Tennessee Broadband Task Force
The local boys have been busy in Nashville today.
The Tennessee Broadband Task Force spent much of the last six months
studying the deployment and access to high-speed Internet – or broadband.“Every Tennessee home and business should have access to broadband service,” said Rep. Mark Maddox, D-Dresden, who co-chaired the task force with Sen.
Roy Herron, D-Dresden.The General Assembly charged the task force with determining Tennessee’s
level of broadband availability. Broadband is used to describe almost any
always-on, high-speed connection to the Internet. Broadband users can
quickly view and download video and graphics, shop online or surf the Web.
Students can take high school or college courses online. Rural physicians
can get medical diagnoses from specialists while patients never leave home.
Broadband will help Tennessee businesses compete with their global
neighbors.But broadband is not widely available in Tennessee, only one in four
households has adopted it, which ranks the state 37th in the nation in
usage. The United States ranks as low as 21st in the world in broadband
usage. In Tennessee, the service most often is provided by local phone
companies, such as BellSouth, or cable television providers, but the task
force report recommends expansion to other potential providers to spur
competition.cut
The report said, “Tennessee needs to make a purposeful effort to serve rural
areas with broadband service. Until that occurs, Tennessee will lose
ground-and jobs and educational opportunities-to states willing to make that
commitment.”
Read the rest here. Yeah, I’m one of those rural Tennesseans and I’m looking at this carefully.
UPDATE: Sorry about the jumpiness of the actual press release, but I can’t seem to fix it. It still reads the same but crud.
