Forty years ago, business proprietors carefully gauged a location’s access to water, sewer and electricity before setting up shop. Now they want all that plus high-speed Internet service.
Until now, many businesses have bypassed rural North Georgia communities where connections were minimal at best.
The $33 million federal stimulus grant awarded Thursday to the North Georgia Network will bring rural businesses, schools and hospitals up to speed technologically while laying the foundation for future prosperity, local network facilitators said.
Private backers will augment federal funds to finance the $42 million project that will lay an ultra-high speed regional fiber optic network over a 260-mile corridor that winds through 12 North Georgia counties. The increased bandwidth will allow more data, whether it’s medical images or elementary school test scores, to be more quickly transmitted to and from the area.North Georgia Network is the agency receiving the federal funds. The network is a public-private enterprise supported by North Georgia College & State University, Habersham Electric Membership Corp. and Blue Ridge Mountain EMC.
Charlie Auvermann, executive director of the Dawson County Development Authority, initiated the network with Lumpkin County Development Authority executive director Bruce Abraham. The North Georgia Network was born from a realization that too many businesses bypassed Dawson, Lumpkin, Union, White and Habersham counties because the area lacked significant Internet capacity.
"What we found was the problem was more prevalent than we had expected," Auvermann said. "It didn’t matter which business or type of industry you were in, they were having issues like that. And certainly, if we’re going to attract very high technology businesses in rural areas, they’re going to expect it and the future is going to demand it."
When U.S. Vice President Joe Biden announced the grant award Thursday at Impulse Manufacturing, he acknowledged that students at North Georgia College and in public K-12 schools will gain a powerful learning tool once broadband is available in the area.
"If they’re on the other side of that digital divide it doesn’t matter how smart they are, they’re going to get left behind," he said. "This is like a book or a desk, but this is a more powerful learning tool than any of those things."
Auvermann said he expects work on laying the fiber optic cables will start as early in 2010 as possible, and broadband hook-ups could be available in the area within a year.
Biden said the increased Internet capacity will allow schools and universities to use more cost-efficient Web-based learning to provide students access to talented teachers and quality foreign language instruction. He said it also will allow North Georgia College to significantly enhance its remote nursing program that has outlets at Lanier Technical College and Gainesville State College.
"The idea of a classroom with four walls and a bell in the corner is changing rapidly," Biden said. "And the nursing school is realizing with broadband, they can bust through that bottle neck. They can meet the demand for nurses not by bringing students to the classroom, but by bringing the classroom and the limited teachers to the students."
Bryson Payne, chief information officer at North Georgia College, said the school was one of the original partners in the network study and the grant award has been two years in the making.
He said the university has been spending about $1,000 a month per connection at the two end sites to deliver the distance learning program in nursing. But with broadband, the high-demand courses can be administered for less.
"This program is in such high demand that we can’t house everyone on campus," Payne said. "We are going to be able to provide this at a much lower cost than we were able to do before, which means a lower cost for students."
Times staff writer Ashley Fielding contributed to this story.