Two New Brunswick cities show the ay to intelligent investment in broadband and telecom infrastructure. The payoff? Entrepreneurial activity abounds

There was a time when being too smart either got you into trouble or branded as uncool. Not anymore. We’ve got the smartphone, the smart board, the Smart car, and now the smart city. Two of the smartest are in New Brunswick: Fredericton and Moncton. That’s according to the New York-based Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), which honoured both Canadian communities in its annual listing of the world’s Top Seven most intelligent communities. It’s a first for Moncton, and the second year running for Fredericton. 

“With 420 entries this year, the Moncton-Fredericton connection is interesting,” says ICF co-founder Louis Zacharilla from his Manhattan office. “It’s highly unusual to have two communities from the same country, much less the same province.” The two are the only Top Seven smart cities in Canada. The other winners are: Bristol, Virginia; Eindhoven, Netherlands; Issy-les-Moulineaux, France; Stockholm, Sweden; and Tallinn, Estonia.

The Intelligent Community Forum came to life after a 1995 Toronto conference where for the first time telecommunications and economic development professionals sat down and talked. Zacharilla and his partners continued to ponder whether telecom, and later broadband, was having a direct impact on economic development. “As we moved into the late 1990s and early 2000s,” he says, “it became clear to us that it was.”

Zacharilla grew up in Lyons, N.Y., a community that tumbled when its largest employer, the railroad, went kaput. Nothing was ready to replace it. (Moncton knows this story all too well.) As a professional he looked to see how similar towns and cities generated economic opportunity and saw that some were investing in broadband telecommunication infrastructure. “Today communities can look at the Top Seven, look at our research,” says Zacharilla, “and take the steps to revive their economic base.” 

The ICF was originally funded by World Teleport Association, a non-profit trade association that serves
the satellite industry. It remains affiliated with this association, as satellite plays a key role in delivering broadband to parts of the world. It held its first summit in 2004 in New York City. 

Today the non-profit organization is largely funded by corporate sponsorships from companies such as Verizon, IBM, and Korean Telecom. They are currently working to raise the funds needed to create an institute for the study of the intelligent community. “We were seeing a lot of job growth and entrepreneurial activity taking place,” says Zacharilla. “Communities like Moncton, like Fredericton, were producing jobs and doing great things.” 

So what makes Moncton and Fredericton so smart? Broadband infrastructure and what people and businesses are doing with it. Fredericton’s creation of the Fred e-Zone got it in the Top Seven the first time around. The Fred e-Zone is a network of hundreds of wireless access points that gives parts of the city free Internet service. Fredericton’s second Top Seven listing is mostly due to two factors: improving areas the ICF last year identified as weak; and Microsoft’s decision to pull Leo Hayes High School into its innovative schools network, a live web portal complete with teaching aides, professional-development tools, and resources for students. Microsoft did the same thing in Taipei, Taiwan, not long after it was named one of the Top Seven in 2006. 

In Moncton the city and its business community are working with Red Ball Internet to develop fully customized and secure high-speed wireless applications. Red Ball started by putting cards in building inspectors’ laptops and mobile WiFi hotspots in every bus. It used Kyocera’s iBurst—one of the world’s most secure mobile data-transmission technologies—to develop wireless debit and credit card services for taxis, security-camera operators, and attorneys who want secure access to their offices when in court. It’s a step up from the service one gets with smart phones and WiFi networks such as Fredericton’s Fred e-Zone.

“The major difference is signal range, quality, and security,” says Sean Adams, Red Ball’s chief marketing officer. “When you’re dealing with a fully wide-open WiFi network, anyone can jump on and join, and that means the data you’re transmitting is vulnerable. iBurst built appropriate protocols right into the technology to ensure that when you’re transferring data, it’s going to be protected.”

For WiFi to work you need to be within 90 metres of an access point, and the signal gets weaker with distance. With iBurst you can be up to 12 kilometres away, and, according to Adams, the applications are limitless. The company is currently working with NB Power on a new technology that promises to get the meter reader out of your backyard by wirelessly transmitting your electricity usage directly to the utility. It looks like they’ll be able to do the same for city water usage too. Zacharilla says it’s this kind of innovative broadband business development that put Moncton in the running.

Red Ball Internet started in 2004, when founders Karl Holmqvist and Jason Squire, two fresh-out-of-school ICT consultants, were on their way to a meeting and forgot their documents. Wondering why they couldn't access their information anywhere, they started looking for a solution. At a conference in Chicago, Martin Cooper, who is widely accepted as the inventor of the cell phone, introduced them to iBurst. Red Ball now owns the rights to the technology across Canada and is set up for business in Moncton, Fredericton, and Saint John. “Our investors wanted to see us test in New Brunswick first and see what we could do,” says Adams. “If it comes time to grow it across Canada, we will.”

It’s impressive to make the Top Seven list, but does it have value other than good public relations? Zacharilla says it has the effect of motivating communities to do what it takes to improve. He also believes the recognition will open up global opportunities; communities around the world will look to Fredericton and Moncton for solutions to their individual economic and infrastructure challenges. 

“If given a choice between locating a new North American office in a community that has been dubbed intelligent or one that hasn’t, which would you pick?” says Zacharilla. “What it means is that they have an appropriate level of broadband infrastructure, adequate workforce, and innovation in both the public and private sectors.”

Facing an $800-million deficit this year, a smart New Brunswick should keep this ball rolling as a means to get back in the black.