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by Teresa Martin

It's funny how the seemly invisible things provide the underpinning to potential. I mean, every time one starts on a 'what if' dream line, it's infrastructure that snaps us back to reality. The foundation of a house. The availability of gas lines. The existence of a road. Power sources. And all types of capacity-carrying systems.

As you can probably guess, from home to work to regional development, infrastructure has been on my mind. While surely not as sexy as having, say, a trip to Kauai on the mind, the unrelenting topic has certainly provided a lot of space for thought.

As astute observers may know, I've been showing up early and often to talk about one of our region's most significant infrastructure efforts: OpenCape. OpenCape is the effort to create a backhaul network, the middle mile, the water main of data for the Cape region.

If you've ever tried to lease dark fiber, build a network between different physical locations, upload large data files, or take on any other data or file size intensive task, you know the wall you hit. IF you can even get enough bandwidth - and that's a big if - you pay through the nose for it because it isn't a commodity here, as it is in other places. And of course, there are significant pockets of our region where there's no broadband of any size to be had for love or money.

It all comes down to dollars, of course. Creating infrastructure - whether it is the foundation under the house or the backhaul network for data - is a significant cost. And the investor needs to see a justifiable return on that cost.

For a private company in the telecommunications space, that return is measured in double digit percentage dollars. In the model of telecommunications infrastructure as it currently exists, that double-digit return can only happen within certain population density implementations. The Cape is not a densely populated region, ergo the profit motive as the sole return for this kind of infrastructure investment does not work for the companies in this sector. Period.

But for those who live and work and grow business in regions like ours, the returns are measured in more than dollars and cents. They are measured in opportunities gained and in opportunities lost, in civic engagement, in municipal efficiency, and in simply existing in the 21st century.

That realization was the driving force that turned the debate and discussion two years ago from the indvidual efforts of a few hundred people trying to find solutions into a nonprofit corporation with engineering plans, deployment models, and a sustainable structure. That's the story behind OpenCape.

We - as an OpenCape board member I am using the royal "we"! - realized that we could all sit around and whine about what wasn't happening ... or we could find a new way of thinking and create our own solutions. And so, we have.

The Cape isn't the only region taking this on. Others have also begin working on ways to build the infrastructure all regions need to grow and thrive in our digital era. Tennessee, Oregon, Maryland, Washington, Kentucky, and many other places whose rural makeup made for limited private sector investment have been figuring out different ways to reach the same end: affordable, open access, middle mile solutions, that enable commerce and community.

We're not talking about 'free access' here. In fact, we're probably not even talking about the pipe that comes to your doorstep. What we are talking about is creating the capacity that enables other companies to bring that service to your door. It's kinda like getting a water main near your house ... once the water is there, you can connect into your home or your business, using whatever faucet work for you. And you can choose from a bunch of different faucets with different features at different prices.

The middle mile that OpenCape is driving will open the door to competition, options, and potential. I don't think we even know all the things we'll be able to do - as the century unrolls itself and the kids born today grow into adults, this infrastructure will be used in ways we can't even imagine. We're building something to get us into the game today ... and something that the 'technology natives," those who are born into and grow up with the digital world, will build upon tomorrow.

The excitement over the federal stimulus spending has only added momentum to all of the efforts to build this infrastructure. The use of federal dollars acknowledges that returns in civic and community benefits are important, and that infrastructure provides us with a base level of functionality that we need in this century.

Then, add in the FCC writing stuff like like this and it's easy to see why infrastructure has been on my - and many others' - minds:

Broadband technology is a key driver of economic growth. The ability to share large amounts of information at ever-greater speeds increases productivity, facilitates commerce, and drives innovation. Broadband is changing how we communicate with each other, how and where we work, how we educate our children, and how we entertain ourselves. Broadband is particularly critical in rural areas, where advanced communications can shrink the distances that isolate remote communities.

It's pretty amazing stuff. And it's stuff we need here, in our businesses and in our lives, every one of us. This isn't some futurama prediction - this is today's reality. So start dreaming you very own what-ifs ... and get a little bit of infrastructure on your own minds today, too.