There has been a lot of talk about access to broadband Internet connections in rural areas here in Kansas. Mainly because virtually all of Kansas IS a rural area. The farther west you go from the Kansas City-Topeka corner, the less likely you are to find any ability to connect to a true "high-speed" Internet connection unless you live in the limits of some reasonably sized town.
Now, we can argue until we're blue in the face about why and about who is responsible, but the bottom line remains that the Internet is to modern life what the rail system was to 1890's life. That is, if the railroad didn't come through your town, your town died. Plain and simple. The Internet functions the same way. Business and opportunity in the information age follow the bandwidth.
I just finished reading
this article. It presents a solution to the very problem outlined above. It likens the Internet to the system of roadways for which government is usually responsible. Why not treat the Internet the same way we treat roads? For institutional customers like us, a public library, this makes especially good sense. For attracting business to a state like Kansas that struggles at times to compete with neighboring states, the appeal of access to exponentially greater bandwidth might entice people to move here. After all, in a world that includes easy access to fast Internet, you can live just about anywhere, right?
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