Symposium on Connectivity - Part II
Hopes are high for Technology Symposium II
By SCOTT BAUGHMAN Daily Courier Staff Writer
RUTHERFORDTON - Many plans were made at the first ever Technology Symposium in February. With Technology Symposium II just around the corner, Tim Will and those at Foothills Connect are incredibly pleased that many of their plans are coming to fruition.
“The mandate for Foothills Connect has always been to use technology to help create economic opportunities for those hit hard by the collapse of the textile and furniture industries,” Will said. “And as we’ve looked at the situation, we’ve studied the current markets, we know that the biggest obstacle people are having to face with regard to the new knowledge based economy is that of connectivity. And specifically we knew we had to get broadband access to the world installed here in the county. This was what we started planning at Technology Symposium one.” Almost one year later, the main plan conceived that day is on its way to being completed.
“We formed a 70-person committee, full of all the community leaders, the movers and shakers in the broadband field and many educational leaders,” Will said. “After numerous meetings and 90 days later we came out with a plan to connect the county to a fiber optic network to provide broadband access to everyone. It was ambitious, it was revolutionary — and it was absolutely vital to economic growth in the county.” The plan called for miles of fiber optic cable, cooperation between schools and fire departments and all manner of logistic concerns, not to mention it wouldn’t be cheap. “As fate would have it, the Golden Leaf Foundation did a study about their money and found that Rutherford County, along with a few other counties was not getting its fair share of the foundation’s money,” Will said. “The county was asked to submit projects that would ‘move the needle’ when it comes to the local economy and so we put together a 12 page grant describing our plan. The idea called for an extension of the great work done by Pangea and the schools in Rutherford County. Connecting the schools to a high speed fiber-optic network was just Step one. “Step two would involve running a fiber-optic line from each school out to the nearest fire station or EMT facility,” he said. “This would extend the fiber another 50 - 60 miles. Finally, a wireless provider will be sought to propagate wireless Internet access from those points at speeds equal to DSL technology.” Golden Leaf officials were impressed by the plan and even more impressed by the level of cooperation. “They awarded us $1.44 million to complete this project,” Will said. “And it is well on it’s way to being completed even today. That was the focus of the first symposium, to educate the people and help them see how important connectivity was both for education and for economic growth.
“When Symposium Two meets in January, our focus will be on making this new network more reliable and reaching out to form a more regional network.” Will went on to explain how having other counties connected could add to Rutherford County’s network. “Fiber-optic networks actually work a lot better when they’re in a ring shape rather than a tree with branches, which the tree is what we have now,” Will said. “When the ring exists, the individual routers will redirect the signal away from a break in the line and make sure that no one experiences any data loss except those right at the break. It’s almost like reversing the flow in a pipeline to make the water flow back to the other side. If we can complete more of these rings it will be great for security and reliability in the network.”
Contact Baughman via email at sbaughman@thedigitalcourier.com
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