One of the very first blog posts I wrote, about 20 months ago, was about Toronto ICT plans. At the time, Toronto ranked third in North America, behind New York and San Francisco, as an ICT centre, and the city was trying to find ways to move up.
Now, I read in the Toronto Star that Toronto might actually prefer to to go to the dark ages.
The Star article says:
In a report that goes to city council’s planning and growth management committee next week, staff recommend new installations should undergo city review and be subject to public consultation in order to minimize the number of new towers in Toronto.
In April 2006, I wrote:
Want a good start to stimulate ICT? How about declaring the GTA to be a ‘telecom friendly free-trade zone’? If carriers want access to upgrade facilities, why not welcome them with the same gusto that Toronto has for the movie industry? It seems to me that movie production trucks are a bigger source of traffic tie-ups than fibre-optic construction, but no one (including me) would complain about them disrupting the movement of cars. Let’s be as positive about new telecom infrastructure.
You can’t be a world class ICT centre without world class telecommunications infrastructure. That means an objective should be to carpet the city with fibre optic filaments; welcoming investment to put five bars of coverage on every cell phone everywhere in the city. That should be the way the report should start.
Why wouldn’t the city report suggest working with carriers to find ways to share existing municipal physical plant? The idea could be to maximize opportunities for telecom investment – perhaps even generating revenue for the city.
None of us want unnecessary eyesores in neighbourhoods or introduce risks for kids. But does the city report look at sharing police or fire radio towers? What about municipal utility sites?
I’d like to see how the new city report gets reconciled with the one looking for improving ICT leadership.