Appomattox Goes Wireless!
The town of Appomattox has joined a small but prestigious list of localities with its new BridgeMAXX, wireless-broadband Internet service. According to officials with DigitalBridge, the company introducing the service in the town, they’ll be throwing the switch sometime this month.
When they do, it will be a giant step for all of rural Southside Virginia.
The nonprofit Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative saw a great need for high-speed Internet service in Appomattox back in 2005 and has been working to devise a solution ever since. Back then, all the locality’s residents had was dial-up access, though the local cable company has begun providing cable Internet access since.
Still, many residents had just two options for accessing the Internet: extremely slow dial-up or somewhat faster but slightly unreliable satellite access. Neither is what anyone in 21st century America should be stuck with.
The Virginia Tobacco Commission, with money from the state’s settlement with Big Tobacco in the 1990s, awarded a grant to pay for half of the costs of the project, the first of its kind in the state.
What will be unveiled soon in Appomattox is the next generation of wireless Internet service. Most folks are familiar with WiFi, the wireless access that’s become so ubiquitous as to be at just about every Starbucks and virtually all points in between. Appomattox will be getting WiMAX wireless service with a stronger signal range and greatly enhanced security features for users.
The technology is fairly new, but its deployment in the United States is growing.
If you think it’s just online gamers or music-downloaders who benefit from high-speed Internet access, think again.
The ability to link up to the Information super-highway is absolutely essential to the very survival of rural America itself.
To remain economically viable, rural America has to have a thriving population, modern schools to educate children and a business community to employ their parents. Nowadays, it’s virtually impossible to have any without a fast connection to the Internet.
Read more at NewsAdvance.com.
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