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Networking The Internet

Ohio Establishing State Wide Broadband Network 105

Posted by samzenpus from the fast-internet-for-the-people dept.
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."
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Ohio Establishing State Wide Broadband Network More

Ohio Establishing State Wide Broadband Network

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  • Queue lawsuits in 3..2...1... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by maillemaker ( 924053 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @07:04PM (#20078967)
    I'm sure the telcos will try and use the courts to stop or cripple this service.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by bladesjester ( 774793 )
      I can see them trying, and, knowing Ted, I can imagine what his reaction would be.

      Thankfully the man has a pretty level head. He's been working at undoing the damage that the last governors have caused.
    • I would expect something more underhanded than lawsuits like crippling access to the backbones that they control. Inserting unnecessary delays, or using their control of media to enhance delivery to only their own customers.

      Also, doesn't the article say that private enterprises are welcome to help in this effort? Does this only apply to the state agencies or will it extend to homes? From my reading, the telcos will still have a substantial market there - they may just make sure that this network is as is

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by $1uck ( 710826 )
        This is why the backbones and transmission lines should not be in private hands. You can't build any sort of back bone, main thorough fare (even radio broadcasts) with out Eminent domain. And if eminent domain is used to construct something it should belong to everyone equally not just corporations.
        • Most of the backbones were constructed along the railroad lines, in the "right of way" areas. They didn't use eminent domain to get them, they leased them from the railroad companies. Now, parts of the railway system were acquired using eminent domain, but that was about 100 years ago and the telcos had nothing to do with that.

          Now, one other thing.

          You can't build any sort of back bone, main thorough fare (even radio broadcasts) with out Eminent domain.

          RADIO BROADCASTS?! WTF are you smoking to th

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by $1uck ( 710826 )
            RADIO BROADCASTS?! WTF are you smoking to think that you need eminent domain for that? Transmitter sites that TV and Radio stations used haven't been acquired by eminent domain

            You try running your own pirate radio station, or just broadcasting whatever you want on the airwaves. You won't be allowed to will you? why b/c you have to buy the rights from the goverment? what exactly would you be buying the rights to? radio frequencies? who owns them ? the government? on what grounds? the grounds that they

            • So yeah I'll lump in the fact the government has just taken control of the "airwaves" and sells it to the highest bidder as eminent domain.

              Sorry, but you just can't lump electromagnetic frequencies in with eminent domain. Eminent domain is the forced sale of an asset that already belongs to someone. In most cases, we are talking about real estate. The government forces somebody who has paid for and cared for a piece of property to sell that property against their will at a price that is not always fair.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by $1uck ( 710826 )
                I fail to see a difference. Your ownership of land is by way of governments permission, just as ownership of all the airspace that radio waves etc travel through. Try telling Delta that they aren't allowed to fly over your house, or Verizon that they can't broadcast their cell signal through your property with out paying you. Eminent domain is not a forced sale of anything, its the government taking ownership of something (if they're nice they'll offer to pay for it). The government has claimed ownersh

            • in the "right of way" areas.

              What is that? Sounds like eminent domain...

              Ummmm... no. The GP specifically mentioned that they (the telcos, AKA corporations in the private sector) leased the right to use the land from the railroad companies (again, corporations in the private sector). That is, the railroads bought the land (or in some cases, yes, were given it by the government, which had seized it by means of eminent domain), and they they turned around and leased it out to whomever they pleased. If I owned a piece of land, and a telco wanted to put a line across it, I coul

              • If you refused to let them place the line on or over your land, there are situations where they could use eminent domain to get an easement beyond your control. I have seen it done with a pipeline which ended up having fiber strung along a conduit 2 years after it was operational.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Original Replica ( 908688 )
        like crippling access to the backbones

        Maybe then "packet shaping" will encounter any opponent with enough clout to make politicians see it for the problem that it is.

    • Re:Queue lawsuits in 3..2...1... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ngarrang ( 1023425 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @07:19PM (#20079105) Journal
      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: (Score:2)

        by fm6 ( 162816 )
        But the guy is a (looks nervously over his shoulder and whispers) liberal. And he's got a PhD in psychology.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gallwapa ( 909389 )
        Until people realize that our definition of high speed is horrible - just because it works on broadband technology they get away with it? Please. what is it, 256k down is considered 'high speed' or something like that?

        I have a hard time calling my 6mb down/640k up comcast high speed.
        • Try using DirecWay for awhile, and you will be quite pleased going back to your comcast high-speed. I live in a rural area of Ohio, and DirecWay is all that I have available to me. I just hope that the gov'ner's actions will actually get some wires pulled down my way.
          • Its not that I mind comcast per se - its that its $100 a month (well, they 'bundle' it with 'extended cable' (2-99) TV, and if you don't get the TV bundle, its $60/mo for internet then $20 for basic cable + taxes and fees = $100 / month...funny how that works, huh?

            All I really want is unfettered access to the internet: I don't need their damn services, homepage, email, videos, news feeds, virus scanners - just hook me straight to the internet...for like $10 a month at 10mbit down 1mbit up and ill be a pret

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Praedon ( 707326 )
            When I lived in Louisiana to help out with the Katrina victims, I used Direcway/Hughes and I have to say that I was never happier to actually jump on a land-line internet connection when I moved back to Ohio. Mind you, I lived in an area that ironically I could only get DSL instead of Roadrunner from Warner Cable, but the delay was gone... That horrible 1 second delay... Now I have Roadrunner again, and I am happy!
          • I doubt it will get wires pulled your way but it might get some wireless going out or something. I too live in an area where my options are limited, Time warner who services everyone on the road that crosses mine less then 200 yards away told me it wasn't technologically feasible to service my house and Verizon refuse to check my location for service until I had a land line installed. They fought it until I complained to the public utilities commission (PUCO) and somehow, they realized I was within range fo

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by chrish ( 4714 )
          The definition for "high speed" and "broadband" in Canada seems to be "faster than 56kbps"; I've seen Rogers and Bell both offering "high speed" services that maxed out at about twice the speed of your typical modem connection. The cost differential between a dial-up account and real broadband (which I'm going to define as "at least 4Mbps down-stream") means these "high-speed lite" connections are aimed squarely at the 100% clueless, who will then learn that "high-speed" isn't worth the money because their

    • Basically, the gov'ner is bringing a backbone for internet to every county. There are quite a few counties, mainly in the SouthEast, that are very rural and poor. They basically are more like WV than the rest of Ohio. But, they'll have at least one pipe run to each county.

      Now, the distribution of those services aren't necessarily run by the state. Individual telcos may use them once the main line is run, which will probably include companies like Time Warner, Verizon, etc, because they have the capital

      • Re:they're actually going to profit from it (Score:4, Informative)

        by stinerman ( 812158 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @07:54PM (#20079457)

        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.

        • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

          by bladesjester ( 774793 )
          Strictland is indeed doing a good job of starting to turn things around after our last failure of a governor.

          I've actually had the pleasure of meeting the man a few times in personal and professional settings. Decent enough sort who actually seems to care about the people that he represents.

        • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          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.

          Personal information for 1 million citizens, complete with social security numbers. Yeah, great job.

          If you only knew...if you only had a clue as to how ate up the State of Ohio information technology is, you would crawl under your bed and shiver.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by chazbet ( 621421 )
            Poor IT security predated Strickland; the question is will he put people in place to fix it?

            • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

              by Anonymous Coward
              True, but auditors advised his office of the *complete lack* of data security well AFTER he took office. He did absolutely nothing; and he ordered nothing further to be done. Now that the feces has hit the fan, I'm sure something will be done. Its a little late for 1 mil people who lost their personal info though.

              If it sounds like I dislike Strickland, I do. Almost as much as his predecessor. Strickland wants to use a good program that was designed for business, government, innovation, etc. and turn it into

              • His ilk call it "bridging the digital divide" instead of "welfare handout". Watch what happens - he will pervert this program into "free broadband! - but only if you live in the projects".

                I don't have a problem with that.

                If this is indeed his plan, then he should say so. You've asserted that he will and have provided nothing to back up your claims. Indeed, we will see what happens. Usually stuff like this ends up making no difference to anyone, but it doesn't hurt to hope.

        • I don't know if good job is a word you will want to associate with him. Maybe a better job then the last guy but I don't think that should automatically qualify as a good job.

          One of the problems I have with him is that he is attempting to sell all the state's assets off and cash out the tobacco settlement programs to create programs that will lose natural funding after a few years. Granted, the states rainy day fund isn't what it used to be when he took office but he has already dipped into it one more then

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by afidel ( 530433 )
        I'm not sure how much this will help. Athens Ohio (home of OU) already has multiple DS3's to the commodity internet and a link to Internet2 yet the people outside of town for probably 50 miles in any direction have very little chance of having any broadband connectivity and so no way to tap into that bandwidth.
        • Except in The Plains where we actually do have 2 cable Internet providers to choose from, one of which has a peering agreement with the university. Not to mention Albany, which also has RoadRunner available. Or really anywhere north, for that matter. What with DSL available in Nelsonville, and surely something in Logan.
    • is that the devil is going to be in the details.

      I do *not* support replacing one monopoly with another. The state has the potential to essentially manage the natural monopoly of the lines to create a free market for services. I.e. inviting the telcos to offer services to their subscribers *over* the OBN instead of through their own. This is the way it works in my county and I have the choice between three different telephone service providers (over fiber/ATM-- circuit, not packet-switched), and something
    • I'm sure the telcos will try and use the courts to stop or cripple this service.

      I'm sure. Comcast and Qwest did it to Utopianet in 2004 with S.B. 66 [state.ut.us] Fortunately it's expired and Cities are now starting to join Utopianet fiber. Qwest is currently involved in multiple lawsuits against Utopia. What's screwy is they were invited to join it along with Comcast. It's like public roads. You can choose to do business with any company or their competitor. I guess competition is something they simply can't stom
  • ...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.
    • Oops, please ignore the second 'Specifically.' I meant to delete it after I reminded myself just what the new definition would be...
    • It will most likely become a part of a 10G fiber network that is currently providing gigabit up links to the state network to educational institutions. It is commonly refered to as the Ohio Supercomputer Network or formerly as the Third Frontier Network.

  • I can Only Hope... (Score:4, Informative)

    by morari ( 1080535 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @07:41PM (#20079321) Journal
    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

    • I'm an Ohio resident and am fairly pleased with what Ted has done so far

      Not including the mismanagement of 7.3% of Ohio [slashdot.org] resdients' social security numbers, I'm assuming? As another Ohio resident, that kind of irked me, personally. Besides that, I'm not sure that turning over broadband control to the state will yield much more than what we have now: a practically monopolistic and poorly run set of services with proprietary infrastructures. All that being said, if Mr. Strickland doesn't fall into any of t

      • Re:Now, let's be a little more cynical about this. (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Not including the mismanagement of 7.3% of Ohio [slashdot.org] resdients' social security numbers, I'm assuming?


        Yes, I'm sure Ted is personally responsible for that. How long was Taft in office again?
      • It was a program manager hired by the previous administration (Republican Governor Taft) who began the policy that led to the data breach. Governor Strickland had at least convened a panel to look into state computer security immediately after he took office and before this incident occurred. The panel had reported back with a number of recommendations which would have covered this problem, but it takes time for such recommendations to become actual policy and work their way into the day-to-day practices
    • I'm glad to see a state taking an initiative such as this to improve access to the internet given we still have so many areas still without adequate internet access, such as rural areas and so forth. Often there is not enough profit to be made in such areas for the telcos to give them much priority.

  • Alberta has done this already... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by j1ggy ( 1136125 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @07:48PM (#20079393)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by clarkn0va ( 807617 )
      And I can tell you first hand that it has done wonders in bringing broadband into homes that would otherwise have no hope of it. I work for a wireless ISP and without the Alberta Supernet we wouldn't have a business, or at least not on the scale that we presently enjoy, and in the future hope to enjoy. And I can name other small local companies that we compete with who also use the supernet to connect to their upstream provider. All this in an area far too remote to ever blip on the cable or telcos' radar.

      U

  • Just remember... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Chris Burke ( 6130 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @08:10PM (#20079587) Homepage
    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.

    • 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.
      There's a huge difference: The DoD doesn't sell jet fighters. Ohio is selling broadband.
      • There's a huge difference: The DoD doesn't sell jet fighters. Ohio is selling broadband.

        Bold emphasis mine, because first, ha ha ha ha! [reuters.com].

        That out of the way, I'll admit I was out on a limb because I didn't RTFA. And according to the article, they're leasing network access, as in paying a monthly fee for it, and allowing public and private entities to access it, as in giving it away for free. As in, the State of Ohio is spending taxpayer money to purchase broadband access for everyone, and they're spending

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jez9999 ( 618189 )
      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.

      Once the network is built, how long do ya think it'll be before some braindead governor comes along and sells it off to Verizon at al? The trouble is, it only takes one dumb decision like that to lose public infrastructure, a
      • Why would we have to wait for another governor? This maybe the plan all along. When strickland first got into office he started looking into selling off assets the state held. These assets included state parks and buildings and lands taken for tax debt among other things. It would surprise me if he isn't going to build this up just to sell it later.
    • If you look at an Internet last mile as two parts, 1) physical component 2) placement/power.

      Given the FCC stop stealing all of the air waves and gives an functional portion of the airwaves back to the people. A demand for cheap physical components will exist. People will put them on there roof tops and this will create a network. Not with the nearly useless low power units we can get at best buy and wall*mart, but the ones that can interact over 10 to 15 kilometers. Given this radio network, ISP's
  • 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!
  • 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
  • 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 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 t

  • No Hardware Partial Solution (Score:3, Interesting)

    by veektor ( 545483 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @09:34PM (#20080303)
    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
    • I live in Bloom Township, Fairfield County, Ohio.

      You have my sympathy :P

      (I'm in Ross, which is just as bad)
    • First, this isn't about getting roadrunner. But it about getting the ability to get roadrunner as well as other services that can be better then roadrunner. I have a business location I service that gets 10 meg service from SBC/ATT DSL which is far better then most road runner services.

      Next, I'm in rush creek township so I am a neighbor of yours. I was told by time warner that it wasn't financially feasible to run a run along the phone line right of way to get cable 200 yards up my road to my house. Like yo
  • 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?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )
      That's apples and oranges.

      The FCC's fundamental job entails the restrictions of rights, specifically the public right to use the spectrum. It prevents the public from using the spectrum and grants monopolies to private parties for a piece of the spectrum in a geographic area. The justification is utilitarian: the public benefits in this case by having its rights to use the spectrum curtailed because this enables companies to provide service over that spectrum. It then follows that if the private party g

  • IPv6 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Skapare ( 16644 ) on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @10:27PM (#20080743) Homepage

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

  • 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 cabl
  • 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, an

  • We have heard the people and have financing . . . (Score:4, Funny)

    by PolarIced ( 119874 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @12:03AM (#20081353)
    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?
         
  • 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!
  • 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?
  • As an Ohioan, I'm getting a kick out of these replies.

    Wait....wrong site.

  • This sounds great, but it's not. (Score:5, Informative)

    by ocbwilg ( 259828 ) on Thursday August 02, 2007 @07:33AM (#20083769)
    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?
  • 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 downl
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 :)

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