CIO Chris Tonjes wants 25 miles of fiber to expand Baltimore’s fiber network [VIDEO]

As Baltimore city’s CIO Chris Tonjes told the crowd at December’s Baltimore TechBreakfast, he’s looking to change up some of the tenets of the mission of the Mayor’s Office of Information Technology.
Part of his proposed shift is to have MOIT focus more on greater public engagement and improving digital access across the city, as Technically Baltimore reported. Key to this effort will be “to secure and enhance the city’s 800 MHz radio system and expand the city’s fiber network with about 25 miles of fiber,” Tonjes told the publication Government Technology.

Something of a fiber network already exists in downtown Baltimore courtesy of Litecast, the Canton-based broadband services company that built a 25-mile network of fiber-optic cables several years ago.
Already MOIT has made strides toward installing WiFi at all six of Baltimore’s historic public markets. (As of November, Lexington Market was the only one of the six with free wireless Internet access.)
No word yet on when the fiber expansion will happen, although Tonjes did say at December’s TechBreakfast that MOIT has roughly $7 million each year allotted for spending on “new technologies.”
Watch Tonjes address the crowd at December’s Baltimore TechBreakfast:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkG8odqIDaU]