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Idea for: Telecommunications
Build a municipally owned fiber optic network Windom City Leaders realized several years ago the local telephone provider was not going to upgrade their system and provide high speed internet/data communications to the residents or business in Windom. Following a referendum the City of Windom became the first city in Minnesota to plan, build and operate a municipally owned telecommunications system. The $8.6 million dollar fiber optic broadband network overbuild of the community started operations in April, 2005. The City of Windom now offers its residents and businesses full service telecommunications from dial-up internet up to speeds as high as 100 Mbs for business applications. The fiber optic system also provides traditional telephone service with an add-on options package, basic and expanded television cable including high definition TV at competitive prices. Windomnet completed construction of their state of the art telecommunications system this spring and is now connecting homes and businesses to the system. From James King of Windom, MN on 05/11/05
Rating:  FiberFirst Minnesota is a non-profit organized to assist and encourage the deployment of fiber optics to the home (FTTH) throughout Minnesota. Please check our website at www.fiberfirstmn.org Contact us to assist your community with true high speed broadband deployment. Cities like Windom and private sector leaders like Verizon are demonstrating that installing fiber in the "last mile" to the home and business is now financially viable, as well as economically required. Jim Erickson From Jim Erickson of Minneapolis, MN on 06/13/05 Rating: From Ann Higgins of Eden Prairie, MN on 05/27/05 Rating:  Low cost of living, high quality of life, great places to raise a family. Wit a small lake and a scenic neighborhood you could attract a niche of "high tech" residents. Geeks aren't what they used to be. From Don Larson of Crosslake, MN on 05/26/05 Rating: This is an idea to allow those of us who work out out our home office to view a small town as a possible location to move to. I don't want this to be viewed as an escape to... but rather an abbility to get small town America up to speed, on an equal footing to surburban MN. From Alan Aleckson of Brooklyn Park, MN on 05/26/05 Rating: I recently moved to a small town in MN and have found the internet services here sadly lacking. There is only one provider and compared to what you would find in any city, I'm getting taken for a ride as far as price goes. I have been working on a proposal for a boradband for my small town using wireless. God willing, we can help push our town out of the dark ages of dialup and slow DSL. I think any efforts in this area are worthy. Bottom line is that people need decent internet these days. From Adam Wagner of Fisher, MN on 05/26/05 Rating: Small towns have economical land and buildings. With good power, internet and telecom they can become white-collar nodes. They can host distributed offices for large companies that don't want to pay big city rents, utilities, and taxes. This should be especially attractive for the small towns that ring large metropolitan centers. If the workers lived nearby it would also off-load some of the commute time, traffic congestion, and pollution from the big city. Also small business incubators. From Joe Pearson of St. Paul, MN on 05/20/05 Rating: Even better dialup connections would be good; but, it seems that the telecoms hesitate to upgrade anything. They hide behind their promise of providing voice quality analog service. They will sell you DSL at $30+ per month but try to get a better quality line for dialup and they just ignore you. From Tony Zoars of Watersmeet, MI on 05/20/05 Rating: There are many jobs that can use high bandwidth internet. People who do circuit board layout (& similar jobs) don't need to sit in a cubicle. Why not a small-town farmhouse? For collaboration, desktop Video TeleConference (VTC) works well. But information flowing here is all intellectual property, so it has to be secure. Not sure how secure wireless is, though cheaper. For example, a co-worker's home wireless stopped, then started. Turns out he had reconnected to his neighbor's network. From Adrian Sanchez of St. Paul, MN on 05/16/05 Rating: I install phone & computer networks. Funding a fiber network for every neighborhood in america would be a wise investment for our goverment. A network that would make todays broadband look like yesterday's dialup, supporting limitless amounts of data at the speed of light. Tomorrows technology will soon demand this, will we be ready? Instead of rebuilding Iraq, shouldn't we be rebuilding America? A million new jobs right here with nobody shooting at you. What a concept. Let them kill themselves! From Bruce Dylla of Spicer, MN on 05/13/05 Rating: Wonderful idea, could generate business growth and help the communities generate revenue, to keep property taxes down. From Sanda Oslin of Sturgeon Lake, MN on 05/12/05 Rating: I don't know the population of Windom or its location. Assuming it is a small community of 10,000 or less population and more that 50 miles from a large urban center it is super that their community supported this project. At $8.6M the cost for most every small community in this country is just too much. The rub is that communities need broadband. In Waupaca, WI we have used wireless as our platform. It so much more affordable. We capitalized our project at cost of $500,000. From Henry Veleker of Waupaca, WI on 05/12/05 Rating: that's terrific From Richard Johnson of St. Cloud, MN on 05/11/05
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