Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Wally Bowen, head of the Mountain Area Information Network, has a column in today’s Raleigh News & Observer about the need to address the lack of broadband Internet service to rural areas. Here’s a portion:
Local networks hire local folks; absentee networks “parachute” crews in for short-term work. Customer-support jobs in local networks are local, not outsourced to India. Network management is local, reversing a rural “brain drain” as absentee networks long ago consolidated management in hub cities like Atlanta and Chicago.
In addition, local networks boost economic growth via social capital formation and innovation.
MAIN illustrates this edge. In 1995, most residents and businesses outside Asheville had to call long-distance to get to the Internet. With a federal grant, MAIN placed servers in 14 counties to provide Internet access with no long-distance charges.
Graham County, one of Appalachia’s most remote areas, presented a special dilemma. Should our server go in the library and enable the first public Internet access, or in the new community college annex where local students, for the first time, could take classes without a two-hour commute to the main campus in Cherokee County?
Our board member, a local computer dealer, proposed placing the server at the library and using a new wireless technology to link the college annex. Thus, in 1996, little-known Wi-Fi technology was deployed in this remote corner of Appalachia. The board member became the region’s first wireless broadband dealer and consultant.
More recently, a local developer was converting an abandoned school into artists’ studios. In an artists’ haven like Asheville, this was a sure bet. But this school was 30 minutes north of Asheville — in Marshall, population 846 — on an island in the French Broad River. Artists love the beauty and seclusion of the place, but they expect broadband.
Getting a reliable estimate from the non-local telecom companies was a shot in the dark. But MAIN, in partnership with the local electric co-op, took a fiber line to Marshall and to provide plentiful broadband — via wireless — to Marshall High Studios, which is thriving. Across the river, the town is awakening from decades of economic decline.
The developer also took our advice to run ethernet cabling during renovation to accommodate the Web of the future. This sharing of local expertise — this social capital — is not dispensed from call-centers in India.
