There’s no secret agenda. The V.I. Next Generation Network isn’t out to create a cash cow for the government; they’re just looking to provide local residents with high speed Internet that they can purchase at lower costs through their Internet service providers, viNGN Chief Executive Officer Lawrence Kupfer told Rotary Sunrise members Tuesday.
Speaking at the club’s regular meeting on St. Thomas, Kupfer looked to address some public misconceptions about the company and how they’re serving the territory through the newly constructed broadband network that spans all three islands. Rotary Club members raised concerns about high prices, limited hours at a few of viNGN’s public computer centers on St. Thomas and, most importantly, that the company will be kicking out the competition in an effort to create a V.I. monopoly on fiber.
Not so, Kupfer said during Tuesday’s meeting. Referencing testimony provided by the Bureau of Information Technology during recent Senate budget hearings, Kupfer said many government agencies are already talking about the lower prices they’re paying for increased bandwidth through their Internet service provider, but explained that there is a different structure, or market, between those ISPs and viNGN.
Kupfer added that viNGN, with its approximately 30 employees, is not a multimillion dollar enterprise. Once the federal grant money used to build the network is completely spent, money paid by the Internet service providers to viNGN will keep it running. That cost is about $5 – 7 million, not $10 million, and viNGN is already coming in with 80 percent of its costs – namely the build out of the network and public computer centers – already taken care of. Maintaining the network long term and funding some expansion efforts are what will be left in terms of expenses, he said.
So far, eight companies have signed on to tap into the viNGN network and the company is in talks with six more, Kupfer added.
Addressing related concerns about the possibility of viNGN becoming a monopoly, Kupfer explained that the federal government’s efforts to develop broadband throughout the United States were not meant for that.
“The misconception is that we want to be king of the Internet, that we’re trying to run everyone out of business, and none of that is the case,” he said. “Our network is open access. Anybody can come to us, any provider, and use our network to service their customers. A lot of other networks now are not open access and the federal government has said that’s not what we want. We want to build a federal highway system for data and that is what we’re hosting. We connect the World Wide Web with Internet service providers in the territory.”
According to federal surveys, only 60 percent of the territory’s population had access to baseline download speeds of more than three megabits per second and upload speeds of more than .7 megabits per second. That data was part of the reason the federal government looked to give the V.I. government $68 million to develop its extensive network, so cheaper, faster Internet could be accessible to all of the territory’s “underserved or unserved” populations, Kupfer said.
“We’re installing enough fiber to go around the world one time (a little over 25,000 miles of fiber is what we’re installing) and light travels on that fiber at 125,000 miles a second, so at every second, our signal goes around the world five times and the amount of data you can carry on that single strand of fiber is massive,” he added.
Speaking after the meeting, Kupfer said the installation of various fiber access points across the three islands will allow providers to increase their signal in hard to reach areas. The lower parts of Caret Bay East on St. Thomas, for example, are too far in to catch the signal sent out by several Internet service providers but Kupfer said any company could tap into the viNGN network through the fiber access point set up in Estate Dorothea and offer a wireless solution to its customers that could extend that signal to areas that otherwise would not get it.
“So the bottom line is that we are not here not here to drive these people out of business because we don’t sell directly to the end user,” Kupfer added. “We rely on the Internet service providers to service the end users. We’re here to compliment what they offer.”
