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High up in the William Snodgrass tower in downtown Nashville sits the network operations center of the Tennessee Information Infrastructure (www.tnii.net). It’s nothing fancy. There are a couple of big monitors on the wall, but overall, the place has the aura of an antiquated Star Trek set, or perhaps a high school computer room from the mid-1990s. Unfortunately, the bandwidth available here—the capacity of a communications channel—is similarly outdated.

At the heart of this network, a stone’s throw from the state Capitol, TNII’s service offerings can run as high as 155 megabits per second; in the far corners of the state, it is reduced to dial-up speeds far below three megabits per second. (By comparison, fiber-optic lines would increase the bandwidth to a maximum of 10 gigabits per second, or 64 times its current level.)

Of course, given that technology is often the next-to-last item even in corporate budgets, state and local government sees no reason for immediate embarrassment. As long as the system works—there have been times it didn’t—and its performance trumps similar networks in some neighboring states, operators seem content. “Georgia and Kentucky will someday get to the quality of TNII,” says network director Tom Hickerson.

While it’s well and good to be the envy of two states, one needs to keep in mind the 30 or so U.S. states that are presently laboring to overhaul their telecommunications structures, making them on average 60 times faster than what Tennessee currently has to offer.

In 2002, a not-for-profit consortium of technology executives TechNet released a State Broadband Index, which listed 25 leaders among U.S. states in deployment of broadband technologies. Michigan, Florida, and Missouri ranked the highest overall, and California ranked 14th. Tennessee was not on the list.

For a state seeking to establish a reputation as a top business and research location, there should be little satisfaction in the cry “We’re number 40!” on a matter so crucial to both.

Faster than a Speeding Pedestrian

As for research, even the fastest speeds provided by TNII are a far cry from what Tennessee academics and researchers require to compete for contracts in the global marketplace. Few know this better than Michael Langston, a scientist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Langston applies computational analysis to genetic riddles using super-fast computers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and U.T. But what good are those computers, Langston asks, if he and his colleagues have to hand-carry the fruits of their research on compact disks from one campus to another? Attempting to transmit data of the size that Langston routinely works with and generates through a dial-up or DSL service would be the equivalent of pushing a bowling ball through a garden hose. The copper-wire telephone lines that carry most e-mail across Tennessee are not designed to meet the needs of most advanced researchers in the state. “Sometimes you have to say, ‘Mail it to me, and it’ll be here in a week,’” Langston says. “That’s pretty bad science.” In other words, in an age of rockets, Tennessee is using biplanes.

“The current telecommunications model was built on a 100-year-old switch network approach,” says Brice Bible, U.T.’s chief information officer. Bible is one of the representatives of the state’s research and academic community who recently banded together to lobby the state government for information technology interests. In last year’s study dubbed “One Tenn: A 21st Century Cyberinfrastructure for Tennessee,” which was sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation, Bible and colleagues found that all of Tennessee’s existing information networks are “inadequate in capabilities and excessively costly to operate.”

In fact, the networks are so inadequate that the research-heavy U.T.-Knoxville was forced to pull some of its research centers out of TNII and connect to the rest of the world via a fiber-optic pipeline in Atlanta. “TNII didn’t have the capacity we required at the time, and it’s still the case. It was a cost and technology issue,” Bible says. In response, TNII’s Hickerson says that he’s unsure why U.T. chose alternate routes, maintaining that TNII is available to serve the university’s needs.

Past Imperfect

The disconnect between university and TNII perspectives should not be a surprise given the history of TNII. The Tennessee Information Infrastructure was conceived in the early 1990s by then-Gov. Ned Ray McWherter. The idea was simple. As Americans rushed to connect to the Internet from their homes and offices to do everything from sending holiday greetings to running businesses, states required separate Internet service providers in order to keep up with modern means of communication. So Tennessee officials decided to connect state agencies with each other and its residents via an outsourced contract to telephone giants BellSouth and Qwest, at an annual cost of some $18 million. The idea was simple, but execution was not. Connecting 1,300 government outposts in 95 counties proved a burdensome undertaking for BellSouth, Qwest and network manager EDS. The contractors delivered virtually zero connectivity on the day the network went into operation in 1999. “The state didn’t spend a dime [paying contractors] until the kinks were worked out in the first two years,” says Vic Mangrum, chief information officer of the Tennessee Department of Transportation.

arty Dickens, BellSouth’s Nashville-based vice president, acknowledges that TNII “did take longer to build than originally intended. Some things took longer than expected from a technical standpoint.” Although Dickens declined to name the technical problems specifically, he said that part of the issue was “[network managing company] EDS, another contractor, but I’m not by any means trying to lay the blame at their feet.”

Beyond the immediate drawback of not having a fully functioning network, the setback caused much tension between state officials and the communications companies it retained.

Coming Over from the Dark Side <,p>Ironically, Tennessee has an ample supply of the very thing needed to make TNII’s past difficulties and present lagging moot. Throughout the state, lying unlit and unused, there are thousands of miles of fiber optic cable—all that is needed to place Tennessee on a more competitive national and even global footing. The unlit—or dark—fiber cables were installed along the interstates and railroads by telephone companies during the technology boom of the late 1990s. After some of those companies, including MCI, went bankrupt, other carriers, still flush with capital, purchased the holdings.

BellSouth and its counterparts in other states chose not to deploy their fiber-optic holdings en masse. According to Steve Corbato of Internet2, a consortium that runs high-speed information networks for the Library of Congress, NASA and 240 member institutions, the companies opted to continue to provide telephone and Internet service over the old copper wires. As a result of that delay in adopting fiber-optic resources, even major universities in the country failed to gain access to high-speed optical networks. Internet2 has sought to address this shortcoming. Through its not-for-profit subsidiary FiberCo, Internet2 now teaches universities how to convince their state governments to buy up dark fiber from telephone companies and to operate those networks by themselves. The efforts of Corbato’s group and other like-minded organizations and individuals have met with success in other states. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanko recently set aside $40 million to acquire dark fiber for Louisiana’s optical network. Florida, Texas and Ohio are looking into similar initiatives. Michigan’s aggressive broadband policy includes its LinkMichigan initiative, started by the governor, which practically seizes dark fiber-optic lines from carriers in exchange for tax credits.

Bold moves like these pay off not just in research and technology transfer dollars, Corbato says. They also enable K-12 students in rural areas of the United States to learn via video uplinks directly in their classrooms. Imagine a classroom in Chapel Hill, Tenn., where students could talk live to mobile home manufacturing tycoon Jim Clayton about building a business, take cello lessons from Yo-Yo Ma, or explore the depths of the ocean via a live uplink with a diver as part of The Jason Project (www.jasonproject.org).

Buy Now or Pay Later

There’s a more direct financial impetus for the state to buy the dark fiber from BellSouth and other carriers now, rather than waiting even six months.

“In Tennessee there is a sense of urgency to [lease or buy fiber] because we don’t see those assets being available much longer at current pricing,” Corbato warns. It’s as simple as supply and demand. Previously unheard of in the telecommunications business, large banks are now in the market to buy fiber in efforts to fortify or rebuild their own communications networks.

And then there’s Google. According to CNNMoney.com, Google “has quietly been shopping for miles and miles of ‘dark,’ or unused, fiber-optic cable across the country from wholesalers such as New York’s AboveNet. It’s also acquiring superfast connections from Cogent Communications and WilTel, among others, between East Coast cities including Atlanta, Miami and New York.” Speculation on Google’s motives for the buying spree range from the establishing of a nationwide wi-fi access to the sudden supplanting of the telecom industry, but the result would be the same for Tennessee—a much higher price of a crucial resource even a few months down the line, or the inability to obtain it at all.

Other states, according to Corbato, recently paid $1,200 to $1,800 per strand mile of fiber, for a 20-year lease, or one-third of the going market rate. The benefits are obvious, he says. Aside from a symbolic maintenance cost (some $100 per fiber mile a year), the state owns its network and no longer has to face the need “to call a telecom carrier asking for certain bandwidth and haggling for price. This is a totally new approach, giving education a chance to build the network from the ground up.”

The Age of Enlightenment?

Despite the poor current condition of Tennessee’s Internet highway, the timing does seem to be right, finally, for change. Much to the relief of some of TNII’s critics, the state’s five-year contract for the management of its information network expires in the middle of this year, providing a perfect opportunity to examine other options.

Most importantly, the state has at its helm a governor who seems aware of the problem and poised to do something about it. In the words of many industry executives, Gov. Phil Bredesen understands better than most the benefits of vigorous research and up-to-date technology. Over the last eighteen months, Bredesen has been talking up the need to support research and education via an expansion of Tennessee’s cyberinfrastructure.

In early 2005 at an economic development event in East Tennessee, he observed that the state is currently is at a disadvantage as regards telecommunications. “Right now, for example, when the University of Tennessee wants to send information electronically to the Oak Ridge Laboratory, that information goes through Dallas,” he said, (perhaps in reference to those files actually small enough to send). This “circuitous route may be the difference between Tennessee attracting new industry and that new industry passing us by,” he continued.

So in a state where the governor “gets” technology, arguing that Tennes- see should urgently re-evaluate its current information infrastructure should be as easy as it was for Alexander Graham Bell to promote telephone service a century ago. Judging by Bredesen’s 2005 jobs agenda, it appears that he even toyed with the idea of creating a public-private consortium to move things forward with the purchase of dark fiber. “[Ten- nessee’s Economic and Community Development Department] will tap the best minds to help identify ways,” read the jobs agenda, “in which the state, partnering with the private sector, can encourage and support broadband development and access to all parts of the state.”

A Fiber-Optic Crossroads

Tennessee has reached a crossroads. TNII is getting ready to propose a new improved “next generation” model, which would expand to 3,300 user locations from 1,300, potentially increasing BellSouth’s annual contract from $18 million to $50 million. With the budget tamed, TennCare somewhat subdued and an ethics special session behind him, Gov. Bredesen may well decide now is the time to tackle his next 800-pound gorilla. With both an established bureaucracy in TNII and a large, entrenched special interest in BellSouth maneuvering for position, Bredesen has his work cut out for him. But compared to the Gordian knot of TennCare, it might be relatively easy to pull Tennessee out of the Dark Ages and into the light. Now well into the Information Age, our state’s research and business communities depend on it.