Bloomington-Normal Technology Initiative

2004-11-22T07:40:00.000-08:00

< style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">At our last meeting we talked about holding a number of meetings were we would concentrate on providing specific information to the group regarding Broadband deployment, technology and policy. Here is what I propose: <>Meetings to begin at 10:00 in the morning on the first Wednesday of the month starting in January. Each meeting will consist of a one hour presentation session followed by 30 to 45 minutes of question and answer. In some case we may have more than one speaker or presenter.

January 5 2005 -- Existing Assets and Plans. Presentation by local Telco’s and Broadband Service Providers and Dave LeLande, (an Technology entrepreneur who has previously proposed a project for the area) including what assets they have installed, what capabilities they have to provide high speed service, and their plans for future service.

February 6, 2005 -- Community Models. Presentation by other communities, describing their efforts, models and progress in establishing a community wide broadband and or wireless initiative. Some communities that are implementing projects or are in the process include Peoria, Rockford, Cedar Falls, Iowa. We would invite them to come and provide us with their models and presentation.

March 2, 2005 – Legal & Regulatory Climate. Presentation by legal and regulatory experts on the stablishment and development of community networks and wireless meshes. Jim Baller of the law firm of Baller & Herbst of Washington D.C. has been at the forefront of this issue and could probably brought in as a speaker. In addition a speaker from the Illinois Commerce Commission could be brought in.

April 6, 2005 – Economic Development Impact. Presentation by Edward Feser and Timothy Green of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who have been commissioned by the Lt. Governor’s office to develop a report on recommendations for universal broadband access. In addition, other reports regarding the impact on economic development can be presented as well.

<>This is my idea of a schedule we can speed it up or slow it down depending upon how quickly we want to move. One option would be to move the meeting to twice a month to get the schedule completed twice as fast.

Illinois Broadband Report

2004-11-11T08:24:00.000-08:00

Here is the website for obtaining the Illinois Broadband report by Dr. Edward Feser mentioned in the previous article:

http://www.state.il.us/ltgov/pdf/IllinoisOnline.pdf

Connecting Communities Conference

2004-11-11T08:14:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I attended the a mini-conference sponsored by the University of Illinois Extension Service at Champaign-Urbana. The title of the conference was “Creating Connected Communities”, and was partly sponsored by the Lt. Governors Office of Rural Affairs. The morning session opened with a report commissioned by the Lt. Governors office titled “Illinois Online: Recommendations for Universal Broadband Access”.

The paper was prepared by Edward Feser (http://www.urban.uiuc.edu/faculty/feser/) and Timothy Green from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and dated October 2004.

The report says that many smaller towns as well as selected areas of within the State’s metropolitan areas lack access to broadband service despite ongoing rollout of digital subscriber line (DSL) and cable modem services by telecommunications companies and cable providers. In some cases the service is available but not affordable. The recommendations of the report say that Illinois’ Broadband strategy should: 1) encourage innovative local and regional solutions to broadband provisioning rather than top-down plan for universal deployment; 2) remain neutral with respect to technologies and provider-types; and 3) include development of the necessary administrative capacity to implement programs with maximum flexibility and effectiveness. There are other recommendations in the body of the report and we hope to have a full copy of the report available on-line or a link to a website.

Other programs included the following: Innovative Telehealth Projects, Distance Learning Options and Demonstrations, Coalescing an IT Agenda for West Central Illinois, and Innovative Community Projects, which included a presentation by Ameren regarding their experiment with Broadband over Power Lines (BPL). The last seminar was by Dr. John Lumpkin, former Director of Public Health for the State of Illinois and now Senior Vice President and Director of the Health Care Group for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. His compelling presentation was called: “The Role of Health Informatics in Improving Health and Health Care.”

Overall it was an interesting and informative conference. I was refreshingly impressed by a presenter, Mr. Richard Schmidt, who along with his family has owned the Home Telephone Company in St. Jacob, Illinois. The Home Telephone Company is one of 48 phone companies providing dial tone in the State of Illinois! The company serves 1,100 customers in a 52 square mile area, and Mr. Schmidt claimed to know all of his customers personally. How’s that for customer service. Dial-up internet service was first offered to their customers in 1995. Since then they have converted approximately 64% of their customers to DSL. They plan to be able to offer all of their customers’ fiber optic internet service within the next two years. They also offer cable television service and wireless internet access to neighboring Highland, Illinois. The Home Telephone Company obviously isn’t waiting for anyone to provide the highest quality internet speed and affordable access to their community and businesses! You can see their website at www.hometel.com.

Here are some other websites that might interest you:

www.dslreports.com

http://dslforum.com/

www.muniwireless.com

<>http://www.baller.com/library-articles.html
this site has good articles of a legal nature on the regulatory issues surrounding municipal broadband and wireless activities. Mr. Baller is well known as a national expert in this area.

--Marty Vanags

Mission/Vision for Technology in our Community

2004-11-09T07:49:00.000-08:00

I received a response from one of the participants of the November 4th meeting, Galen Crow, the Executive Director of ISU's Extended University and Director of Research and Sponsored Programs. He suggested we center our vision for Broadband Technology in the Bloomington Normal Community and McLean County using the following themes:

Primary Mission of the Broadband Initiative that seemed to come through: Increase economic development and quality of life through a cooperative community-based telecommunications infrastructure.

As far as unmet needs to be addressed to achieve the mission - these seemed to be the reoccurring items - not necessarily in priority order.

1. Lower than commercial costs for broadband to "small" businesses, startups, incubators. Goal is to stimulate job growth among existing small companies and hope to attract or grow new businesses.

2. Lower costs and universal access for all local schools. Goal is to improve quality of life in hopes of attracting quality workers - long term benefit of better prepared local workforce thru improved schools.

3. Free Internet access to disadvantaged individuals. Goal is improve quality of life and improve local workforce.

4. Broadband access to rural communities and individuals. Goal is to further develop and improve agricultural base but also to allow more tele-commuting - also to attract certain type of knowledge workers/businesses.

5. Create community/region planning process for technology/communications infrastructure. Goal is to continually monitor and improve based on technological advancements, environmental opportunities, and needs recognition.

Finally one caution as we move forward we need to examine our community assets, needs and desires -- and maybe not be so envious of Peoria Next. We should be envious of the fact they they seem to coordinate efforts better. But the Next project itself is the outcome of several circumstances unique to Peoria: 1) an underemployed skilled workforce, 2) willingness of Caterpillar to share patents off the shelf for commercialization. Our assets and challenges are different - and solutions and opportunities will likewise differ.

I would like to know what you all think of this. Is this a framework for moving forward? Submit your opinions here.

We have to start somewhere...

2004-11-08T09:27:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday, November 4, 2004 a group of interested people from the Bloomongton-Normal business, institutional and governmental community came together to discuss the issues of Broadband connectivity and its relationship to economic development. A frank discussion ensued and it was decided that further discussion is necessary, additional education and knowledge is needed and the ideas and topics are worth pursuing.

This Blog will be a forum for further discussion by those participants as well as anybody who cares. Enter your thoughts, comments and contributions here and we can move forward. What better place than this forum, on the internet, to discuss this topic.