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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."
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.
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.
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.
The enemies of Democracy are
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
The game.
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.
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
He appears to actually represent the people he is supposed to represent, I voted for him. Closest thing to a true 'liberal' in my opinion.
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).
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
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?