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 | Week of June 15, 2000 |
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Tri-county panelists see NAP in Miami within a year By Jennifer MillerA local Network Access Point, or NAP, will be up and running in a year in downtown Miami, says Paul Anderson, incoming vice chairman of The Broward Alliance. "The train is on the tracks," Mr. Anderson said at a tri-county economic development breakfast in the Hotel Inter-Continental Miami Friday. "This is well on its way to becoming a reality and could be as much as a $500 million investment. "It should be a matter of months," he said. Mr. Anderson, who is also chairman of the board of trustees of Broward Community College and vice president of government relations for JM Family Enterprises, was among panelists who took part in a discussion on "Regionalism: Working Together on Economic Development & the Internet Coast," featuring representatives for agencies responsible for economic development in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. Other panel members were Richard Paul-Hus, vice president of business development for Hypower Inc.; Frank Nero, president & CEO of The Beacon Council, Miami-Dade County's official economic development agency and event host; and Larry Pelton, president of The Business Development Board of Palm Beach County. If it becomes a reality, panelists said, the NAP would be a central access point for Africa, Europe and the Americas, and the fifth largest switching station in the country. "We've become the focal point for electronic commerce," Mr. Pelton said. "With the NAP we can see twice the row of information technology companies. Now there are 6,000. I don't see why we couldn't see more." Predictions of massive economic growth, Mr. Anderson said, are causing concern among company leaders that the region would not be able to supply incoming firms with enough trained workers in the high-tech sector. "The work force doesn't exist for this type of growth," he said, "but we have the ability to train the population. At Broward Community College we've been establishing info-tech advisory boards and asking these companies to help us develop the curriculum — not what they need today but what they need for the next year. "We're also working on contracts where company workers become professors in exchange for enlisting students to work for them." Mr. Nero and Mr. Pelton said they are also working with local school boards to make sure students receive training early on. "We owe it to the people of the Internet Coast to improve the quality of education," Mr. Pelton said. Panel said studies show that by 2006 more than 50% of all city jobs will be integrated with the Internet. Guests at the breakfast asked which company would run the NAP in the near future. "We're trying to get an Internet company to operate the NAP, but everyone would be able to share it," said Mr. Paul-Hus, who also chairs the Internet Coast's NAP subcommittee and is a member of an IT Florida Task Force. Mr. Paul-Hus said although a company has not yet been chosen, companies such as BellSouth, EPIK Communications and Telefonica are vying for the opportunity. A solely-operated NAP, he said, is the way to boost Florida's Internet switching center from a tier two to tier one status like those in New York and San Francisco. He said that means the NAP's carriers would be larger and the region would be able to leapfrog some of the top NAP centers in the country. Until now, Florida's closest Internet connection point was Washington, DC, but with the Latin American Internet explosion, he said, it now makes sense to localize the Internet backbone. Mr. Nero said he is working with officials of Miami and Miami-Dade County to get approval for operating the NAP. "At the end of the day," he said, "the private sector decides where the NAP will be. Now comes the tricky part: making sure this goes from the investors' side to making it happen."
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