ONE Ohio gathering gets early look at Strickland Broadband Council order

More than fifty technology activists from Coshocton, Mansfield, Dayton. Cleveland, Steubenville, Toledo, Cambridge, Cincinnati and a dozen other communities showed up at the State Library of Ohio for ONE Ohio's second statewide gathering last Friday.

The day's big news was the release of Governor Strickland's executive order creating a new Ohio Broadband Council. From the press release:

The order directs the Ohio Broadband Council to coordinate efforts to extend access to the Broadband Ohio Network to every county in Ohio. And the order allows public and private entities to tap into the Broadband Ohio Network – all with a goal of expanding access to high-speed internet service in parts of the state that presently don't have such service.

...The Council, to be co-chaired by the state Chief Information Officer and the director of the Ohio Supercomputer Center, will consist of representatives from several state agencies, four state legislators and the director of the Governor's Office of Appalachia or his designee. In addition, the governor will appoint representatives from Ohio's business and labor communities, local governments and the general public to serve on the Council at his discretion.

The governor has charged the Ohio Broadband Council to extend access to the Broadband Ohio Network so that state agencies in all 88 counties can be linked to the nearest connection point on the network. In addition, the order authorizes governmental and non-governmental entities to access the Broadband Ohio Network.

"This is the first step in bridging the digital divide in Ohio, and I look forward to working with industry providers, businesses and our local communities to take additional steps to provide superior broadband access to all of Ohio's 88 counties," Strickland said.

Here's the whole Executive Order 2007 - 24S: Establishing the Ohio Broadband Council and Broadband Ohio Network (.doc file).

Here's the Ohio Broadband Council website.

ONE Ohio gathering participants got copies of the just-released documents "hot off the press", and a thorough briefing on the Governor's plan from the state's Chief Information Officer, Steve Edmonson, along with Pankaj Shah of the Ohio Supercomputer Center. We also shared some local broadband deployment success stories, discussed ONE Ohio's broadband access mapping project, and did a whole lot of networking.

All in all, a successful and informative gathering.

State CIO Edmonson to speak at July 27 gathering

R. Steve Edmonson, Governor Strickland's Chief Information Officer, will be a featured presenter at ONE Ohio's second statewide gathering this Friday, July 27.

Edmonson will discuss the strategy and status of the Governor's "Broadband Ohio" program.

The gathering will take place from 10 am to 2:30 pm at the State Library of Ohio in Columbus (directions here). It's free and no pre-registration is necessary, but box lunches will be available for a modest charge only if you pre-order one by tomorrow, July 24. Email Bill Callahan at bill@clevelanddigitalvision.org.

State helps fund three more community broadband projects

From a July 9 Development Department press release:

Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher today announced that the Governor's Office of Appalachia (GOA) has teamed with the Ohio State University (OSU) to sponsor the Connecting Rural Ohio Wireless Neighborhood Initiative to deploy broadband to community-owned wireless networks to several communities within distressed Appalachian counties. Up to three communities will be selected to receive a community learning center that will include six computers and a networked printer available at no charge for public use.

This is the next step of a strategy devised by Alan Escovitz and his colleagues at OSU. The first application of the idea was deployed in New Straitsville in Perry County in 2003; the second has been famously up and running in Chesterhill in Morgan County for more than a year. The third CRO project is now being rolled out in the village of Vinton in Gallia County. As the DOD press release says, the Connecting Rural Ohio team is looking to develop two additional sites in the near future.

To learn more contact Dr. Escovitz at OSU's Office of the CIO.