John Donohue (1:397/5258) wrote to Steven Horn at 22:56 on 14 Jan 2003:

 JD> From my own travels, talking to other librarians, and other users,
 JD> it seems that while some kind of internet availability it nearly
 JD> universal, quality, quantity do vary greatly. Texas has had a dual
 JD> opportunity since the mid '90s. The Bill and Melinda Gates
 JD> Foundation grants of equipment and training is one of these.  It
 JD> was outgunned by double whammy of Texas House Bill 2128 and the
 JD> Texas Infrastructure Fund. House Bill 2128 said that in order to
 JD> foster internet access to education, rural areas, and the
 JD> economically disadvantaged, providers had to provide broadband to
 JD> schools and libraries at cost plus five percent. Translated,
 JD> schools and libraries get T1's for $260 a month (instead of $800+).
 JD> The Texas Infrastructure Fund (aka TIF) is basically a tariff on
 JD> cell phone services; the money raised is distributed thru
 JD> competitive technology grants for network hardware, wiring,
 JD> installation, and servers.

Texas is a much bigger jurisdiction than the Yukon and we took a different
tack.  The government partnered with the telco (the supplier of ADSL) to
make cheap broadband available to libraries with the government paying the
connection charges for itself and the community libraries which it funds. 
Equipment and training on the other hand came from Gates Foundation
funding.

 JD> TIF requires the receiving entity to contribute some level of
 JD> matching funds, percentage based on eligibility.

That would be very hard for a small library to do.

 JD> It's tougher for entities that don't get their broadband cheap, or
 JD> in places where they're on metered service (charged according to
 JD> megs of data transferred) I suppose that would make them place
 JD> limits on what you could do. I.e., we have LS-120, ZIP-100, or
 JD> ZIP-250 drives on most of our public access computers. If we were 
 JD> paying business T1 rates or on metered service, we might have only
 JD> provided standard floppies. ;-)

Interesting.  I don't think that any of our libraries have high capacity
removable media; all have 1.44 MB floppies. 

 JD> That's certainly an option to get client computers into the
 JD> building, but broadband costs at his location are still a
 JD> significant part of the equation An option other libraries have
 JD> pursued is using older equipment and linux. There's a library in
 JD> Colorado (Colorado Springs?) that runs their entire operation on
 JD> linux/freebsd. I'll have to dig up the url for their site. Given
 JD> the popularity of linux in europe, I'd suspect that route to me
 JD> more common over there.

I'd certainly be interested in viewing the site.  As for the cost of
broadband in Europe, I sense that it is a higher per capita cost than it is
here. 

 JD> As for the message's subject; I used to say that I intended to be
 JD> the last node in fidonet; but since the growth of fido in russia, I
 JD> may have to settle for the distinction of being the last fido node
 JD> in zone 1. ;-)

There will be others competing with you.:-)

 JD> In 3 1/2 more years I'll have my 25 in. Then I'll have to figure
 JD> out what to do for the next 18-20 years until I can draw on it. :-(

We generally set our retirement packages based on 30 and out.  I won't be
that lucky as I'll be fortunate if I have 25 in when I go if I go at 65 but
I'm not forced to go at that age and may stick around.  But then again, my
pension will give me around 40% to 50% of my salary so I can't really
complain.

 JD> (Assuming the feds don't keep pushing back the age at which you can
 JD> start collecting on SSI and retirement account proceeds)

Is the Social Security Fund that broke?

 JD> I hope Fido outlives both of us.

It's younger than we are as it only turns 20 next year.

Take care,

Steven Horn (steven_a_horn{at}yahoo.ca)
Moderator, ALASKA_CHAT 
--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+