Broadband has been proven to improve tenant efficiency.

In the quest for establishing rapid Internet access and high-powered connectivity, the real estate and telecommunications industries are getting to know each other. Landlords have the opportunity of bringing broadband technology to corporate tenants, and by doing so, enable them to improve their efficiency, increase revenues, and reduce costs. The opportunity for the real estate owner is to maximize property value for ownership and its investors.

Speakers at the recent NACORE New York luncheon, which was devoted to the topic "Broadband or No Band," discussed the merits of bandwidth-intensive fiber networks and the way technology has revolutionized the power of the Internet. The panel consisted of three top telecommunications professionals: Raul K. Martynek, COO of Gillette Global Network (GGN)/Eureka Broadband, a facilities-based national provider of broadband infrastructure and software applications; George M. Lakestream, vice-president of Lightpath/Cablevision, owners of a 10,000-mile fiber network in New York City and telecom provider; and Steve Coutts, of CoStar, one of the largest real estate information providers in the U.S.

According to the speakers, fiber is the best choice, as its bandwidth has virtually unlimited potential, as opposed to the copper and wireless alternatives. Just how much bandwidth is enough? Presently, there is a ton of fiber across the ocean and across the nation. On the metropolitan level, however, there is still not enough fiber for the end-user buildings.

"You can never have enough fiber just as you can never have enough memory on a computer or enough resolution on a video screen, "said Raul Martynek. "You need two things -- bandwidth and convergence -- to carry data through a lot of different networks set on top of each other."

"The weakest link in the bandwidth chain is what the industry calls the last mile," he explained.