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Broadband everywhere?
Submitted by acohill on Mon, 07/19/2004 - 09:40.
We just rented a beach house for a week, and the contract had a list of amenities. To my surprise, broadband Internet access, a computer, and WiFi comes with what is a very moderately priced beach rental.
It's one more signal that your region, to be competitive in the global economy, needs to be working with your local hospitality, recreation, and travel businesses to make sure they understand this is what travelers want and expect.
If your local businesspeople are saying they don't understand it or don't think it's worth it, then you have an education and training challenge to help them identify what they need and why they need it (they need to keep customers coming). And your region needs hotels, motels, restaurants, and recreation spots to have these services. It's no longer some esoteric marketing strategy....it's become part of the base services package, like electricity, water, and sewer.
going to the beach
Mr. Cohill,
Yes, we have an education and training challenge ahead of us. I certainly agree with you there. I could go on vacation much more frequently, if the accomodations and my family would allow me to work "just a bit" simultaneously. Yes, it's just like having clean drinking water available, a basic service in the minds of many folks today.
Once upon a time, I read an article in Fast Company Magazine (which beats the fire outta Good Housekeeping, for example) that had pictures of all these very remote, exquisitely beautiful places (you know, like "the other side" of Lee County) and went on to report that executives and entrepreneurs and such are spending big bucks on travelling to places where they can get away and enjoy all the wonders that Mother Earth provides, while still staying connected and in touch with their businesses and jobs and such. I saw that article before I moved to Lee County and it even helped me decide just where I want to live. They featured remote islands that had only been previously inhabited by monks that have now gotten high speed internet and developed travel packages for high faluting (I can't even find such a word in the dictionary as to get the spelling correct, oh well) executives so they could "get away" and sanely stay in touch simultaneously... in an effort to subsidize the revenues of their monkdoms (okay, so I made that word up). It's not monasteries, that's nuns-only, right? well, whatever the masculine word for a monastery is...
Anyway, way I figured it, I didn't even have to have the big bucks to get away upon occasion... I could just move my whole family there and have all the wonderful nurturing things that Mother Nature provides available to me year-round, right here in Lee Coounty. On Sunday, for example, we rode our bikes out the Wilderness Road until we reached the quarry. wow! wowee!! What a beautiful place! When we go camping, we just truck it 20 minutes down the road to Cumberland Gap National Historical Park -- my, what a wonderful campground they have.
Once upon a time (but not today apparently, due to "lack of demand"), you could get highspeed internet via some tower or whatever INSIDE Cumberland Gap National Park. That's my dream. I want to be able to be out and about with my family, camping, for example, where I can occasionally whip my little laptop out on the picnic table in the woods, and check up on things in the work world. It was here for a brief moment. I don't think it will be too long before it's back.
As far as training and educating local businesses... well, I think there's another generation coming right on up that's going to take care of that. My daughter uses technology tools that I've never even learned about. She says that her buddies in Abingdon AND IN ROSE HILL use the same tools, particularly instant messaging and chat rooms. When THAT generation becomes business owners, things will change around here. Either that, or like Appalachia's brain drain trends of the past, they'll all leave here. Are we giving them the skills they need to become successful entrepreneurs?
I suspect that when the Rose Hill library has high speed internet available, the only folks I'll be having to share the tools with, will be my daughter's age. It's the teenagers I'll be fighting with saying, no, it's MY TURN now, give me a turn. It ain't gonna be your traditional Lee County business owners fighting me over who gets to use the one public access high speed connection...
You have fun at beach, by the way!
Joan