1. Benefits of Broadband for Your Community
Mark Latham
City Manager
City of Highland

3. About Highland Established in 1837 9,919 residents
30 miles east of St. Louis, Missouri
History of Highland
Briefly discuss the entrepreneurial history of Highland
One of the first City’s in Illinois to have concrete streets
National companies that began in Highland (Korte Construction, Highland Supply, etc.)
Transition from discussing Highland as a progressive community to how Highland works to meet the needs of the community

4. Motivators Telecommunications Act of 2006 Serve the community
Effects on Highland community
Serve the community
Create opportunities
Present residents and businesses with options
Technology
Making our community more marketable
After the passing the Telecommunications Act of 2006, much of the private telecommunication service providers that were in the community were bought out by larger corporations. As a result, Highland’s location, just thirty minutes from St. Louis and surrounded by other larger municipalities, began to play a factor in the rate of speed at which telecommunication providers services the community. Because there were larger populations and more businesses located just 5-10 minutes away, these private companies placed a higher priority on servicing the communities that had a higher ROI. In addition, as the number of service options began to lessen, the more monopolized private corporations began to take advantage of the businesses and residents of Highland by providing poor customer service and inconsistent pricing options. Below are several of the City’s goals and objectives for taking a proactive approach to implementing the fiber optic network.
Goals and Objectives:
Serve the needs of the residents and businesses
Incumbent providers not providing enough “pipe” for:
Business and job expansion and retention
Create opportunities within the community to enable economic growth
Create opportunities within workplaces for businesses to expand their technological abilities
Provide residents and businesses with the opportunity to have more telecommunication options in and services
Supplement the growth of Highland as it competes with larger suburbs of St. Louis, MO
Produces the opportunity for the use of technology to traditional industries that can improve productivity and connectivity that would otherwise not have been available to them.
Generate revenue through community ownership to reinvest system revenues back into the community

5. Municipally owned telecommunications company
Established in 2010
Municipally owned telecommunications company
Provides advanced fiber optic services
Voice
Data
Video
Discuss history of HCS
Also discuss the use of City owned electric utility
Where HCS stands today
HCS has four satellite dishes to capture video streams
100 ft antenna to capture off-air channels
$3.5 million headend building
Redundant line

11. Benefits to the Highland Community
Economic growth opportunities
Business retention
Creates competitive atmosphere
Location and accountability
Community ownership
Promotes innovation, efficiency, and greate effectiveness
Offers businesses the ability to have enhanced mechanisms for transferring knowledge from one location to another or quickly connecting with other businesses throughout the world
Highland now has the capacity to present companies with the most beneficial environment to fulfill their business needs
The fiber-to-the-premises infrastructure produces the opportunity for the use of technology to traditional industries that can improve productivity and connectivity that would otherwise not have been available to them
Creates competitive atmosphere to present local businesses and residents with more options and better services as well as prices
The local proximity of services guarantees more rapid deployment of service technicians and allows customers to hold HCS accountable
HCS ensures community ownership which means that system revenues are reinvested back into the community, providing for a stronger economic foundation for all
Innovation, efficiency, and greater effectiveness:
The use of the fiber optics and the technology associated with it allows for a decrease in manpower which in turn increases the efficiency and effectiveness of various departments
Ex: HCS allows for the implementation of progressive technology, such as “Smart Grids”, on a City-wide basis. The use of Smart Grid technology will allow the City’s electric meters to be read by the click of a button in an office and not by having an employee drive from meter to meter. In addition, it will provide options for the remote control of electric use and supporting the City’s electric linemen in determining the cause and exact location of outages instead of trying to manually locate the problem.

12. Benefits to Your Community
Generate revenue
Improve quality of life
Economic development
Create opportunity
With balanced budget, hard work, dedicated staff, and devoted community, municipalities in other regions throughout the state would be able to achieve the success in implementing your own broadband optic network to help improve your community