45
Above left:
Summit participants
will have plenty of time
to question Cole about
broadband's role in
economic development.
Rural Lifesavers
Te University of Michigan Medical School
sends staf to a reservation in North Dakota
to provide breast cancer screening. Prior to
installing a wireless broadband system, women
would travel up to 50
miles over gravel roads
or worse to be screened,
and then come back
again after the images
had been read in
Ann Arbor. With
broadband available,
the images are now
sent immediately to
Ann Arbor and immediately read by the experts
there. Te discussion between the women and
the local caregiver take place the very same day,
saving a trip and the time between discovery of
some problem and its treatment.
Olds Grows with Gigabits
Olds, Alberta is, well, rural. How rural? Te
nearest "city" is Red Deer. Heard of it? Yet
its population grew from 6700 to 8500 in the
years from 2005 to 2011. What does Olds have
that other small towns don't? Broadband, and
now gigabit broadband, provided by a for-
proft public-private partnership, O-NET. Te
monthly connect fee is about $50. All the profts
from O-NET stay in town, rebated to local
government to be used
for other projects.
Olds tried in vain
to get commercial
providers interested
before the local
agricultural college,
the farm association,
and the Chamber of
Commerce hatched their broadband system.
Tis morphed into O-NET, connected to the
Alberta provincial government's province-wide
SuperNet. Te cheap interconnection with the
rest of the
world allows cheap rates for consumers. But
the take rate goal was only about 30 percent
until Olds ofered the gig – a speed that the
incumbent could not match. Te goal now
is 50 percent in fve years, and eventually
100 percent.
Olds Alberta upped its
population 25 percent
in 5 years: Broadband!
Bevo, the ofcial mascot
of the UT Longhorns.
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