A Case for "Wiring" Talbot County

Senator Mikulski (D MD) Has Made it Possible for a Fiber Optic, Information Super Highway to be Implemented between Wallops Island and the Delaware River Bridge

Talbot County government appears to be apathetic about preparing our County for the 21st Century. We are far behind our Western Shore competitors with respect to our use of telecommunications and information technology. Businesses and consumers find themselves unable to interact reliably with potential suppliers, investors, or customers. Many parts of our county lack cell phone as well as wireless and cable access to the Internet. Simply stated: we are not “wired for the 21st Century”.

Information technology experts who deal with “continuity of business” issues and initiatives everyday know full well the value of dispersing information technology assets to remote locations for information safety, recovery, and cost factors. Since 9/11 2001 many companies now value dispersing information technology for business survival. The Eastern Shore could serve as a remote location for information recovery assets belonging to companies and government agencies from New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia / Wilmington to Baltimore, to Washington DC, and to Northern Virginia. With the majority of financial institutions operating within 200 miles of Talbot, and with banking concentration in Wilmington and the Federal Government concentration around Washington, Talbot provides a close but rural location for business continuity services.

Eastern Shore broadband telecommunications infrastructure and services will make it possible for us to manage our growth without the need for a large influx of people. Though we have been undergoing substantial development pressures, and though for the time being this pressure has subsided due to the “credit crunch” I wrote about in an earlier blog article; we can accommodate growth associated with an influx of broadband capabilities. By adhering to our Comprehensive Plan, we can avoid the effects of suburban sprawl unlike our urban counterparts on the Western Shore. Eventual renovation and infill in our towns, supported by competitively priced broadband access, can also provide substantial quality of life and environmental advantages.

Information technology investments companies might make in our towns include information archives, computing centers, data-backup server clusters for organizations such as financial firms (insurance, securities, banking), hospitals (telemedicine), and various government agencies. I believe our County Council should encourage corporations, State and Federal counterparts, and the health care industry to use infrastructure assets we have her in Talbot when developing their business continuity plans. However, before this will be possible we should be doing a whole lot more to energize, advertise, and expaqnd the efforts of the Maryland Broadband Cooperative (MBC) as well as providing County County leadership and appropriate funding to ensure Talbot has the most modern, up-to-date infrastructure to make use of MBC’s Eastern Shore fiber optic backbone. At present, wireless technologies such as WiMAX offers us an opportunity to “wire Talbot” at a cost significantly less than that required for a fiber optic infrastructure. WiMAX deployed on water towers, silos, radio towers, etc. could provide 100% coverage of Talbot. In the longer-term, every effort should be made to develop a county-wide fiber optic infrastructure to meet eventual increased bandwidth requirements as new applications, reliability, security, and quality of service considerations dictate.

Broadband wireless is the most cost-effective Internet access technology for Talbot to use for expanding the availability of affordable broadband service to all our businesses, schools, service providers, and residents. Our Council’s support for the Maryland Broadband Cooperative is essential to develop a common, open system broadband “back haul” infrastructure that would be used by future wireless internet service providers (WISPs) as they gear up to offer cost-effective broadband service throughout Talbot. Where there’s leadership and the will – there’s a way.

These are broad assertions, where’s are specifics? My intent here is to provide specifics. As I see it, there is a hierarchy of need in our community beginning with family and quality of life, followed closely by parenting, individual responsibilities, then jobs, education, housing, cost of living, recreation, volunteerism and so forth. I want to relate the “why and how” wiring Talbot is critical to our future from a family, quality of life, and parenting perspective. As I tour our county speaking with residents from all walks of life, I find the number one personal concern is the breakdown in family and the resulting impact on quality of life and parenting. Concerns range from “all my children have moved away and our ability to travel to be with them has become extremely challenging”; to: “why can’t there be jobs in Talbot that pay a decent wage so our children will stay here?”; to: “our family has become totally dysfunctional since our children have moved away; to: “my son wants to drop out of school because he sees mowing grass as being a better opportunity than graduating from high school”. The testimonies abound. Bottom line: we need a well-paying job environment in Talbot that affects our children’s attitudes and decisions. Bringing information technology business into Talbot will create an economic dynamic having a profound effect for our children’s futures. Jobs in this industry are well-paying, averaging $65,000/yr for a computer programmer with basic skills, more for systems engineers, site managers, etc. Should we look into forming a wireless task force to create a WIFI solution for our County, similar to what’s happening now in Cambridge? This Task Force would focus on the value of free wireless access from anywhere in our County.

Having this sort of environmentally-sound job base will impact student motivation, family prospects for real unity and much more. Its our responsibility to create a future for our youth. Not hand outs, but real opportunity motivating interest in getting an education, giving parents a basis for encouraging their sons and daughters by focusing on the positive aspects of a future in Talbot, providing our schools with solid rationale, drawn on local example, for our students to stay in school and perform well. And, most important, providing families with real reasons to feel pride and a sense of dignity in their Our Eastern Shore broadband telecommunications infrastructure and services will make it possible for us to manage our growth without the need for a large influx of people and additional large-scale development.

Recognizing agriculture plays a major role in the economy of Talbot is one reason for getting our County “wired”. Today, there is an abundance of interactive, technical tools on the Internet available to our farmers and nurserymen providing much needed capabilities about ways to make agriculture more profitable. These tools are best known as precision agriculture tools. They process everything from soil type analysis; what and when to plant; how much seed / nutrients to employ per acre; types row spacing and seed drill settings; coupled with such tools for assessing irrigation requirements, harvesting techniques and more, much more. Talbot should have a comprehensive database detailing every geospatial parameter for agriculture lands in Talbot. Such a data repository could be accessed while plowing, seeding, spraying, or harvesting a field via an interactive, wireless computer carried on the tractor coupled to the Global Positioning System. Such applications are not uncommon these days on large-scale farms in our country’s breadbasket and the cost for such systems have dropped drastically.

Likewise, our County’s Economic Development Office partnering with our Chamber of Commerce could carry out a marketing strategy focused on bringing major corporation “business continuity centers” into Talbot. The Internet is indeed ubiquitous, its everywhere. However, its infrastructure remains vulnerable because Internet deployment has relied heavily on available right-of-ways, e.g. AMTRAK as one example. You may remember several years ago a major train fire in the railroad tunnel passing through Baltimore. The intensity of that fire destroyed all sorts of commercial telecommunications cabling running through that tunnel. In a similar vain, the destruction of the twin towers on 11 September 2001 brought a halt to many major Internet services supporting all sorts of business and private activities along the eastern seaboard and to points west. The DELMARVA presents a perfect solution for a survivable alternative North/South route for Internet networking. For many years now our Federal Government has been wrestling with Critical Infrastructure Protection. Though progress in the Federal Government sector has been steady and focused, private industry has been slow to invest in business continuity systems primarily due to a lack of available, redundant, secure, survivable infrastructure. Our County should support the on-going efforts by our Mid Shore Regional Council and the Maryland Broadband Cooperative to deploy a broadband, high-speed, telecommunications backbone from Wallops Island to the Delaware Bridge.

With this backbone in place our opportunity to provide broadband Internet access to every Talbot resident as well as meeting requirements for “business continuity centers”, tourism, and other activities becomes a reality.

The IT industry, as its known, is one of several enterprise opportunities for creating decent, environmentally-sound, well-paying jobs in our County. We need to do more than simply talk about keeping our youth in our County. We need to put our tax dollars and common sense to work to ensure our County is ready for the 21st Century and the jobs such enterprises provide.

Owen Wormser