Broadband "one of the number one issues" —Bill Slaughter @ VLCIA 2013-02-19

 

Lowndes County Chairman Bill Slaughter told the Industrial Authority 19 February 2013 that broadband is: "one of the number one issues".

...certainly one of the most important recruiting tools that we're going to have to figure out in this community how we can get it. To be honest with you, it's a wide open question. Do you have the infrastructure? How much will the infrastructure that we currently have support? We're going to have to find a way to get with the professional providers and find out just exactly what these capabilities are in our community.... I see that as the big question. We've got to figure out where to start with it.

I think it is probably in my opinion one of the number one issues that this community is going to have to address from the standpoint of where we go with economic development in the future for this community not only for new economic development but for existing businesses as well. As a business begins to grow,

begins to branch out further outside and get more nationally and internationally in our community, they have to have that broadband capability.

And the key is right now that I see is what will our infrastructure support, what is the technology that is coming in the future, what can we look for? We go everything from wired infrastructure to wireless infrastructure where do we go? And where do we need to go to take the funds that we're going to have to generate as much capability as we can.

I don't have the magic wand right now but we're hunting it.

This is a huge step forward for Bill from his position on the campaign trail, which was puzzlement whenever Gretchen brought up Internet as infrastructure. Sure and he doesn't have a magic wand; nobody does. This is a worldwide problem. Fortunately, there are plenty of people nationally and worldwide working on this problem whose expertise can be drawn on if the local powers that be so choose. Or they can do what they did with the county trash situation: pretend they know everything and throw rural residents in the trash along with home-based businesses.

Roy Copeland emphasized:

We surely appreciate your interest in this fairly important infrastructure problem slash issue.

You can hear his emphasis on infrastructure.

Continued in the next post.

-jsq