Virginia has provided a $35,000 grant to gather a list of towers, tall buildings, silos, smokestacks and steeples in Central Virginia. Many such structures already have communications antennas, or could become sites for equipment that relays computer signals through the air.
While densely populated regions of Virginia already have high-speed computer service by cable or other landline, rural areas do not. Wireless communication offers the best hope in underserved areas for the fast connection that employers require.
Knowing all the potential locations for antennas is a key part of improving broadband communications in parts of Virginia that are underserved — or not served at all — by the Internet, said Bryan David, executive director of the Region 2000 Economic Development Council.
The study “won’t mean much to the household and business that already have broadband connections,” David said. “It means the world to those that do not.”
The $35,000 grant came from the Virginia Productivity Investment Fund, and the study will be completed by the Region 2000 Partnership based in Lynchburg.
The study includes the counties of Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell, the cities of Bedford and Lynchburg, and the towns of Altavista, Amherst, Appomattox, Brookneal and Pamplin.
Although many communications companies and Internet service providers have searched out potential antenna locations on their own, a complete list of sites does not exist, David said.
Local and state governments own some of the antenna locations on high-elevation towers and buildings, while others belong to private owners.
Existing antennas operate with permits from the Federal Communications Commission, but their locations are not always readily known.
Sometimes private companies lease space for their antennas on structures owned by another company, explained Harry Schickling of Bedford County, a member of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s Broadband Roundtable. The roundtable was set up last year to spread broadband access to every part of Virginia. One of its early tasks was to define broadband as any service, wired or wireless, that moves data at 768 kilobits per second or faster, Schickling said.
That access can be tricky in places such as Bedford County because of their mountains, valleys and small populations, Schickling said. Internet service providers need large numbers of customers in order to be profitable.
The grant will pay for the workers’ hours involved in gathering the data from such public-domain sources as communications and aviation agencies that keep lists of water tanks, radio towers and other tall structures. Other data will come from local community-development agencies.
The nine-month project will meld data from the two sources into a Geographic Information System database that will include zoning information, a structure’s elevation at its base and top, ownership data and contact information, David said.
Other funds from the grant will pay for work at Virginia Tech, which has the GIS hardware and software to perform hard information technology work, David said.
Schickling said existing structures provide the best hope for deploying faster service, because antennas can be mounted without cluttering the landscape and without long waits for construction permits.
David said Region 2000 was able to get the state grant partly because of cooperation among business, government and educational leaders. “We are known throughout the commonwealth for that collaboration,” David said.
The result could be more jobs, David said.
“There is empirical evidence, in a study by the Brookings Institution in 2007, that economic output and job growth are favorably influenced by broadband’s availability,” David said.
“That leads me to believe the more we can do to provide broadband on a regular basis, the better it will be for this region’s economy,” he said.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Ray Reed
Quelle/Source: The News and Advance, 04.08.2008
