Dispatches From Digital City EXPO, Part 4: Getting Smart

Last Mile had a fine time learning about the various struggles and successes of this year's Smart Community Awards and was proud to announce its two winners. Bristol, Va., won as the city with a population less than 200,000 and Tucson, Ariz., won as the city with a population more than 200,000. Though these two cities' networks were quite different--fiber-based in Bristol and wireless in Tucson--their challenges were very similar. And so too were their message to the attendees who gathered in the Digital City EXPO Exhibit Hall for the award ceremony.

Sandy Crusenberry, executive director of the Bristol Virginia Utilities (BVU) marketing division, BVU Focus, accepted the award and showed the audience a video about the city's network. Bristol faced a legal battle on its way to providing a city-wide fiber to the premises network. BVU owns and operates the network. [You can read more about Bristol in this Last Mile article from the July/August 2007 issue.]

Richard Nassi, transportation administrator in Tucson, told the story of how Tucson has deployed a wireless network for its ER-Link, which is used in emergency response vehicles and transmit streaming video to the local hospital so that doctors are able to have advanced notice and diagnostics of a patient in transport.

What both of these cities had in common was the leadership involved in bringing broadband to its citizens. We look forward to learning even more about these Smart Communities as we will provide you with in-depth profiles of the award winners in the March issue of Last Mile.