Category: Telecommunications
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Disaster + Fiscal Insolvency = Puerto Rico
I can watch only so much CNN and MSNBC before I get nauseated, but I have seen enough the past day or two to be appalled at how the media are spinning the post-hurricane disaster of Puerto Rico: It’s another Katrina. The Trump administration hasn’t responded fast enough or aggressively enough to help the battered…
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Northam’s Affordable, Not-So-Ambitious Plan for Reviving Rural Virginia
Ralph Northam, Democratic Party candidate for governor, grew up on the Eastern Shore, so it’s not surprising that he has given considerable thought to the challenges of economic development in Virginia’s small towns and rural communities. Earlier this week, he unveiled his plan for economic growth in rural Virginia. If you’re looking for a “Marshall…
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Virginia Beach, Emerging World-Class Data Hub
Speaking of Virginia Beach…. Here’s a more promising approach to economic development than building arenas in the hope of wrangling big-name concerts and basketball tourneys for 30 years into the future. Reports the Virginian-Pilot: A Dutch company wants to create a new data center park to draw the likes of Snapchat, IBM and Uber. NxtVn will…
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Logging on from the Boonies
by S.E. Warwick Last December, the RUOnlineVA statewide, broadband-demand survey reported that “23 percent of respondents have no option for fixed internet access and 48 percent rely on technologies that are too slow or expensive to support critical applications.” These statistics reflect conditions not only in rural southwest Virginia, but just a few miles from…
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Virginia Is for Lovers, Not Lobbyists
by Christopher Mitchell Pop quiz: Should the state create or remove barriers to broadband investment in rural Virginia? Trick question. The answer depends very much on who you are – an incumbent telephone company or someone living every day with poor connectivity. If you happen to be a big telephone company like CenturyLink or Frontier,…
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CIT Maps Highlight Gaps in Virginia Bandwidth
The Center for Innovative Technology has announced an upgrade to its Virginia Broadband Availability Map, which allows users to search by address or zip code where broadband services are available and to overlay the broadband data with other data such as population and vertical assets. I have given the map a quick spin and have…