An effort is under way to bring high-speed Internet service to rural and remote parts of the San Joaquin Valley that until now have been stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide.
But once these areas have access to the service, then what?
Enter the San Joaquin Valley Regional Broadband Consortium. The group is using $450,000 in state funding to help rural homes and businesses take advantage of the service.
"The effects of what we do will be felt for many years in the future," said Mike Dozier, director of the Office of Community and Economic Development at California State University, Fresno.
The $450,000 -- which will come in three annual increments of $150,000 -- follows up on $46.6 million in federal money that was given last year to boost high-speed Internet access throughout the Central Valley.
Dozier said the federal money is for infrastructure.
The money, for instance, was slated to help extend fiber-optic and wireless broadband service from Yuba City to Bakersfield and through the Sierra Nevada.
A consortium of independent telephone companies called the Central Valley Independent Network also used some of the federal money for a 1,371-mile fiber-optic network.
The funds also helped pay for 12 new wireless nodes to serve remote areas of Fresno, Tulare, Kings and Kern counties.
Some 350 existing cellphone towers in the region will be boosted so they, too, can provide high-speed wireless access.
Larry Powell, Fresno County superintendent of schools, said high-speed Internet access is now coming to schools across the county, so they can have access to video streaming and other technologies.
The plan is to have homes in the remote areas connect to high-speed Internet provided through the schools.
"We're doing everything we can to get rid of the digital divide," he said.
Besides Fresno County, the San Joaquin Valley Regional Broadband Consortium -- an initiative of the California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley -- is working to get residents in Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Tulare counties connected sooner to broadband Internet.
Dozier likened it to bringing a brand-new technology to people steeped in a bygone way of doing things. Through pilot programs and work with school districts, these areas can learn how to take advantage of the new technology.
One way, for instance, is "telemedicine." Dozier said a rural area may not only lack a hospital, but doctors as well. With broadband Internet access, a nurse could do a physical examination on a patient at a clinic while a doctor at a different location watches -- and then develops a long-distance diagnosis.
The group also hopes to be an advocate for local efforts to improve Internet access, Dozier said.
The Tulare County foothill town of Three Rivers contacted the consortium for help with getting broadband access. Representatives of Three Rivers now plan to come to the consortium's Dec. 15 meeting to explain what the town needs.
The ultimate goal, Dozier said, is to expand high-speed Internet services to 95% of the Valley by the middle of the decade.
"Our side of it," he said, "is advocacy, education and collaboration."
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Autor(en)/Author(s): John Ellis
Quelle/Source: The Fresno Bee, 03.12.2011
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