US/ND-2: Rural Internet Access
Rural Internet Access
Marty Tennant (marty@sccoast.net)
Sat, 07 Sep 1996 13:39:11 -0700
I got this off an interesting USENET group and thought the group
might like it.
Marty Tennant
Rural Internet Access
dave@oldcolo.com
26 Aug 1996 15:58:10 GMT
In <telecom16.407.11@massis.lcs.mit.edu>, bsharp@cris.com (Brian
M. Sharp) writes:
> Is there any way people living outside a metropolitan area can get
> internet access without having to pay per hour? With all the interest
> in the internet, isn't there some service that can see the huge number
> of people in this uncomfortable position?
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Some small towns have an ISP or two
> in the community. Bill Pfieffer has told me for example that where
> he lives, there are two or three ISPs including a Free Net in the
> nearby (also relatively small) town of Springfield, Missouri. I think
> it is just a matter of time until small towns everywhere are included
> in the net. Maybe we need someone like Andrew Carnagie, the steel mill
> baron of the 19th century who went around to small towns all over the
> United States building public libraries, to do the same now with
> Free Nets. A century later, there are still a large number of 'Carnagie
> Library' facilities all over the country; for the most part still
> using the endowments established for them by Andrew Carnagie.
> I guess you could say this is my million dollar dream: to see libraries
> throughout the USA connected to the internet; and to see Free Nets
> in small towns everywhere. Today the great promise is that thing
> sitting in front of your face as you read this message. Where are the
> Carnagies and the Rockefellers to do today for America what those men
> did a century ago? Where are they to join Bill Gates?
You don't need Carnegies or Bill Gates to get rural communities -
including all 15,000 US public libraries (1) connected to the net (2)
operating a 'free net.' They can do it themselves, right now, for
(relatively) peanuts of cost. What you *do* have to do is be sure the
less-than-generous CEO's of RBOCs, LDCs, and cablecos don't act -- at
the Washington, DC level to *prevent* small towns, neighborhoods,
rural communities from connecting up with no-licence (or licenced but
no comm cost) digital wireless.
As the Principal Investigator of the National Science Foundation Wireless
Field Test for Education Project, I have been evaluating, as well as our
project installing and testing, a wide range (from 5Mbs wireless lans to
2Mbs 25 mile point to point spread spectrum, no licence (FCC Part 15)
digital radios. Connecting up, for example, a middle school in Monte
Vista, Colorado to the closest commercial POP in another city - Alamosa,
17 miles away, at 115KBS, using radios that cost $1,250 retail, with
maybe $250 antenna costs. And extending, by relay techniques, that
link to yet another town 22 miles from Alamosa. And working on reaching
the smallest town we are working with - San Luis (850 pop) - that is
about 35 miles away.
We are about to link the wireless link to the small school, (300 or so
students) with more bandwidth than they can yet us, via a small state
technology grant ($26,000) no-cost wirelessly to five public access sites
in the community at the Parish, at the Cultural Center (museum/library),
town government, businesses via the artists of the town, and the
county seat. Together with training for 100% of all local citizens,
and effectively zero-per-hour costs for access to the net for the
citizens, while the school district pays the commercial $300 a month
POP cost (which means, via school taxes, the citizens are paying). And
operating, at the school, the Web Site, BBS, designed in part by the
students and teachers, for outside in, and inside out access -- in
Spanish or English as your linguistic talents permit.
i.e. the combination of no-licence, high performance, reasonable range
the last 20 miles), digital wireless, with school networking needs,
(and school districts are where people in this country live, rural or
urban) contains within it the seeds of 'community' networking,
inclusive of the need to train/educate community adults on how to use
these technologies. And libraries - both in-school ones (which in some
*very* small towns are bigger than public libraries) and community
ones, being part and parcel part of 'education' - integrated within
such networks. (Just stick a $1,000 radio in the tiny library connected
to its one PC and voila, you have public connectivity - and access to
any 'free net' across town.) Point to multi-point radios are widely
available now.
So this is a 'do it yourself' rather than 'let Carnegie do it' approach
which economically, as well as technologically is doable right now.
And since the FCC is confronted with the requirement of the '96
Telecom Act to make proposal/plans for insuring that advanced telecom
services are available to all citizens at affordable costs, with
special emphasis on schools (84,000 of em) and libraries (15,000) this
approach that we are revealing from our analysis (we are also visiting
communities which have already done it wirelessly, and evaluating
their cost benefit factors, technical reliability, and other factors
for our report.)
You can follow what we are doing, examining, by accessing
http://wireless.oldcolo.com
Dave Hughes dave@oldcolo.com