Broadband Internet Effort for New River Valley Hits Snag
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By Paul Dellinger paul.dellinger@roanoke.com (276) 228-4752  One four-year regional effort to bring the future of telecommunications technology to the New River Valley may now be obsolete.  And that's mainly because of funding shortages and sore political feelings.
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By LAWRENCE SUSSMAN  The Metropolitan Builders Association of Greater Milwaukee is suing the Village of Jackson over its plans to form a municipal telecommunications utility that would provide high-speed Internet access.
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Companies don't seem interested in building public broadband infrastructure for small cities, so municipalities will have to get creative.
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InfoWorld - Despite the tribulations of launching a regional wireless Internet network, some cities are making progress by sharing their hard-won lessons.
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A plan to have private investors build a national wireless broadband network for emergency workers met resistance.
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An ambitious plan to equip Silicon Valley with wireless public broadband services is proceeding with great hopes but many challenges.The Wireless Silicon Valley project was the subject of a presentation at the MuniWireless conference in Santa Clara, Calif. on Tuesday afternoon. Expected to cost $100 million to $150 million, Wireless Silicon Valley involves developing an architecture covering 1,500 square miles. It would be used by around 40 cities in Silicon Valley, each of which has contributed $2,500 to seed the effort. While there are no officially defined boundaries, Silicon Valley is generally considered to be a span of California cities in the San Francisco Bay Area, including San Jose.The project's vision involves connecting anyone, anywhere, involving any device, said Seth Fearey, project lead for Wireless Silicon Valley and vice president of Joint Venture, Silicon Valley Network."We're going to move beyond the model of laptops connecting the Internet doing e-mail and the Web. We want to connect devices and things," Fearey said.The network would only function outdoors and provide capabilities ranging from citizen access to the Internet to provision of public services. Users would be able to maintain a connection if they linked up in Daly City, just south of San Francisco, and traveled to Gilroy 71 miles from San Francisco.Economic development is the top priority of Wireless Silicon Valley, with the idea being to connect small businesses, attract businesses, and make Silicon Valley an exciting place to be."People coming here for conventions would spend more money if they knew where to go," such as being able to find movie theaters via wireless access, said Fearey."We can use this network to help give them that information," he said.Benefits of the plan are to make a network that is much more useful and leverages economies of scale, one that deploys multiple technologies together, provides more revenue opportunities, and accommodates government staff.Challenges, however, include finding an owner/operator and operating on an unproven business model. Also, the network has a high cost to build and the needs of low-revenue areas must be balanced with those of high-revenue areas. The network also takes time to deploy."We're breaking new ground here," said Fearey. Investors want to see how the network will work and are struggling to determine how they will make moneyThe cities participating in the program are quite small, except for San Jose, Fearey said. "This is a big, big challenge," financially, he said.A request for proposal was issued, resulting in companies such as IBM and Cisco offering to provide equipment and Azulstar to operate the network. These vendors comprise the Metro Connect team that intends to provide the network infrastructure, own and operate it, and sell services. Azulstar, however, was not able to raise money to get the project moving. Now, additional operators are being sought.?The goal with the network is create lots of opportunities for the operator of the network to make money not just from consumer subscriptions and adverting but also from other services such as provision of point-to-point advertising.A variety of applications has been suggested, ranging from wireless reading of water meters to irrigation control and wireless parking meters that could have fluctuating prices based on the time of day.During an earlier panel session at the conference Tuesday, Joanne Hovis, president of Columbia Telecommunications, said that if Google acquires the 700-MHz frequencies to be auctioned off by the FCC, that could change the wireless market.Hovis noted there is much speculation about Google's plans. One audience member speculated Google could open up a wireless network for everybody.?"My personal opinion is I'm not sure Google is serious about bidding on that spectrum," Hovis said. It also would be a few years before Google could build its network, Hovis said.
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By gregstanmar@insightbb.com;Greg Stanmar  STREATOR - The idea of giving the entire town free access to high- speed Internet connection is being proposed for LaSalle and Livingston county municipalities by Streator City Manager John Kolata.
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The federal government is challenging an appeals court ruling that, officials fear, would stifle the expansion of cable broadband services by burdening the providers with new regulations.
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The internet is coming up the toilet The idea of laying fibre along sewer lines has been sloshing around the networking business for years. Now a UK firm claims today's broadband will seem a trickle compared to the torrents of data it'll soon offer.â¦
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ISPs say bringing broadband to rural sites doesn't deliver sufficient return on investment.
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Mayor Kerry Prendergast is going to make broadband a key issue in her re-election campaign. Privately owned telco CityLink says that for $5.5 million, it could build a 53-kilometre suburban network.
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A cash-flow problem in a federal program is hindering the ability of many schools and libraries to pay for Internet service.
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By Danielle Sottosanti, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson  Jun. 14--Oro Valley's Town Council on Wednesday night will consider drastically increasing water-connection fees for new homes and businesses -- a move that has for months been the center of controversy between the town and developers.
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By Helen Bebbington Contributing Writer  There was a time when Sandy Rash, 64, of Centerville would have to ask friends to help her surf the Internet for information. Her friends would encourage Rush to get her own computer.
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Ambitious plans for big Wi-Fi networks to provide free or low-cost wireless Internet access are being abandoned or scaled back by US cities as the economics of the deals turn out to be more challenging than expected.
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By JUDY O'ROURKE  SANTA CLARITA -- The days of patronizing certain food or coffee joints to tap a wireless Internet feed may soon be past, with citywide access on the horizon.
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After four years of painful decline, the area's telecommunications business is starting to come back.  Most new entries are getting by without the dollars that used to flow from venture capital funds or from going public.-The Washington Post