The economic benefits I know of <div>are anecdotal, but I can provide </div><div>those interested with the e-mail </div><div>address of a person in the area </div><div>that is familiar with the project,</div><div>has the service, a hard IT background,</div>
<div>and lives and works in the area. I'm</div><div>sure that what he doesn't know off</div><div>hand he can provide pointers to.</div><div><br></div><div>There is a company website: <a href="http://lusfiber.com/">http://lusfiber.com/</a>,</div>
<div>and LUSFiber lists key people that could be </div><div>contacted. </div><div><br></div><div>That I know of, the system, which is</div><div>symmetrical by the way - e.g., 50 Mbps</div><div>up, and 50 Mbps down - is now being</div>
<div>used by movie people to access a </div><div>supercomputer center. And businesses</div><div>in general can get the 100 Mbps service.</div><div><br></div><div>I have to believe that something like this </div><div>would be of interest to the "miracle mile"</div>
<div>of medical facilities in GR. I suspect that</div><div>GR or Lansing would be the key candidates</div><div>in MI now, most other cities being either </div><div>too small, or economic basket cases.</div><div><br></div>
<div><a href="http://multi.media.illinois.edu/ng/J480fall2009/broadbandinternet/InternetAccess/Example_of_a_fiber_network.html">http://multi.media.illinois.edu/ng/J480fall2009/broadbandinternet/InternetAccess/Example_of_a_fiber_network.html</a></div>
<div><br></div><div>One of the references on the LUSFiber</div><div>website. The ability to link businesses,</div><div>public facilities, like libraries, and </div><div>individuals together at high rates </div><div>is likely beneficial, but it's apparently</div>
<div>hard in general to make a specific measure</div><div>of these things. Greenspan once </div><div>commented that the Internet was </div><div>clearly having a positive impact on</div><div>business, but he didn't know how to </div>
<div>measure it. A specific case, a person</div><div>said that before the Internet it was </div><div>difficult to get a bid or two on steel for</div><div>a bridge his business wanted to build.</div><div>Today it's routine to get a dozen bids.</div>
<div>That doesn't argue for speed per se,</div><div>but a high quality system is pretty </div><div>clearly enabling technology.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div> -- Bob</div><div><br></div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div>
<br></div><div> </div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 2:00 PM, AJ <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:aj.wasi@gmail.com">aj.wasi@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
It would be interesting to see if such a push for local fiber could be done in Grand Rapids or anywhere else in Michigan. Bob, you mentioned economic benefits, were there any hard numbers for the economic increases?<div>
<div></div><div class="h5"><br><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 12:22 PM, Adam Tauno Williams <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:awilliam@whitemice.org" target="_blank">awilliam@whitemice.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
<div><br>
<br>
> Anyway, it's not clear whether other<br>
> towns could duplicate this achievement.<br>
> GR could not even bring off a 1.5 Mbps<br>
> WiFi system.<br>
<br>
</div>Many issues were involved in that [and replicated in many other places]<br>
failure. But WiFi was available for 2009 Art Prize, and will be<br>
available for 2010 Art Prize.<br>
<br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
grlug mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:grlug@grlug.org" target="_blank">grlug@grlug.org</a><br>
<a href="http://shinobu.grlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/grlug" target="_blank">http://shinobu.grlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/grlug</a><br>
</blockquote></div><br>
</div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>
grlug mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:grlug@grlug.org">grlug@grlug.org</a><br>
<a href="http://shinobu.grlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/grlug" target="_blank">http://shinobu.grlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/grlug</a><br></blockquote></div><br></div>