Business View Magazine | December 2019

337 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2019 PEACHTREE CORNERS , GEORGI A Ultimately, we want a company to like it so much that they want to relocate, expand, or create a business here. And now we’ve got permanent presence; jobs being created or retained; families moving to the city; house values stable or increasing - a community where people want to live, work, learn, and play. “We activated our 5G environment in Tech Park around the same time as downtown Atlanta, largely because we were constructing Curiosity Lab. Sprint (for 5G utilization) and Georgia Power (for smart cities applications) have invested directly into the Lab and are using it for their own testing. We’ve recently announced partnerships with Georgia Tech and Delta Airlines to test here. We’ve also had companies move into unoccupied buildings in Tech Park, instead of other locations in Atlanta, because of Curiosity Lab. So, we know that we’ve already benefited, to a degree, from that and, going forward, we’ll be able to track the economic dividends we’re achieving.” BVM: What are the most important points you’d like to share about Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners? Plattenburg: “We have interest from around the world and we are inviting people to come in and test regardless of their current location, which is an exciting prospect and helps us to meet our economic development goals in the city.” Johnson: “We have existing 5G wireless infrastructure available in the Lab for free. The facilities themselves and all the other technology – DSRC (Dedicated short-range communications), smart street lights, smart traffic signals, all looped in together to a network operation – are also free. We do not require intellectual property ownership of anything created here. And we respect proprietary confidentiality. We are the only governmental entity that regulates and coordinates usage of this living laboratory.