The Rio Mesa E-Village Takes Shape
By Melanie Stewart, Nortel Networks

A new planned residential community near Fresno in Madera County, California, will connect every aspect of the community, ranging from residents, employees, local businesses, schools and universities - to babysitter schedules, local school curriculums, sports team results, hospital information, and other aspects of the community. Imagine being home on a Friday night looking to plan your weekend activities. With the click of a mouse, you can check on the availability of tickets for a movie showing later that night and also see if a tee time is available at your favorite golf course on Sunday. In addition, you can verify your restaurant reservations, check the community calendar for the upcoming activities, and check on the status of your dry cleaning. All by accessing the Web pages found on your community's intranet.

For residents of Rio Mesa in Madera County, the idea of a Master Planned Community (MPC) is about to become reality. Slated for ground breaking in fall 2001, this 15,000-acre telecommuting "e-Village" is expected to include over 30,000 homes, along with schools, hotels, businesses, daycare and office centers. It will promote electronic interaction throughout the community with a state-of-the-art telecommunications infrastructure that will support the growth of telecommuting and greater broadband access and services, offering Silicon Valley professionals affordable housing in an electronically-enabled, high performance Internet community.

MPCs pave the way for service providers to expand their roles to become "on-site service providers" (OSPs), creating wired communities with high-speed voice, data, and video access, along with value-added local community services. More than 54 million North Americans access the Internet from home computers, but only 3 million have any form of high-speed access - only six percent, according to Insight Research (2000). This gap opens vast business opportunities for service providers to target this niche, especially in developments such as in Rio Mesa geared toward upscale consumers.

This e-Village is unique because of the collaboration between Nortel Networks, California State University Fresno (CSUF), Chawanakee School District, Edison Utility Services, Sierra Foothills Public Utilities District, Cal-Trans, and Property Development Group, which will bring together all of the components necessary to provide a completely integrated and connected community.

The success of Rio Mesa is built on a partnership among all key players in the development but in particular through a true "partnership" between Nortel Networks and the Property Development Group. This solution encompasses not only the planning and building of the network but also includes assistance with the operation, enhancement, marketing and strategic partnerships.

The Network Solution

For the initial stages of the build-out, Nortel Networks has a $5.6 million contract with Rio Mesa Utility Services LLC to design, install and support a network for the first 500 units.

Nortel Networks will be providing solutions from its On-site Service Provider (OSP) product suite, which enables next-generation voice, broadcast video and data services for MPCs, multidwelling units (MDUs), multitenant units (MTUs), and multihospitality units (MHUs). This product suite includes solutions based on Ethernet, Hybrid Fiber Coax (HFC), Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), and next-generation wireless and optical Internet.

The initial MPC solution for Rio Mesa is a combination of coaxial cable from the home to a curbside transceiver that serves many homes, and optical fiber to the community Point of Presence (PoP) - this will evolve to a next generation optical solution. This solution will enable broadband access and services such as business-to-consumer eCommerce, video on demand, competitive gaming, community Web portals and "bulletin boards," remote video monitoring, home security monitoring, telecommuter and home office services and secure access to corporate networks to name just a few.

Complete Network Services Provided

The typical services in the master planned community will focus on broadband or high-speed interconnectivity, not only to the Internet, but also to peers and businesses within the community. Additionally, telephone voice services and voice over IP services can be incorporated into the solutions for those developers who choose to enter the local and long-distance service provider market. Video services, including cable or satellite TV and video-on-demand, can also be deployed over the community network infrastructure.

These MPC solutions for the community encompass all aspects of the community being connected electronically. While broadband Internet access is certainly a significant component of these solutions, especially for telecommuting and home office applications, it is not the only driving factor for adding convenience to the hectic lifestyles of residents in these communities.
One value proposition for the community is that all of these services can be delivered to each household via a single service provider. This means that each home will have a single bill to pay for phone, cable and Internet access, greatly simplifying payment for the MPC residents.

Rio Mesa - Profile of a Master Planned Community

For Rio Mesa, the MPC concept caters to consumers by keeping the vast majority of their purchases within their own communities. Research has shown that 90% of the purchases made by consumers are made within ten miles of their homes. The service provider for the community-wide network serves these consumers with local content custom-tailored to that community and has the capability to be custom-tailored to each individual user. Scaling down the "worldwide Internet" into a "community Intranet" is where the convenience for the user is created. This custom content prevents the problem with the Internet in that a search will return thousands of hits with restaurants or golf courses hundreds of miles away. These results are of no value to someone looking to make reservations at the Italian restaurant down the road. The custom content, local and specific to Rio Mesa can give residents the convenience and confidence that they can find what they are looking for in the shortest possible time.

Home prices will begin at $100,000 compared with prices upwards of a million dollars in Silicon Valley. The first 500 houses are expected to go on the market by the end of the year.

For Rio Mesa, the MPC solutions will enable residents and businesses to connect with one another whenever, wherever and however they desire, taking this sense of community to the next level - the electronic level. End users can graduate from low-speed dial-up modems or ISDN lines to high-speed Internet access, videoconferencing, online gaming, and much more - and all bundled for convenience and attractive pricing.

For service providers, the MPC presents the opportunity to create a more profitable business model that will benefit home developers and builders, local businesses and residents. The service provider can select strategic vendors, who will advertise through the community portal, and who will deliver property maintenance services such as lawn care, landscaping, and carpet cleaning to the communities they serve at significantly discounted rates - passing on the cost saving benefits of "bulk customer acquisition" to the selected home service companies and ultimately to its residents.

Local businesses will be able to foster long term relationships with residents through the delivery of cost-effective, valuable services -- creating customer loyalty and increasing the probability of repeat business. The community intranet will also help decrease costs associated with obtaining new customers, retaining existing customers and handling transactions. As residents served by Rio Mesa realize cost savings, their home purchase decisions will be positively reinforced.

The e-Village is designed to provide a livable community for telecommuting residents and their families. Numerous studies have illustrated that telecommuting benefits corporations and workers alike by increasing productivity and lowering operational costs. Dr. Tom Wielicki, Professor of Information Systems at CSUF, who is part of the planning team for the e-Village, notes, as this telecom lifestyle continues to grow, the benefits of an e-community become more evident, including:

* Residents spending less time commuting to their workplaces and other destinations to take care of basic needs, resulting in more time to spend with their families and on social/recreational activities;
* Residents having more interaction with their neighbors in the community because more people will be home during the day, resulting in a more social and safer environment; and
* Numerous environmental benefits including energy conservation, cleaner air quality, and less traffic congestion due to reduced vehicle trips and less dependency on the automobile to meet basic living needs.
By providing network services to MPCs such as Rio Mesa, service providers can gain new revenues from an affluent customer base and accelerate their business opportunities by addressing customer needs even as their homes are being built. The provider is well positioned to gain additional revenue from emerging services, all while keeping implementation costs down due to the density of the service area.

About the Author
Melanie Stewart is manager of technical solutions marketing for Nortel Networks. Ms. Stewart is project leader for Nortel Networks On-site Service Provider initiative and helped launch the Rio Mesa master planned community project. The author may be reached with questions or comments via email at stewmel@nortelnetworks.com,