Leading Question - 07/09

»The amount of bandwidth in the region is not a concern, at least for now.

“It’s being kept up with now,” says Adam Sewall, president of Fort Myers-based T3 Communications, a telecommunications carrier. “We deploy fiber and high-speed wireless that can meet and exceed the needs of the market.”

The trick, he says, is to have enough infrastructure in place to meet the needs of residents, small businesses and the region’s largest companies in the next several years.

“We always want to stay a step ahead of the curve. Right now, are we keeping pace? Absolutely. Are we a little bit ahead? Sure. Will we stay there without expansion? No,” Sewall says.

Companies such as The Jackson Laboratory, which plans to build a genetic research facility in Collier County, and bandwidth hogs such as hospitals and physicians offices (due to electronic medical records) drive the need for additional bandwidth, says Jim Lamb, enterprise sales manager for CenturyLink – South Florida, a provider of voice, broadband and video services. The emergence of cloud computing (see Business Basics p. 42) also requires more bandwidth.

There is enough fiber with all the different fiber networks that come through Southwest Florida, says Peter Seif, president of Fort Myers-based Synergy Networks. “Our bandwidth capacity is as good as anywhere else.”

Lamb is confident that CenturyLink’s 3,500 miles of fiber throughout Southwest Florida will provide the growing need for bandwidth by all kinds of businesses.

“We’re in touch with what developers have in mind for developing the surrounding area,” he says. “We’re in touch with where the potential growth is planned for the future.”

The challenge is providing “flexible” and “diverse” bandwidth infrastructure that new, data-intensive businesses in fields such as biotechnology, medical technology and engineering will need, says Sewall. Another issue is the availability of “redundant” bandwidth, which helps guarantee network availability.

Sewall contends that areas such as Lehigh Acres, Cape Coral and North Fort Myers are lacking affordable high-speed bandwidth, although Seif and Lamb disagree. If CenturyLink hasn’t built out (or physically put in the conduit, fiber and electronics for the cable and links to connect from data centers to customers) locations in Southwest Florida, there are plans to do so, Lamb says.

T3 Communcations has applied for $20 million of the $7.2 billion in government stimulus grants and loans to expand broadband access in underserved areas, which could increase choices and drop prices, Sewall says.

“You don’t want to build a glut in the marketplace that sits idle, either,” he says.