UPDATE: Georgia’s Republican Governor, Sonny Perdue, and Democratic Vice President Joe Biden stood together on at least one issue this morning: an effort to improve communication — and attract industry — in North Georgia.

Perdue joined the vice president on the stage at a Dawsonville manufacturing company as Biden announced more than $183 million in broadband projects in 17 states. One of those grants will help fund the construction of more than 135 miles of fiber optic lines that will bring high-speed internet access to rural areas of North Georgia.

The grants and loans Biden announced today are part of about $2 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grants and loans that will be made on a rolling basis over the next 75 days to bring broadband to communities that currently have little access to the technology.

Specifically, it will impact the Dawsonville manufacturing plant, Impulse Manufacturing, that both the governor and vice president visited Thursday.

“The future of Georgia needed infrastructure of the 21st Century and this would be, literally, the dial tone of the future as we go forward,” Perdue said. “Just as we’ve looked to roads and the phone lines to open up markets in our history, broadband access really is a tool ... to compete with today’s global information based economy.”

EARLIER STORY:
Vice President Joe Biden will visit Dawsonville today to announce more than $2 billion in stimulus grants and loans that will bring high-speed Internet to rural communities that don't have it.

The vice president will make the announcement at an 11:30 a.m. event today at Impulse Manufacturing in Dawsonville. Local officials expect about $33 million of the grant awards to go toward a fiber optic network that will connect eight Georgia counties to broadband technology and improve the region's allure to high-tech industries.

During his visit, Biden will tour Impulse, one of the industries White House officials say suffers from a lack of broadband availability.

The high-tech metal fabricator uses lasers and robots for cutting and welding metal, company president Ron Baysden said. The company makes parts for Blue Bird buses, Yamaha golf carts and Carrier Corp., said Bobby Densmore, director of operations.

Though no one from Impulse was eager to comment on why the vice president would visit their company today, Densmore said broadband would help the company better communicate with its customers who send part specifications electronically.

"Slow download speeds do cause a problem," Densmore said.

State Rep. Amos Amerson, R-Dahlonega, said the need to accommodate high-tech industries in the region is great. After one of Lumpkin County's largest employers, Mohawk Industries, closed in June 2008, Lumpkin County officials had a hard time replacing it with a new industry, Amerson said.

"Other people came and looked at the building, but without
broadband technology they (said they) wouldn't be able to do business (in Lumpkin County)," Amerson said.

But the North Georgia Network, a planned regional technology expansion, would extend more than 135 miles of new fiber optic cables through Lumpkin, Dawson, Union, White, Habersham, Rabun, Towns and Forsyth counties. Part of the stimulus grants and loans that Biden is expected to announce today will include financial support of that project.

The regional technology project started in a conversation between Charlie Auvermann, the executive director of the development authority of Dawson County, and his Lumpkin County counterpart, Bruce Abraham.

"We were talking about complaints and issues that companies in our respective counties were having utilizing the technologies that they had purchased for their businesses ... and we found we had a lot of mutual issues," Auvermann said.

The conversation spawned the North Georgia Network, a public-private enterprise that would be supported by North Georgia College and State University, Habersham Electric Membership Corporation and Blue Ridge Mountain EMC.

Now, the project will be backed by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which will support $2 billion worth of similar projects in the next 75 days, said Jared Bernstein, chief economist and economic adviser to the vice president.

Today's announcement will kick off an initial $182 million investment in 18 broadband projects in 17 states, Bernstein said. The funds have been matched with $46 million in private investment.

The broadband project is expected to create "tens of thousands of jobs," Bernstein said.

"When you get right down to it, this is about jobs," Bernstein said.

Initially, Bernstein said the investments will create jobs for technology specialists, factory workers and construction workers who build the fiber optic lines.

But more importantly, the fiber optic lines will make future jobs available.

"Local manufacturers will be able to increase productivity, expand into the global marketplace and they'll require a larger work force to do so," Bernstein said. "... Communities that have lost entire manufacturing industries do to lack of technology will be able to attract new businesses and plants to settle in their own backyards along with the jobs that that will generate."

And while they wait for the announcement, and the technology improvements that are sure to follow, the folks at Impulse are getting ready for one of their highest profile visitors.

"My wife is going through this place with an extremely critical eye as you can imagine," Baysden said. "And I mean, by golly, gee whiz, I've gotten my marching orders as to how clean my desk is."