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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."
I'm sure the telcos will try and use the courts to stop or cripple this service.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Suits can only be laundered
Ted
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
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
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.
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.
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.
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.
We are all just people.
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
They should require that this network be fully IPv6 functional right from the start.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
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?
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?
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?
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 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?