This from Michael Kremer:
I was reading through some articles this morning when this one jumped out:
The Battle Is Raging for Control of the Internet -- and Big Corporations May Come Out on the Losing Side.
This article touches on something I've often thought would make sense in Yellow Springs: a Village-owned Internet subnet. In this article are mentioned several municipalities, many small, which own their own Internet networks and provide fibre-optic networking to the home, at very competitive prices. Every time I hear the phrase "business incubator," two thoughts come to mind: first, Yellow Springs cannot significantly compete in a physical industry, but we are more than capable of competing in information industries. Second, how attractive a place would this be to live, raise a family, bring and build a business, if each and every location had a fibre connection and the entire business center of Dayton St. and Xenia Ave. was one giant, free wireless hot-spot.
This is one of my wishes for this community to remain vibrant.
I'd love to hear what you think of the article above.
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6 comments:
The more commerce relies on broadband internet service, the less this country can afford to allow control of it to rest in the hands of a few companies. A town like YS could easily be ignored in favor of larger cities, making economic development even more difficult. In this day and age where work can be performed at home as long as there is adequate internet service, we cannot afford to be left out. As I understand it, currently, many homes in the village cannot even access DSL. As the publisher of this blog, this concerns me. Folks who are using dial up probably have to wait forever for the Blog's graphics to download.
Hervey
While I think broadband is great, why do we keep ignoring problems in our water and electrical systems.If we want to really draw business to town show them you have the foundation to make it happen.
all we need for a free open wireless hotspot downtown is for all the people who operate wireless access points downtown to open them up like mine is.
I am paying about $54 a month for Time-Warner Roadrunner, the fastest service available in Yellow Springs, and the most expensive. Currently my download speed, according to Speedtest.net, is an anemic 9.9 Mbps, and upload speed a pitiable .45 Mbps. I could be happy with that if it cost, maybe, $15 a month.
Virgil—anyone with an AT&T land line should be able to get DSL. I'd like to hear more about why people can't get it. And dial-up? Does that even still exist?:)
Maybe we can't afford to be left out, but could we conceivably pay for it, especially given the backlog of infrastructure maintenance we're already struggling under? I'd like to see an estimate of the per-household cost of installing FTTH, to see if this is more than just a pipe dream. And with the educational institutions and upscale self-employed people in town, I wouldn't assume we'll be passed by if the phone or cable companies are upgrading in the area. There might be enough business here to make it worth their while. If there's not, then it probably wouldn't be feasible to do it ourselves, either, with such a small population to share the cost.
Anonymous—You're right—how would we get something like FTTH done when our basic utilities and infrastructure are falling apart, and the faction that controls village government thinks that's a good thing? Even if we could somehow pay for it, would people who advocate planting gardens in the parks and scrapping our refrigerators in preparation for the eco-apocalypse get behind a cutting-edge technology project? This is a community where we recently argued about WHETHER the streets should be paved. Getting village government and their faction behind such an idea would probably be difficult.
I forget where I read that some people in the village cannot get DSL. But I do know that not everybody can get it, because when I applied for it, they had to test my line first and get back to me. I have been told that it depends on how far you are from the service point (or whatever they call it) and how many are on it already. I know people who are using dial-up.
Sadly, all of your arguments about why this won't fly here are probably right.
Of course water, electrical, and road surfaces should have primacy, but I suspect that we would be wise to consider broadband as part of the whole infrastructure package of the future.
Aren't there already Internet access systems that work with household electrical lines rather than cable or phone lines? It would seem reasonable that any consideration of planning for future electrical system upgrades/maintenance might take this into account.
Granted, as long as we're not even playing catchup with the infrastructure, it's tempting to discount the possibility of local internet management.
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