6—Cleveland Daily Banner—Wednesday, January 6, 2016
www.clevelandbanner.com
TACIR
From Page 1
actually accessible to every
home and business in the
block. Owen focused on wired
connections in his presentation
Tuesday. Tennesseans can also
access broadband Internet
through wireless or mobile connection in many areas. Maps
showing the areas that have
these connectivity options will
be reviewed at TACIR’s next
meeting.
“The data (map) shows us
that a census block is covered
even if one address in the census block receives coverage,”
Owen said.
TACIR board member Jeff
Huffman, Tipton county executive, asked how Tennessee’s
connectivity availability compared to other states. Owen
said this information was not
available at this time, commenting that staff could research
this.
Hazlewood said the term
broadband Internet could mean
“different things to different
people.” He defined it as “highspeed internet service that is
always on and at least 4/1
Mbps (megabits per second).”
However, Hazlewood said
capacity of the service to a given
location is not always the typical speed a person can get. He
discussed issues such as
“Network Latency — the time it
takes for a data packet to get
from one network point to
another usually measured in
round trip time (RTT), (and is)
affected by distance and congestion” and “throughput —
completed end-to-end data
transfer.”
He said small files, such as
email, transfer quickly at 5
mbps. The larger the file the
more capacity is needed to send
the file in a timely manner.
Hazlewood mentioned the
medical industry as one example of an organization needing a
high broadband capacity.
He said Tennessee needs to
take a long-range approach to
the issue, recommending that
“1 gigabit per second would be
an optimum capacity for a 10year Tennessee Broadband
“I would suggest for
consideration the areas
where private industry
… are not willing to
service, then perhaps
government nonprofits
should have a role to
provide the
infrastructure. I would
consider in a rural area
that the government
nonprofit provides the
infrastructure; it doesn’t
mean they have to
provide the service.”
— Victor Hazlewood
Vision or plan.”
“These broadband Internet
issues are clearly necessary in
rural Tennessee, especially in
terms of industrial development,” Huffman said. “That is
one of the first questions we get
asked is, ‘Can you offer broadband?’”
Tennessee Rep. Mike Carter,
R-Ooltewah, said cost of service
compared to the salaries in a
service area needs to also be
studied.
“If it’s not affordable, it
doesn’t matter if it’s there,”
Carter said.
In Tennessee, broadband
Internet access is offered via
DSL, cable modem, fiber, wireless or satellite. Hazlewood said
each of these types of connections offer different maximum
capacities.
The types of devices that people are trying to access the
Internet with also vary across
the state, ranging from computers to farm equipment.
Hazlewood
said
having
access to broadband Internet
would allow many farmers to
use equipment to its full potential. He said that if service
could get to a building on the
property, then farmers could
use wireless directional antennae to get broadband access to
their field.
Iliff McMahan Jr. of the
Tennessee Department of
Economic and Community
Development said the hills
prevalent in areas of the state
could limit the success of this
technology.
“I would suggest for consideration the areas where private
industr