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The State Of Broadband: Page 5 of 5

Jacobson of North Carolina not-for-profit NCREN says the group's successful BTOP round 1 application (awarded $28.2 million) came from efforts by the state's office of economic recovery. It's going to trickle up to the hospitals, too. "All the medical schools in the state are on NCREN today," he says, and "the nonprofit hospitals will be eligible to interconnect to us as well."

Welcome Back To Sneakerville

Some caution is necessary. There will be no shortage of poorly conceived broadband initiatives. Savvy IT organizations will stay close to operations, leaving the speculation to investors and economic development types.

Moving beyond sneakernet will require more than just fatter pipes. "Civil engineers discovered some time ago that building more lanes on highways does not really relieve traffic problems," says Mark Butler, director of product marketing with Internet services company Internap. "Relief comes when you use the available capacity in a more efficient manner."

So as you keep track of the legislation and other craziness coming out of Washington, keep pace with technical realities, lest you invest in higher-speed lines only to find that your use case isn't quite as you had planned. George Bonser, a network operator with mobile messaging provider Seven, cites cases of companies that install high-speed lines and then discover they can't get anywhere near their theoretical limit because of the software in use. It's a complicated matter that deserves your attention in the same way that keeping track of broadband competition, accessibility, and fairness does.

InformationWeek: July 12, 2010 Issue
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