Gigabit Nation

Franklin County formed a public/private partnership with a local wireless Internet service provider (WISP) to expand the County's local government wide-area network (WAN) and provide broadband options for the citizens. Sandie Terry, Franklin County’s CIO, has driven this project as it has gone from serving 98 customers in early 2005 to currently thousands of residential customers and hundreds of businesses. The wireless mesh network supports data and voice and the WISP has segmented the County's voice traffic on their network to ensure quality of service (QoS). Among the many accomplishments, the county has reduced telecom expenditures 36% in two years after deploying VoIP to all offices over this WAN. We’ll discuss:   How can broadband projects become successful for those who didn’t win stimulus or Google money; The role of wireless in the big bigger broadband picture particularly in rural areas; and How Franklin County and their WISP overcame challenges in dealing with financing and difficult terra