The City of St. Louis and some of its economic development groups recently released a Gigabit Internet request for information (RFI) for the upgrade and expansion of the regional broadband infrastructure to provide speeds more than 1,000 Mbps. Those speeds would reportedly be an estimated 20 times faster than current averages in the city.
Downtown STL Inc., the City of St. Louis, St. Louis Development Corp. and St. Louis Economic Development Partnership are the issuers of the RFI outlining the market opportunity and inviting interested parties to submit ideas for delivering the service. In a press release, they note they are “committed to making the critical investments and policy modifications required to ensure that St. Louis has widely available and affordable ultra-high-speed Internet service.”
Kiplinger and BusinessInsider, among others, have reported that St. Louis is a top destination for technology entrepreneurs. “One of the key infrastructure ingredients for sustaining and accelerating the growth of this innovation ecosystem is availability of modern fiber-optic network and access to affordable, ultra-fast broadband Internet,” the RFI issuers state.
“We’ve had immense growth in St. Louis’s innovation clusters in downtown, Cortex, along with Cherokee, and Mid-town Alley,” Missy Kelley, president of Downtown STL, says. “The RFI will allow us to identify potential business models and partnerships to deliver Gigabit Internet services across all neighborhoods and communities of St. Louis.”