Installation will take a maximum of three years and create approximately 700 jobs during construction and 40 permanent jobs. The new fiber will provide high-speed Internet access to approximately 215 public schools, 30 health care facilities and 10 community colleges, along with countless homes and businesses, according to a press release from Gov. Jay Nixon.
Sen. Wes Shoemyer said this initiative and the grant applications for broadband funding were in response to an assessment of Missouri’s needs. Shoemyer said this new technology will help make Missouri more competitive on a global level.
“[The broadband] is going to make things a lot more efficient and make our kids have much better opportunities with our city cousins,” Shoemyer said. “It’s just going to have an everyday impact that’s going to be huge well into the future and make us competitive in the world economy.”
Shoemyer said the public/private partnership of MoBroadbandNow made this opportunity possible for rural Missouri. He said the Missouri Office of Administration and the governor’s office played a large role in writing the grant applications.
“This is one of those times when government has a real role,” Shoemyer said. “The private companies were not interested in running high speed Internet to these very rural areas.”
BlueBird Media, a private member of the MoBroadbandNow partnership, has agreed to match $9.1 million to the federal grant. BlueBird Media will install a middle-mile network to community anchor points, and then United Electric Cooperative will branch off of that main fiber to build last-mile networks to households and businesses, according to the press release.
Shoemyer said this network will provide high-speed access to about 95 percent of homes in 59 counties.
Northeast Missouri Medical Center in Kirksville will be one of the middle-mile anchor points in BlueBird’s network. Hospital CEO Eric Barber said the implementation of this technology will help ease the flow of patient information and make it easier for patients to get specialized help without having to travel long distances.
“I think one of the most interesting parts of this is that Sen. Shoemyer and Gov. Nixon had to go after this money,” Barber said. “This money was available for competitive grants from the U.S. government, so we were competing against other states to make sure that this money was given to the state of Missouri.”
Barber said that although it might take a while for hospitals nationwide to discover the full availability and potential of telemedicine, he thinks getting broadband in Northeast Missouri can begin to open chances to provide better care for patients here and to develop a sophisticated medical network at the state and national level.
“If you look at Northeast Missouri, [Kirksville is] one of the biggest things, so the creation of additional jobs here means additional revenue for the folks who own businesses in this community, and it might even mean some additional revenue for this hospital so we can continue investing in it,” Barber said.
Truman nursing student junior Sarah Brown said access to medical technology is one thing hospital clinical experience in Kirksville has lacked in the past. She also said broadband technology in Kirksville would improve the quality of both the hospital and the learning experience available in clinical studies.
Brown also said she thinks that access to broadband could help the community as a whole, especially people who are not able to leave their houses or travel frequently.
“I find a lot of stuff is easier to do over the Internet,” Brown said. “If you have something that you need to buy that really isn’t available in Kirksville very readily, it is a lot easier to go online and have it shipped to you. I feel like that would be really easy for a lot of people to do.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Baillie James
Quelle/Source: Truman Index, 02.09.2010
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