County-wide Wireless Broadband

An anonymous submitter sent in this story about a Maryland county providing wireless broadband to everyone, well, almost everyone, anyway. The article doesn't mention how much the service costs, and I don't see anything on the network's website either. There is a good page of information about the network, though.

Comments

Err...

[NiftyNews]

Gee, I'm glad no one wasted the $2 on a phone call to this place to get some relevent info before posting it for half a million people to read ;)

Price for service

[client32]

It clearly states the price on the web site. It is "almost free"

Press update

[swagr]

The government has now scrapped tempest and optical time-domain eavesdropping techniques.
They report the technilogies as being "no longer required [now that those fools broadcast everything]".

I read that as...

[Anonymous Coward]

"country-wide" and clicked through faster than you can shake a lamb by its tail three times.

Now I know how all those people feel outside the U.S. when they click through on subjects with "universal" in the title applying to (most of) the 48 contiguous states :(

Wow! Cumberland?

[nakhla]

My girlfriend is from Cumberland, and she's a total non-geek. She won't believe it when I tell her that her hometown is mentioned on Slashdot.

Cumberland is very far out of the way, though. It's a small city in the mountains of western Maryland. You can't even get decent cellular phone reception out there. In fact, I don't think they have any digital coverage at all.

The cost of living is low there, and it's a nice place to live if you like the small-town atmosphere and don't mind semi-rural communities too much. However, the lack of high-tech jobs and broadband does inhibit some people from moving there. It's good to see one of these factors being removed. Perhaps it will bring more telecommuting to the area!

Re:Looks like costs are covered by taxes

[realgone]

Far as I can tell, the industryclick.com article doesn't suggest Allconet would be funded through county tax revenues. Rather, the new network would be operated as a utility -- i.e., you use it, you pay for it; you don't, you don't.

(Of course, there's always a third option: you use it, you don't pay for it, and you end up in a nice jail funded by county taxes. So indirectly, you might be onto something there...)

Re:Wow! Cumberland?

[tswinzig]

My girlfriend is from Cumberland, and she's a total non-geek. She won't believe it when I tell her that her hometown is mentioned on Slashdot.

And by your own admission, she won't care, either.