A GIANT STEP FOR NAP 

Friday, June 16, 2000
BY BEATRICE E. GARCIA, Miami Herald

Proponents of developing a high-speed Internet connection point in downtown Miami said Thursday they have the support of nine major telecommunications companies, representing the critical mass needed to make the project viable.

It's a key step forward in the development of an Internet access hub in South Florida, the proponents said, because the nine companies handle a significant volume of Internet traffic.

The companies have endorsed a downtown Miami location as the best site for the so-called network access point. A NAP is a high-speed data switching station that would facilitate local Internet traffic and provide a more efficient, reliable network. It also would serve as a gateway for data, voice and video flowing to and from Latin America, where Internet usage and e-commerce are expected to grow substantially in the next few years.

Benjamin Finzi, executive vice president of EPIK Communications, the telecommunications arm of the Florida East Coast Railway, said the next step is for the group to decide on a specific location, choose a company to operate the NAP and determine an operating structure. That could happen in two to three weeks.

Besides EPIK, the eight other companies signed on to the project are AT&T; FPL FiberNet, the telecommunication network unit of Florida Power & Light Co.; Global Crossing, a Bermuda company that's building undersea and landed fiber-optic lines; Level 3 Communications, a Denver firm constructing a fiber-optic network across the country; Global NAPS Inc., a Chelmsford, Mass., company that provides Internet access; Nextlink, a McLean, Va., provider of broadband services via fiber-optic and wireless networks; NetRail Inc., an Atlanta company that provides broadband services to other telecom companies; and 360networks, a Vancouver company that's building a broadband network in North America and Europe.

The carriers that support a downtown location for the NAP are continuing discussions with other major telecom companies, including Worldcom, PSINet, Telefonica, TeleGlobe, Sprint, Cable & Wireless and Genuity, which represents GTE's Internet backbone business that will be spun off as a separate company when GTE's merger with BellAtlantic is completed. 

BellSouth, the regional telephone company that serves Florida and eight other Southeastern states, is floating its own plan for high-speed Internet connectivity in South Florida.

Rather than one central public place for telecom companies and Internet service providers to exchange traffic, BellSouth would rather see a series of strategically located ``nodes,'' or connection points where the traffic can be exchanged. Possible sites include downtown Miami, West Miami-Dade, downtown Fort Lauderdale and a location in Palm Beach. 

Susan Campbell, BellSouth's director of business development and strategy, explains that such plans provide greater opportunity for connectivity and economic development. 

BellSouth would be willing to operate these connection points, which could be set up in the offices housing its switches. 

Worldcom is one company being courted by both BellSouth and the downtown group. Through its UUNet unit, it's one of the world's largest Internet backbone companies. UUNet runs public network access points in Reston, Va., San Jose, Calif., , and Dallas. 

A spokesman for Worldcom said the company is talking with both groups in Miami and monitoring their progress. Worldcom is building its own Internet connection point in West Dade. It already handles a huge amount of Internet traffic on its own network. 

In the meantime, Richard Paul-Haus, chairman of the InternetCoast NAP committee, said the group will move forward to determine which of the various sites best meets the design criteria for the NAP. 

Finzi said there are three to six possible sites downtown. He declined to name them. 

One contender is the Technology Center of the Americas that will be built by Terremark Worldwide and the Miami Heat organization on a full block adjacent to the Miami Arena. 

Miami city officials are big supporters of developing an Internet hub in Miami because they believe it will spur an economic revival downtown, as well as spark the rehabilitation of the nearby Park West and Overtown neighborhoods. 

Commissioners Arthur Teele and Johnnie Winton have committed to working with the telecom companies as well as developers to speed up permitting and inspections.