See the latest!
Check out MacTelCom:
Sacramento has fiber to the home!
Also See:Videotele.com See Stevens Point Community Access:
A hearing on the fiberopitc system was held Tuesday, October 23, 2001 at 7:30 PM in the School district Board Room, by the McMinnville City Council. Over 70 citizens attended, filling all the chairs and part of the waiting area. At least ten persons testified both for and against the proposal to expand the system.
MTC Secretary, Wes Caspers, testified as follows:
Testimony for the Public Hearing on
Telecommunications Services
Right now, as a rider in the back seat of our Model T, I see three drivers with their feet on the three floor pedals. One is a brake, one is a forward or reverse pedal and the other a clutch for neutral. I see no hand on the throttle. If some one of the drivers would push the throttle a little we could move ahead.
To the argument that only private companies should provide internet services I ask the "City Fathers." if they could seriously contemplate that the fire protection, police, streets, library services, and schools all be privatized? What would be the public reaction if only "subscribers" could call on the fire department.? What would be the public reaction if the schools charged tuition to cover all costs of education? Would the public accept toll roads or a service charge to use the streets of McMinnville? Would the police only respond to a burglary if the victim paid a fee? What should be the cost of a library card if all books were purchased by the users? How silly can we get in suggesting that all public services be privatized?
Our first meeting this fall was Thursday, Oct. 11, McMinnville Fire-hall, 7:00 PM.
The program l featured Ralph Schultz, the City Manager of Sherwood, and their systems consultant who discussed with us the plans Sherwood is considering regarding a fiber-optics netword for that city. Sixteen citizens and program members attended including Mayor Gormley and City Council President Bob Payne.
Check out these sites for further information:
Sherwood Web
PEG Access Answers
And, The Los Angeles Mayor Reports on Energy:
In:West Hollywood!
And in Paragould!:
Paragould Water and Light
Considerable progress has been accomplished on our Third Goal, the Not-for-Profit Public Access studio, with the establishment of the McMinnville Community Media Board. We need now to assist in obtaining funding for the program they have outlined. Several local donors have provided office equipment and supplies. We wish to thank them. A web site for the studio now exists, it is:
The Other McMinnville,( Tenn.)
REGRETS: We share in the grief of the loss of Alan Jones. He attended several of out sessions. We regarded him highly as a member. He was supportive of our position though was reluctant to seem to oppose the W&Light leadership.
Fiber to the home at Christmas!
[CAPITALISM MAGAZINE.COM] For the past few years, telecom companies have been working diligently to provide us with pseudo-broadband Internet connections over copper (DSL) and cable (cable modem). I use the term "pseudo-broadband" because the existing telecom infrastructure can only provide speeds of up to 1.5 megabits per second. ( In theory, cable modem can provide up to 2.5 megabits per second, but in reality nobody obtains these speeds because the shared aspects of cable modem results in lower speeds.)
No doubt improvements will be made over the next few years to squeeze more out of copper and cable, but it doesn't matter, because fiber to the home is coming, and it will be here faster than most people predict. In case you're wondering, FTTH provides download speeds of up to 155 megabits per second -- that's 100 times faster than the pseudo-broadband DSL and cable modem connections. Can you say, instantaneous data transfer? Can you say, video on demand?
SBC and Bellsouth are two of the telecom giants pioneering FTTH. The initial markets are new residential construction, because you don't have to dig up streets in an existing neighborhood to lay the fiber optic cable. SBC plans to wire 6,000 homes in a community in San Francisco by late next year. Initial net connections will only be about 5 mb / second -- far from the theoretical maximum of 155 mb / second, but still blazingly fast compared to DSL and cable modem.
BellSouth is also pioneering FTTH with a trial project involving more than 400 people in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody. These individuals have Internet connections of about 10 mb / second!
No doubt there will be stumbles along the way to providing FTTH. No doubt there are challenges to making FTTH cost effective. No doubt it will take years before most residences in America have true broadband Internet access.
But FTTH is inevitable, for a number of reasons:
1.
Speed. Nothing else comes close. Not copper, not cable, not wireless. Speed will find a way.
2.
Demand. Once FTTH begins to worm its way into the residential infrastructure, home buyers will seek it out. Years ago, when the cable television infrastructure was being deployed, the availability of cable in a neighborhood became an important purchase consideration for homebuyers. The same thing will happen with FTTH. Homebuyers will seek it out, and within the next few years, FTTH will become the standard for all new construction. This will lay the groundwork for FTTH to spread rapidly via the principle of competitive disadvantage.
Good News for MTC:
According to the June 13 News Register The McMinnville City Council agreed Tuesday to award $5,000 to the private non-profit McMinnville Telecommunications Committee. The money will be used either to help fund a feasibility study on extention of a full-service fiber-optics network in all county households and businesses or to send two committee members to a workshop in Minneapolis at an estimated cost of $4,500.
http://www.mactelcom.org/
Sacramento
Stevens Point Wisconsin
RECENT NEWS:
Three years ago, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley established the Mayor's Council of Technology Ad visors, a group of 70 individuals from the public, private, and academic sectors who were charged with attacking "the digital divide" and bringing more jobs into the city. The result was CivicNet, a public-private project designed to bring fiber to every neighborhood in Chicago.
For those who don't know, I retired from teaching at Linfield College in 1983, and qualify as a senior citizen. As a professor I could easily lecture for 50 minutes on this subject, three days a week for a full semester. Which I actually did back in the 70s. I will try to finish tonight in five minutes!
I am the Secretary of the McMinnville Telecommunication Committee and the web master of
The current network serves primarily the administrators of the City, the School Board, and the Water and Light Department. It should serve us all. It does serve many school students while they are in the school buildings.
Yesterday I received my property tax statement indicating some amounts to be paid for city government, county government, and the schools and colleges. They went up a little from last year as they seem to do each year. I am not objecting to paying these taxes because of the services they provide. I would not object to paying a few more dollars to support the expansion proposed for the same reason, to provide services for TV, telephone, and the internet.
I presently pay private enterprise well over $100 per month for these same services and believe those costs would decrease if the monopolies had substantial competition. The proposed expansion of the fiberoptic network could provide this competition as well as providing a source of income for the City of McMinnville and the Water and Light Department.
One objection to the expansion offered by those opposed is that there is no great demand from the public for expansion. It occurred to me that an analogy could be made by referring to Henry Ford and the Model T automobile. Henry Ford did not build that car because of public demand! He had a vision, built it, and then there was a demand. I thought to check my facts on this by "surfing the web" and found much information including the attached "handout " about a book on the subject.
See: Henry Ford Quotes
One part of moving ahead could be the utilization of the network to provide distance education for children in the school district. This distance education could be well supervised by the teachers as well as parents.
I will conclude with a little joke. Mom saw her kids sitting on the couch playing with their electronic games. She told them to go outside and play. So they did, carrying the games with them, and played the electronic games outside. (Surfing the web would be a broader experience than the games if these kid's terminals were connected to the internet.)
MEETINGS
See "Wired City": LaGrange
Telecom Info News Letter
Zipp, Grant County WA
The Zephyr.com
Re Distance Education:
Have a look at ZIPP:
Grant County PUD (Washington)
A Western Wisconsin Cooperative
Other Cooperatives
Also see:Public Access Association
Eugene Access Video
Tacoma Click!
West Hollywood
Paragould City Light Water & Cable
Paragould Habitat for Humanity Project
Cedar Falls Utilities
WHAT WE HAVE DONE
McMinnville, Tenn
New Information on Fiber Optics:
Fiber Optics
Our Other MTC Web Page.
Contact us by e-mail or phone:
President: Frank Nelson:fnelson@linfield.edu
Vice President: Dan Cochran:freedom@viclink.com
Treasurer: Thelma Butzlaff: Phone 503-474-0635
Past President: Chuck Howell:lacey@viclink.com
Secretary/Webmaster: Wes Caspers:
Email address: caspersw@viclink.com