Mayor Linda Gorton
- On Lexington
“Lexington is well on its way to being one of the largest gigabit cities in the country. Now, we are working to take full advantage of this opportunity to leap into tomorrow’s economy with an aggressive economic development campaign to attract new high tech companies.”
- On Next Century Cities
“In Next Century Cities, Lexington has found a strong partner as we have worked to improve access to the internet in our community.”
- What Lexington is working on
Lexington, Ky., a vibrant University City of more than 300,000, is working on bringing gigabit Internet speed to its citizens and businesses. Mayor Jim Gray launched the effort with the understanding that current constraints within telecommunications companies prevent them from investing in fiber-optic networks to serve current and future bandwidth demand.
The project is just now getting underway. An interdepartmental Fiber Team is now exploring models followed by the few cities that have successfully made the transition. But the Fiber Team is not limiting itself to existing models. It is open to exploring a range of public-private partnerships that can drive dramatically faster internet speeds for residents and businesses while closing the digital divide.
Next steps include a request for information (RFI) to gather interest from private partners, scheduled to be issued in Q1 of 2015.
