Web Access: Gimme Speed and Lots of It

The News & Advance
Published: August 7, 2008

In the 21st century, you live or die by the speed of your connection to the Internet.

Economic progress and retention of businesses, not to mention an area’s ability to attract new employers, is dependent on reliable, fast and inexpensive connections to the Internet; it’s not the 1990s and 56kb dial-up just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Companies don’t just pull in the occasional e-mail anymore; communication between far-flung offices is now along the lines of video-conferencing over the Web. Fast connections allow businesses to locate in areas where the cost of living is lower for employees and the pace of life less frenetic for families, making places like Central Virginia competitive with more urban regions of the country. Speedy connections also make areas more attractive for individuals, as the family computer is quickly morphing into the family entertainment center.

But the very same attributes of rural America — its wide-open spaces, the rustic beauty, the peace and quiet — also are hindrances to the availability of multiple broadband options. Living on a farm in the middle of Campbell County, for example, pretty much cuts out any chance of cable broadband or DSL access. What’s left are expensive, often unreliable options.

Still, there’s a huge, pent-up demand for broadband access in rural America, and the wireless technology of the future could be a big boon to areas like Central Virginia. That’s what makes a study the Region 2000 Economic Development Council is about to embark on so important.

The council, headed by Bryan David, recently received a $35,000 grant to compile a region-wide database of all the tall structures that could host the antennas that could bring broadband to even the remotest portions of Bedford or Amherst counties.

From church steeples to municipal water towers, from silos at the farm down the road to multi-story buildings … all are assets that could host antennas that could “wire” the surroundings.

The emerging technology that could prove a boon to the unserved portions of Central Virginia is WiMaxx, sort of Wifi on steroids.

Whereas a Wifi Internet hotspot is usually just a single restaurant or coffee shop, the WiMaxx signal can cover a large geographic area, sometimes up to a mile and a half from the antenna itself. At that rate, a network of antennas can cover a large geographic area rather cheaply.

In the town of Appomattox, DigitalBridge Communications is pioneering the rollout of WiMaxx. Homes and business previously unable to get online anyway other than dialup are now finally cruising the Internet at broadband rates.

By cataloging the so-called vertical assets of Central Virginia on which signal-boosting antennas could be placed, Region 2000 hopes to make it easier for companies like DigitalBridge to build out their networks, rendering huge swaths of the region online-ready.

From an economic development perspective, the construction of such a wireless infrastructure is invaluable as secure, broadband access is crucial to businesses, both large and small. From the perspective of enhancing Central Virginia’s quality of life, it’s key to maintaining a growing population.

This $35,000 project may well turn out to be the most important grant any organization in Central Virginia has ever received.