{"id":1932,"date":"2005-11-11T11:30:37","date_gmt":"2005-11-11T11:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=1932"},"modified":"2005-11-11T11:30:37","modified_gmt":"2005-11-11T11:30:37","slug":"municipal_broad_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=1932","title":{"rendered":"Municipal Broadband: Princeton Ilinois Moves Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.eprairie.com\/news\/viewnews.asp?newsletterid=12925\">eprairie<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Two years ago, Princeton, Ill., a town of about 7,500 people two hours west of Chicago, was staring at a potentially grim future. One of the town&rsquo;s largest employers had just moved its manufacturing facilities to Chattanooga, Tenn.<br \/>\nLCN, a division of Ingersoll Rand, had just hired a new plant manager for its Princeton factory He had a wake-up call for the town&rsquo;s industrial board.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;He said that if Ingersoll Rand was looking to relocate a new facility, Princeton would not be on the list,&rdquo; recalled Jason Bird, superintendent of the town&rsquo;s electric and telecommunications utility. The town simply did not have the communications capacity that modern companies need.<\/p>\n<p>That conversation was enough to scare the town council and the mayor into action. Last October, the town started construction of a $400,000, 12-mile fiber-optic network. On Dec. 15, it announced it would take the fiber to any customer wanting it.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, Ingersoll Rand has made a $6.5 million investment in its Princeton facility, according to Bird. The fiber network was definitely a factor in that decision, he said. The town has also received a $675,000 economic development grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration for development of its technology park, which is based partially on the town&rsquo;s deployment of the fiber network.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>eprairie: Two years ago, Princeton, Ill., a town of about 7,500 people two hours west of Chicago, was staring at a potentially grim future. One of the town&rsquo;s largest employers had just moved its manufacturing facilities to Chattanooga, Tenn. LCN, a division of Ingersoll Rand, had just hired a new plant manager for its Princeton [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1932"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}