Ohio Establishing State Wide Broadband Network

bohn002 writes "In order to coordinate and expand access to the state's broadband data network, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland has signed an executive order establishing the Ohio Broadband Council and the Broadband Ohio Network. The order directs the Ohio Broadband Council to coordinate efforts to extend access to the Broadband Ohio Network to every county in Ohio. The order allows public and private entities to tap into the Broadband Ohio Network — all with a goal of expanding access to high-speed internet service in parts of the state that presently don't have such service."

Queue lawsuits in 3..2...1...

I'm sure the telcos will try and use the courts to stop or cripple this service.

Re:Queue lawsuits in 3..2...1...

As an Ohio resident, I can verify for you that the Telcos are doing a good job of crippling broadband on their own. I applaud any attempt by the gub'nah get some quality fast internet to areas OUTSIDE of the cities. Please. There are public and private businesses out there, as well.

Re:they're actually going to profit from it

There are quite a few counties, mainly in the SouthEast, that are very rural and poor.

Oddly enough, that was Gov. Strickland's district when he was in the US House of Representatives.

I didn't vote for the guy, but he's doing a good job thus far. Things in Ohio are starting to turn around it seems.

A Good step foreward...

...but at what speed? Specifically, what speed broadband? Specifically, will there definition keep up with the old or (hopefully soon to be new) definition [slashdot.org] The wording a bit vague, but it is nice to see atleast one politician doing what I voted them in to do. They might have failed to ring in a National Broadband Act, but a series of statewide acts will eventually accomplish it just as well.

I can Only Hope...

I'm an Ohio resident and am fairly pleased with what Ted has done so far with my vote. Not only that, but he's generally a pleasant guy, as I am a Scioto County native and know him impersonally. This is a good step, because the Scioto County area especially is lacking in not only accessible broadband, but decent internet in general (aged telephone lines make sure you don't ever recieve anything over 26.4kbps on a modem!). I just wish the rest of the Stricklands around here weren't so scummy and inbred. :P

Alberta has done this already...

The government of Alberta actually completed a multibillion dollar network called the Alberta Supernet and it has worked out quite well so far. It was designed to link public buildings (schools, police, hospitals, etc) directly with fiber (I worked on the project for a while), with fiber feeds/media converters directly to the server rooms of these buildings. They also lease bandwidth to the private sector. It currently links to 429 communities and thousands of facilities.

Just remember...

When they start complaining about the government "competing" with private enterprise, just remember that Ohio will be competing with private network service providers in the same way that the U.S. DoD competes with Boeing in jet fighters -- as in, they won't, they'll be customers. The DoD doesn't want to get into the business of building planes, and I doubt Ohio wants to create their own network company, and instead will be paying someone else to do the work.

The reason they don't like this is because the state will be a customer with the collective bargaining power of potentially every resident in the state, and therefore it will be the network providers who have to either give the state a good deal or go home without a lucrative contract. As opposed to normally when each individual has little choice in providers, and can either take the crappy DSL or cable "deal" or simply go without. It's collective bargaining that they fear.

Of course this is mostly recycled from previous discussions on municipal broadband, the "they" I speak of not referring to any specific complainers in this case.

Ohio Supercomputer Network

Ohio has actually done a wonderful job over the last few years bringing high bandwidth links to the educational institutions in the state via the Ohio Supercomputer Network. It provides Gigabit up links for educational entities, k12 and higher ed, to the 10G backbone of the state network. Considering the lack of network infrastructure in some parts of Ohio they have done a great job deploying a high speed network. I can only hope this new initiative will go as well. Go Ted!

Yet another Ohioan here

This is good an all on paper, but in practice, this is going to cost tons of taxpayer money (that doesn't exist) and will not directly benefit Joe Taxpayer out in West Bufu, Wayne County.

For future note, don't blame me: I didn't pick a school administrator to be governor. That's my $0.02

Expansion of Higher Ed Network

This is Strickland building on previous Governor Taft's Third Frontier Initiative. This network was built using dark fiber and connected K-16 public and private. See osc.edu [osc.edu] for more information and a fun map [osc.edu].

It has been great for us as a private college. We have lots of bandwidth to other higher ed's as well as to the Internet as a result of this initiative. So far so good.

I hope it's for NW Ohio

I live in an area that is completely monopolized. The guy who owns the Toledo Blade, a monopoly, John Block, owns Buckeye Cable System who owns all the lain cable(standard 65 station TV no box & ISP: $90) and refuses to even negotiate allowing anyone to lease lines. A 1.5 hour from where I live, they have total choice, which makes it kind of weird for the Best Buy and Circuit City guys who display all the choices then ask you first if you live 50-60 miles away. Neighbors on 2 sides went Direct DSL and the guys across the street At&t POTS DSL. Both my wife and I are internet workers, 3 online students, and the metal shelve of servers (the dp farm), so we need up/dn bandwidth. When I was teaching a decade ago, the state had been working on a very high speed 1600 mile fiber backbone since '79, and by '95 90% 669 school districts were using it. 2007 is the Ohio Supercomuter Centers 20th anniversary, but I've been out of teaching for 6 years.

No Hardware Partial Solution

The state of Ohio could probably get better results without spending
any money by changing the franchise laws. I live in Bloom Township,
Fairfield County, Ohio. Insight Communications "owns" the cable
franchise for this township. Even though Insight offers Road Runner
in adjacent Franklin County, they have no near term intention of
providing such service in Bloom Township.

Yet, the Greenfield Township line is only 500 feet away, and Time
Warner owns the Greenfield Township cable franchise. Naturally, one
can get Road Runner in Greenfield Township.

If Ohio changed the laws to eliminate the exclusivity and allowed
cable competition, even just in rural areas, I bet a lot more of Ohio
would have broadband access via cable modem.

BTW, I arranged with my neighbor to get Time Warner Business Class
deliver to his address and send it to my house via an 802.11 link. He
already has Road Runner, and Time Warner won't deliver more than one
instance of their service to any address, so I still have to pay twice
as much per month, although the download speed is typically 2
megabytes per second.

Vic, K1LT

State wide broadband be censored like airwaves?

Is this a state owned broadband pipe? Will they censor the pipe, under the same bullshit the FCC uses to control the "people's" airwaves?

IPv6

They should require that this network be fully IPv6 functional right from the start.

an alternative to broadband 'monopolies'

I'm all for this. For the public to pool resources for bargaining power makes sense. The telcos have abused the system long enough and the consumers really don't have many options in most parts of the country. From what I see, the telcos are simply gaining monopoly power, and then screwing the consumer. Currently in south Florida there are two broadband options: Comcast and Bellsouth. Currently, it's troublesome to get base broadband that is not bundled with other un-wanted services like phone and cable. Comcast charges around $42 dollars a month if you have cable for their lowest-priced broadband. $56 dollars for standalone broadband. (Granted, these are at 6Mbit/s speeds, but I simply want to get by on the low speed stuff (like 256k or 512k/s.) DSL from Bellsouth runs $40 for their lowest speed standalone DSL. And that option only became available as of Aug 1. What I had before was a $25/month plan from Comcast which they're discontinuing and can no longer get. Basically, what I see Comcast doing is charging me more so they can afford to bury faster lines so that they can send out VideoOnDemand and other high-end services for which I do not want, but am forced to subsidize. And since there's no competition, I got no choice. Where's the FCC on this? Does anybody see this differently?

Filtering ...

I work in an Ohio public library. The state mandates that our computers be filtered (at our own expense) for us to be able to get the state-supplied T1 line. (Of course, filtering software doesn't work well, but that doesn't matter. It's FOR THE CHILDREN!)

My worry, therefore, is that once this is in place, there will be an argument made that Ohio residents will have to filter their computers (at their own expense, of course) to hook into it -- and FOR THE CHILDREN, the argument will be put into law, and FOR THE CHILDREN, it will be held to be constitutional, with some sops thrown to appease those of us who actually care about porn^H^H^H^H free speech.

We have heard the people and have financing . . .

This just in -

The subject of state-wide wireless internet was presented to the people and they voted electronically using the latest Diebold technology. Not surprisingly, it passed by a narrow 44.00001% to 44% margin. No paper trail was available for verification.

The wireless internet system will be payed for by trading pieces of a rare coin collection owned by the state.

Hey, ho, where'd you go, Ohio?
     

Frightening ...

I'm an ex-patriot Buckeye from Springfield (Schuler's Bakery, home of Jonathan Winters, etc.), and it frightens me to think that the Gov' thinks that an Executive Order (without coordinated legislative backing) is doing anything more than normal political "huffing and puffing". If it works, send him to Colorado!

What technology will this "broadband" network use?

Wireless? Cable TV networks? DSL? I don't see how the state can mandate anything with regard to other peoples physical infrastructure like cable TV and phone networks. So what technology do they intend to use to bring broadband to everyone? Surely the state isn't planning to dig up all of the streets in the state and put down fiber are they?

getting a kick

As an Ohioan, I'm getting a kick out of these replies.

Wait....wrong site.

This sounds great, but it's not.

It's actually a corporate interests doing a land-grab on state owned resources.

Quite some time ago, the state of Ohio began building a new, high speed internetwork that was paid for by taxpayers. This network was supposed to be available only to research and nonprofit institutions like universities, non-profit hospitals, and so forth. This network had strict access standards, and getting your organization connected (unless you were someplace like Ohio State University) wasn't easy to do. Even companies like OCLC [oclc.org] were not permitted to connect to the network. Commercial use of the network was strictly prohibited by charter. It was a good thing for encouraging research and collaboration between research institutions in the state of Ohio.

Not too long ago a few entrepreneurial types decided that if they could just tap into that high-speed network, they could circumvent the telcos and resell access to that network as a broadband data network. Except that doing so would be against the charter, and basically equate to corporate welfare. But they weren't discouraged, because the current governor was on his way out of office, and they spent lots of money on lobbyists who wound up taking roles as technology advisors to the campaigns for both of the major candidates for governor.

I know this because the for-profit hospital that I was employed by at the time was actually approached by this new company about buying access to this high-speed network. At the time we asked them how they planned to pull it off, because we knew that they couldn't legally resell this network access, even if they could get it. Their response was "the next governor will be receptive to our business ideas and change the rules." Since the election hadn't happened yet, we asked them if they knew something about the voting machines that we didn't, and their response was that they had basically convinced both of the two major candidates to see things their way. We were not impressed, not just because we thought that the whole deal was morally questionable but also because the people who approached our company about it came across as extremely sleazy. After meeting with us once about it (which got a very tepid response), they began using our hospital's name in marketing materials for the community that we were located in as if we had already signed on to the project (presumably to convince other businesses that it was a good idea).

So now it's finally happened. We have a new governor, and he's OK'd these new companies to take the high-speed research network away from the institutions that we, the taxpayers, built it for and handed it to businesses that just want to make a fast buck off of it. On one hand, I'm appalled that a state funded, maintained, and sponsored resource could be co-opted by corporate interests and taken from it's intended purpose. On the other hand, I know that our AT&T sales rep was very concerned about this effort, and usually anything that pisses in AT&T's coffee is a good thing. So do I oppose it because it's morally wrong, or do I support it because it could hurt AT&T?

Sign Me Up, Please

I live in Knox county (right across from Licking, in fact, as well), and we only have two options: dial-up and satellite. Dial-up you are all familiar with, but satellite has its own problems. While download and upload speeds are alright, there are three major problems: Intense lag (connection goes to space and back), which results in waiting a good five seconds for even the smallest web pages to load; one-way connections only, which means that if I want to upload something I have to make sure that no downloading is occurring, unless I want the rate to be less than 1 kB/s; and worst of all, a bandwidth cap: 169 MB is the cap on this connection (HughesNet/DirecWay). With the advent of YouTube and other similar sites I'm finding myself going over that cap often, and what happens when I do? I can only end up browsing at less than 1 kB/s for a period of over 24 hours until it "refills" my download quota again. Not only can I not play games online (I'm a CS nut, go figure), but it's also costing us way more than it's worth ($50/month). This is such bullcrap, and I would greatly welcome access to normal broadband Internet.

Too bad it's needed

Normally I'm against the government getting bigger, but service providers have really dropped the ball when it comes to getting broadband to rural areas.

Utterly meaningless

Executive orders are nice, but it takes the legislature in American politics to actually allocate funds. Gov Ted has issued marching orders but has no bucks to pay for it. So really, it's a nice sound bite thing for a re-election campaign. He can say "I'm working to give broadband to everyone", when he's really not. He just signed a piece of paper demanding people to do something that can't be done unless the Ohio legislature actually authorizes money for it.

Total fraud.

Simpsons Did it !!!

Iowa had this done in 1998. I was visiting there with the Army, and got a tour of their disaster management center near Des Moines. They showed us that every county was tied into this network, and they used it for everything from government communications to parole board hearins (via webcam), to emergency communications for natural disasters.

Great tool. Hope they talked to Iowa in planning this, as I got the firm impression that Iowa had their act together in their implimentation.

Here's the easy way to do it

If the state government attached a 802.11 repeater to every damned State Police cruiser and airplane that they have out raising revenue... uhh... I mean writing traffic citations (and include the fake cruisers as well - yes, they really do have fake damned cop cars that they put on the side of the interstate - uggh!) they'd have every square inch of the friggin' state covered in no time.

God, I'm glad I live in Tennessee :)

Re:As an Ohioan...

As another Ohioan... Why are you saying WTF? There are lots of places in our state that don't have broadband available. This should help bring it to them.

Re:As an Ohioan...

As an Ohioan I second your WTF and just want to say, this won't accomplsh much as there is nothing in the document to establish any competition whatsoever. Without that, it'll be an oh-boy!, old-boy!! charade!!!.

Keep the press-releases coming Ted, that'll wow'em. Plus, using the state broadband will probably guarantee that the backup tapes that would normally be in an intern's car overnight will now be available to all the blackhats out there and not just those on foot.

Re:Amish Broadband

I know you're joking, but you'd be surprised at the number of Amish who use the Internet at the public libraries in Ohio. Some are researching medical conditions, some are trawling for porn, some are desperate for information on how to leave the Amish community, some are helping their kids with their schoolwork, some are reading up on other Amish communities, some are keeping in touch with relatives in other parts of the country, some are finding out about their favorite authors, some are playing Yahoo games -- all in all, pretty normal Internet users (as library patrons go).