Clark County is too urban to qualify for the federal stimulus grants funding rural broadband development. But the city of Vancouver plans to apply for Google’s broadband pilot project. As a Google Fiber Community, the city would be a testing ground for Google’s experimental ultra-high speed networks, which would be about 100 times faster than what most Americans have at home today. “Not only would this help solidify Vancouver’s position in the Silicon Forest, it will drive job growth and give people another reason to live, work and, most importantly, stay in … Clark County,” Mayor Tim Leavitt said Thursday in his state of the city address.
Broadband Technology Opportunities Program
A $4.7 billion federal program funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to bring broadband infrastructure to underserved rural areas and encourage adoption of broadband services. For more information, visit www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants.
Washougal will be the gateway to ultra high-speed Internet access for libraries and hospitals in the Columbia River Gorge as part of an $84 million federal recovery act grant awarded this week to the Northwest Open Access Network in Washington.
Stevenson-based Internet service provider Sawtooth Technologies will receive $3.7 million of the Broadband Technologies Opportunity Program grant to lay 1-gigabit-capacity fiber-optic cable to rural Skamania and Klickitat counties in the next three years.
Clark County is too urban to qualify for the federal stimulus grants funding rural broadband development. But the city of Vancouver plans to apply for Google's broadband pilot project. As a Google Fiber Community, the city would be a testing ground for Google's experimental ultra-high speed networks, which would be about 100 times faster than what most Americans have at home today. "Not only would this help solidify Vancouver's position in the Silicon Forest, it will drive job growth and give people another reason to live, work and, most importantly, stay in ... Clark County," Mayor Tim Leavitt said Thursday in his state of the city address.
Broadband Technology Opportunities Program
A $4.7 billion federal program funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to bring broadband infrastructure to underserved rural areas and encourage adoption of broadband services. For more information, visit www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants.
Building on a high-speed network under development for the Washougal School District, Sawtooth will lay new cable following Highway 14 east from Washougal and through the Washington side of the Gorge.
The network will be connected to regional and statewide hubs to bring advanced telecommunication services to the area.
“We’ll be able to send (broadband) traffic from the Columbia Gorge through the fiber into Portland to give a completely new route for data,” said Brian Adams, manager of SawNet, Sawtooth’s Internet service.
The service will initially link all of the area’s hospitals to create telemedicine services that allow rural practitioners to share information and resources.
Private, “last-mile” service providers will then have the opportunity to provide wireless or fiber-based connections to homes and businesses.
Sawtooth’s goal is to eventually expand the fiber-optic backbone to libraries, community colleges and hospitals throughout Clark County, so that rural hospitals will have a direct connection to resources in Vancouver and Portland.
“A person’s ZIP code should never limit their access to learning, high-quality health care or a chance to grow a small business,” U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said. “Broadband access is no longer a luxury, it’s a must. …”
