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Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
"They are potentially looking at helmet cams," Doug Paris said, assistant to the city manager. "Those who are sitting outside (the structure) will be able to see what's going on inside."It would make little sense for the fireman to have wires coming out of their helmets. But that wireless signal from the helmet probably won't propagate to the fire hall or police station. Instead, a wireless access point near the fire can grab the signal and make it available to anyone who needs access to it. One reason public safety departments may not want to rely on privately owned wireless networks is because they may have dead areas. Consider that wireless carriers may focus investment in the areas that generate the highest revenues -- they may see little reason to ensure their services are reliable in rural areas or warehouse districts, for example. Police officers need access to all their tools everywhere in the community, not just where it is convenient for some company to offer it. Ownership of both the wired and wireless components make a lot of sense to local government. And finally, just because we cannot get away from it, Salisbury has been involved in fighting back Time Warner's Monopoly Protection Act at the state capital - Raleigh. Both local officials and a private business owner traveled across the state to oppose a bill to prevent communities from building networks. Local business owner Brad Walser was surprised how much opposition there is to publicly owned FTTH networks:
"I'm a firm believe that fiber optics will open the door to innovation and current high bandwidth applications, such as telemedicine, remote training in education, hoteling and telecommuting," Walser said. "It opened my eyes to how hard the city is having to fight to ensure they can install this fiber network."He recognized that the unwillingness of incumbent providers to invest in modern networks hurts communities:
"Certain areas within the city limits cannot receive reliable bandwidth. We host websites, e-mails, off-site data storage, and for them to get that data to us, they need a good connection to the Internet."Around the country, many of us are watching these events in North Carolina, hoping Time Warner and its legion of lobbyists cannot pass a bill to lock communities into their shoddy service.