Doug’s Dynamic Drivel

We are continuing on our path to bring better high-speed networking to Rossland. We are very interested in building a Wi-Max type network to cover the entire city and neighboring ski hills.The tech committee I sit on met last week and the essential dilemma became apparent: how do we build community involvement or buy-in? There are two basic approaches we can take

• Go after big users
• go after kids and by extension their families

The problem with the first one is that we are primarily a residential and tourism based economy with only limited number of potential big users. Getting buy in from the residents for the cost of building an open access public Wi-Max network for, from their perspective, the primary benefit of businesses is not an easy thing. However if you can build a business case on that basis then you have a better chance for success as the businesses will carry the bulk of the ongoing financial load.

The problem with the second one is that it’s really the kids who want more than DSL or Cable can deliver and their parents do not, yet see the benefit. They see that they already have DSL or Cable “broadband” and why do they need more. Even if you point out to them that they can go for the triple play (Phone, Video, Data) over that one connection and save money in doing so they see it as too much hassle to make those changes. An additional problem is that local smaller businesses who only do business locally do not see a great advantage to coming onboard.

I think the second way is still the way to go, and it’s in the way you do it that you build public buy-in. The real benefit of a high-speed network will be felt by the younger generations, those in their teens, twenties and thirties. They are the ones that are building online businesses and making use of all the convergences (mashups) taking place.

There are a lot of communities in this area that are pursuing their own solutions and I think it is very important to build a ery high-speed local area network that connects them all. If we can go that route we can make use of local community portals to build intra-community marketplaces and inter-community competition.

Back in their heyday Nortel Networks advanced this type of concept with their P-LAN (Public Local Access Network) concept and which, early in 2000, I wrote a white paper on for a previous employer. I still believe this is the path to take in order to build a maximum of community buy-in and community benefit. There is a lot of rivalry around her between cities and towns. Having an individual portal for each community, but a portal that can also be reached from outside of the community, both builds local involvement and makes the resources of that community more apparent to those who are outside of the community.

One thing I’d like to see is a local gaming server set up in each community accessible only to those on the LAN and then promote inter-community competitions. That will get the kids involved and draw in kids who aren’t as computer aware, giving them more exposure. The more exposure they get the more ideas they have on how to take “it” further. Kids need exposure to the net at an early age. It builds entrepreneurial talent. Anyone following the 2006 Olympics is probably familiar with Dale Begg-Smith who won Gold for Australia in Men’s Moguls. Dale is a Canadian who at age 13 started his own Internet marketing company, a company now worth around $40 Million. He’s not unique in that respect.

If families around here want their kids to stay locally, when they’re grown up, they need to realize that there has to be jobs and opportunities here. The single best way of ensuring that is to build a very high-speed network. Such a network will attract new businesses from outside the region who are looking to take advantage of the outdoor lifestyle here and, more importantly, it will give those kids with entrepreneurial talents a means of exercising those talents locally, creating even more jobs.

What do you think? How would, or are, you building community buy-in for a publicly owned high-speed network?