Archive: News

People in Tompkins County with access to Time Warner's Roadrunner service are generally satisfied with their Internet access.  But neighbors -- who might live literally next door, but can't get  that access -- are left with expensive, less satisfying choices ranging from very slow dialup access to satellite, cell tower, spotty DSL availability, or wifi access.  Even Roadrunner users experience slowdowns based on usage on limited available bandwidth.  Hurf Sheldon has been representing the Town of Lansing in various projects that have the potential to bring competitive high speed access to rural areas here.

"Time Warner really does have an extensive (installation) in Lansing," Sheldon told the Lansing Town Board Wednesday.  "But they won't extend it even though it would make financial sense for them.  There is no other competitor and there is not a strong cable commission in the county any more.  Everyone's abdicated responsibility for prompting these companies to make an investment in our communities."

County and municipal officials declined to participate in the Southern Tier East Regional Planning and Development Board initiative this week.  That initiative would develop an 11-county open access fiber network through an application for federal stimulus funding.  But county officials recently learned that the initiative would only provide an Internet backbone at a high cost to the taxpayers, but would not cover the 'final mile' -- the piece that connects the internet to homes and businesses.

"Apparently it would cost up front $861,000 plus if we had been involved in this grant," says Lansing's County Legislator Pat Pryor.  "Plus there would be yearly costs anywhere in the neighborhood of $215,000 and $500,000.  Keeping that in mind we asked would the value be great enough to make it worth asking taxpayers to come up with that kind of money.  What Tompkins County really needs is that final mile.  Apparently we already have the capacity to reach and serve approximately 95% of the the County with broadband if we could find a service provider that would come in and do the final mile."

County Legislature Chair Martha Robertson says officials want to base broadband development on the County's own plan. The County now plans to establish a special, broad-based committee to guide the Internet plan development process.

Sheldon says that while he had asked the Lansing Town Board to write in support of the Southern Tier initiative that the cost and scope of the grant was not understood.  He said that he supports the County Legislature's choice to not participate.

Meanwhile the County has decided to go forward with an application to 'Google Fiber for Communities .'  Google has initiated a competition in which communities nominate themselves or are nominated by others to have backbone and 'the last mile' installed that will deliver connection speeds up to one gigabit per second for between 50,000 and 500,000 people.  The access will be up to 100 times faster than many Americans have today, and will be offered at competitive prices.

The company is doing it as an experiment in providing higher speed access to communities with the idea of sharing what they learn from the project and being able to offer new applications that wouldn't be able to work at current speeds.  Sheldon says that there will be a lot of competition to be chosen for the project, but Tompkins County would be an ideal community because of the presence of Cornell, high tech industry, and the mix of urban and rural areas.

"This is a long shot," he said.  "It is just a shot in the dark, but there didn't seem to be any reason not to do it.  I think Tompkins County has a good shot.  There are a lot of Cornell people who live in Lansing.  But this is county-wide, it's not just being driven by Cornell."

Sheldon said that a grant being pursued by Clarity Connect, a local Internet provider, had been folded into the larger Southern Tier initiative, but is now being separated out as another possibility for bringing Internet to rural areas.

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