Washington, D.C., City Council members are considering legislation that would create an independent authority to operate and manage the city’s fiber-optic backbone communications network, which should be complete by early 2009.

The proposed Communications Technology Authority of the District of Columbia would be a significant step as officials from the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) continue to build DC-NET. The network will provide city agencies and schools with high-speed, secure and fault-tolerant voice, data and video communications for 911 calls, telemedicine, e-learning, and other services and applications.

The new authority would essentially become the city government’s telecommunications provider, offering more efficient services at a cheaper rate than private companies do. OCTO officials say the network is the first in the country that a municipality will build, operate and manage.

Charles Conley, the city’s telecom director, said 58 of the city’s 68 agencies use DC-NET in some capacity. He said 160 sites have replaced copper cables with fiber-optic ones, and more than a quarter of those sites have activated the fiber. Officials plan to connect as many as 350 buildings.

“We have about 14,000 telephones on the network right now, and we are serving about 30 data connections that serve…about 18,000 users,” he said. “We’re estimating 30,000 telephone users in the district, so we’re nearly halfway on telephone users.” He added that the network is carrying about 30 percent to 40 percent of the city’s data traffic.

Adam Rubinson, the city’s deputy CTO, said DC-NET is at only 5 percent capacity.

“We’re talking about nine rings at OC-48,” Rubinson said. “So it’s nine times 2.4 gigabits/sec. If at some point in the future…we get up to 75 [percent] to 80 percent usage, the great thing about this network is how scalable it is. You switch out the lasers [from] OC-48 to OC-192, and now you’ve gotten a quantum leap in capacity, and it’s just so easy to do.”

Frank Dzubeck, president of Communications Network Architects, an industry analysis firm based in Washington, D.C., said fiber-optic networks have been around a while, especially in Europe. A few U.S. states have also developed them, and cities are starting to build them, in addition to establishing Wi-Fi and WiMax networks. Dzubeck said that because Washington, D.C., is geographically small and the network only serves government entities, “that’s a perfect rationale.”