Design Nine Brings Palm Coast FiberNET Online

Design Nine has provided the planning and project management for Florida's first municipal carrier class, open access fiber network. The project is leveraging fiber that the City originally placed for government applications, but is now opening up for business, retail, and commercial use. Construction began in late fall, 2009 and the first customers were connected in April, 2010. Two service providers are offering services on day one of operations, and several more have been evaluating the opportunity. Design Nine’s part in the project included:

Early phase feasibility planning
Financial planning, including ten year financial models
Network operations and maintenance plans
Network architecture design
Equipment vendor evaluation and selection
Service provider identification and evaluation

The open access network is extremely attractive to business owners, entrepreneurs, and retail stores, who can move to Palm Coast knowing that their business have affordable broadband access. The City of Palm Coast is one of a very few communities in the U.S. with an all-fiber, “carrier class” community-owned network. FiberNET is part of the City’s plan to be one of the best locations for business in the United States. Combined with a great climate, excellent quality of life, low cost of living, affordable office space, and abundant recreational activities, the City of Palm Coast is an ideal place for business and industry.

Key Features of FiberNET

Operated by the City of Palm Coast.
A public/private partnership with private sector service providers.
Florida’s first municipal “carrier class” all-fiber, open access network.
Private sector service providers offer all services to businesses and residents.
Incumbent providers are able to use FiberNET facilities to offer services to customers that have been too expensive to reach on their own.
The City of Palm Coast is not selling services or competing with the private sector.
Entrepreneurs, retail businesses, medical clinics, and commercial offices will all benefit from increased broadband access and affordability.
FiberNET began connecting businesses to the network in the spring of 2010.
Fiber services are planned for all major business, commercial, and retail areas of the City.
Two private sector service provider have already begun offering services on the network, and three more private sector service providers have expressed interest in using the network to sell services.
FiberNET meets and exceed all speed and bandwidth standards and requirements of the proposed FCC national broadband plan.
FiberNET can provide connectivity over its fiber network at any speed or capacity needed by any business interested in the region, including high bandwidth applications like data centers and server farms.
FiberNET’s standard connection will be a 100 megabit Layer 2 fiber circuit, and Gigabit ,10 Gigabit, 40 Gigabit, and DWDM connections will be available on request.
FiberNET will also support service provider-offered TDM services.

For more information, visit the FiberNET Web site.

Design Nine
at a glance...

Design Nine provides visionary broadband architecture and engineering services to our clients. We have over seventy years of staff experience with telecom and community broadband-more than any other company in the United States.

We have a full range of broadband and telecom planning, design, and project management services.

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