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Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Online, off wires
Many congrats to Cathy and Ann-Elise on Graham's arrival. He's certainly quite the cutie!
I'll do my best to hold down the fort while Cathy's away, though I can't promise quite the same level of scintillating web-savviness. Comments are welcome! If you'd prefer to send e-mail instead, my address is meghan(at)sevendaysvt.com.
While trying to get a sense of how Vermont's various municipal (or not-so-municipal, but community-based) wireless & broadband projects are progressing, I noticed that the Vermont Rural Broadband Project's list of groups working for Internet access doesn't give any info as to when it was last updated. I'm not sure how old this list is, but I wonder whether any of these projects will show up on town meeting agendas on March 7? If anyone from Calais, Glover, Tunbridge, Marshfield or any of the other towns listed happens to know, I'd love to hear about it.
I also recently discovered MuniWireless, a clearinghouse of info on municipal wireless projects worldwide. (Esme Vos, its founder and main author, was profiled in the Wall Street Journal's Technology Report on Monday.) Apparently county-wide wireless hot spots are nothing new; parts of Michigan and New Mexico already have high-speed networks spanning hundreds of square miles. But now the trend is coming East. The most recent locale to join the large-scale wi-fi fold? Suffolk County, New York — i.e., Long Island. Cawfee tawk via Skype? Who'd've thunk it?
February 15, 2006 at 08:03 PM in Wi-fi/Broadband in VT | Permalink
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Comments
Our new house is in Tunbridge, and we plan to attend town meeting, but I am completely ignorant on process as we are new to VT. We are VERY interested in getting broadband. Currently the only option is satellite. :( Thanks for the heads-up, Meghan.
Post Carbon has information on the plan on their site.
Posted by: scully | Feb 16, 2006 12:35:40 PM
Hey Meghan! Way to blog...
Wireless connectivity should adopted by all municipalites. Problem is, rural states such as ours may not have the budget or technicians to even get started. And it wouldn't be cost effective, considering the low population levels in some of these areas.
I'm happy enough that Burling Telecom is investing so much time and effort into creating a pay service. It'll be nice to have a local alternative to Adelphia. I don't mind shelling out for more options. Hopefully we'll be moving into their service area this year...
Posted by: casey | Feb 18, 2006 12:50:50 PM
Hi Meghan,
I live in Plainfield and in January we were about the third household to get connected to Cloud Alliance's new wireless broadband service (http://www.cloudalliance.com/2006/01/04/huge-announcement-installations-have-begun/). I don't know at what pace they are making installations, but it has been about 6 weeks now, so for residents in our area it is now only a matter of waiting for their turn on the list. Those who "invested" in the service by paying the first year upfront are first in line.
See their base station on Upper Road in Plainfield, and read more about the problems of bringing broadband to New England communities at:
http://www.newenglandfutures.org/issues/connections/sidebar4/
It has informatin about various broadband projects around New England and the country, and how important it is for New England to stay competitive by investing in universal broadband.
Christine
Posted by: Christine | Feb 20, 2006 1:40:42 PM
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