificial intelligence (AI) and IoT, but the predominant force is the demand for faster service to end users.