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THERE HAS NEVER BEEN a better opportunity for West Virginia to benefit from federal funds in order to help build the infrastructure necessary to bring broadband to our rural communities. People from all over the country talk about how well-positioned we are with the population density, demographics and mountainous terrain that we have as our challenges and the influence our legislators have to help provide necessary funding to extend services to our rural communities and overcome these challenges. In addition, the existing fiber networks within the state are rich with capacity which is unlike other states as we have great infrastructure to build upon.
In rural West Virginia, many West Virginians have no access to broadband applications and services and, by extension, no access to our global community. Our rural communities have long been unserved or underserved by broadband technology, but the full implication of this digital divide has emerged as the Internet has become much less a novelty and more of a necessity. The Obama administration and Congress recognize that broadband access will benefit all Americans in much the same way that the nation has overcome infrastructure challenges by building major highways to provide access for transportation. Bringing affordable and ubiquitous services to rural West Virginians will improve the quality of education, health care and public safety in rural West Virginia, among other benefits.
We are just starting to see the exponential growth of technology with the advent of wireless and mobile technology. Some of the leading operators have articulated a hyperconnected vision of the future. Called “Three Screens,” today’s technology is connecting the television, PC and mobile phone under a single umbrella to a vast portfolio of network services that seamlessly glide from one platform to another. Though the portfolio of video, Internet and mobile services functions largely independently of one another today, it won’t be long before we start seeing the first linkages between devices in the home and office, transferring content from mobile devices to TV to PC screens. Looking to the next decade, you will see connectivity expand beyond these three applications, creating a world where everything conceivable can be interconnected. The hub will be the mobile device as our personal network. Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility, says on Squawk Box, “Wireless, and in particular mobile broadband, is going to change the way the world lives and works.” Our daily rituals are to be significantly different and hopefully change for the better. Businesses will be more efficient and people will be more effective.
Aligning Applications to our Rural Demographics
Take a look at West Virginia's demographics from the 2000 census:
Since West Virginia has the highest level of disabled citizens, broadband access to the Internet throughout rural West Virginia would be particularly valuable in assisting people with disabilities to realize their full potential. For example, broadband can let distant sign-language interpreters assist individuals with essential tasks, such as communicating with doctors or participating in business meetings. People who are blind or visually impaired can use adaptive equipment that directs them to information on a Web page. Those with physical injuries due to our extractive resource industries can use broadband access for library services or as a shopping mall, to name just a few.
Bringing broadband to our senior citizen and disabled population can also help improve health care. Due to our topography and population density, our rural citizens don’t have access to the full range of health care services, particularly specialty care, where the population base can’t support a viable, sustainable health care facility. Yet with sufficiently robust broadband services, clinics in rural West Virginia and our mountains can have access to facilities and specialists in more densely populated areas. At a time when the Obama administration is working on health care reform and costs, the ability to leverage our health care resources would vastly benefit our Mountain State citizens.
Jimmy Gianato, Director of Homeland Security for West Virginia, says, “Broadband is essential to meeting our public safety and homeland security needs.” Wireless technology is only the beginning to meet the need of communications in the event of floods, natural disasters or attacks of any kind. Land-based communications are not as effective as the wireless technology used from radio towers. In addition, wireless will provide mobile access and therefore provide mobility for voice and data anytime, anywhere to aid in our mountainous regions and coal communities during disaster for both first responders and citizens. First responders, public health officials and government workers could increasingly use broadband to share critical, time sensitive public safety and security information with each other and with their communities. All Americans, including those in rural areas, must have access to broadband to receive alerts and updates in the event of a local, state or national emergency.
Rural broadband build out can also enhance educational opportunities and academic achievement to improve our college going rates. Students without access to broadband cannot do the same type of homework as their counterparts who enjoy access to the Internet, and students in certain rural areas are often many miles away from advanced educational institutions such as colleges and universities. Broadband can significantly improve the quality of education by providing students in rural areas with the ability to do online research, interact with their teachers and schools from home and obtain college credit and college degrees even though they are not physically on campus.
Clearly, access to mobile broadband devices also has potential to enhance the efficiency and productivity of a number of our agricultural and extraction industries. Coal, timber, natural gas and farmers have the potential to improve efficiency and productivity for a number of outdoor activities in our rural communities. Whether it be surface mining in Southern West Virginia, well tenders in Central West Virginia, timber extractors or agricultural activities, businesses in our remote areas can materially benefit from real-time access to weather reports, business applications that access their databases and safety practices that change their business processes due to mobile technology. Mountain State companies should be able to call on Internet-driven tools to consult with experts and precisely calculate inputs they might need to enable their resources to flourish with less waste and perhaps risk to the environment. Broadband-enabled smart grid technologies could help our utilities balance their network loads more accurately, making energy distribution more efficient. We must align our technology infrastructure with our core industries and help them prosper.
Finally, broadband deployment throughout rural West Virginia where poverty is high is particularly important. Properly implemented, connection via broadband to the wider world offers a boost to people caught in the cycle of poverty. Their need for distance learning and telemedicine is most acute in these areas of West Virginia. We must see that broadband infrastructure and the means to rural communities through last-mile efforts reach our communities that have been red-lined, neglected or segregated from better served areas.
Our Rural Community's Future Depends on Broadband Technology
The many benefits for served areas demonstrate the necessity of ensuring that robust and affordable broadband is available to rural West Virginians. Furthermore, America’s economy depends on ensuring that all Americans, including those in rural areas, have access to broadband and are able to compete in this connected, global economy. According to Dr. Vinton Cerf, the “Father of the Internet,” in the future, billions of devices will be accessible through the Internet at ever-increasing speeds, using applications that, for the most part, have yet to be conceived. Technology is changing that rapidly with mobile devices. Broadband is the interstate highway of the 21st century for small towns and rural communities in West Virginia, the vital connection to the broader nation and, increasingly, the global economy. Through our powerful and effective government officials, both on the federal and state level, we should prosper and benefit from a concerted effort to bring broadband to West Virginia.
Deploying broadband will fundamentally benefit our state economy. Just as rural electrification created a new group of home appliance consumers, so will broadband-connected rural West Virginia want Internet Protocol (IP)- enabled phones, smart meters, telehealth, distance learning, video relay services, online music, streaming movies, interactive gaming and a host of other broadband products and services. Simply put, broadband build out to rural West Virginians promotes and encourages sustained economic development to the benefit of us all.
A Country Boy Can Survive...and Succeed
by Kensie Westerfield and Jennifer Nugent
His house might be located on the West Coast, but for John Chambers, chairman of the board and CEO of Cisco Systems, Inc., West Virginia will always be his home.
His lifelong devotion to the Mountain State began during a childhood spent in Charleston, on the banks of the Elk River. “We had a small camp on the Elk River,” Chambers recalls, “and during the spring, summer and fall I would spend 10 to 15 hours a day in the water, canoeing, swimming, fishing, setting trout lines and chasing crawdads. It was just a lot of fun.”
Chambers is proud of his Mountaineer roots and the influence his background has had on the forward-thinking visionary he has become. “What is fascinating, I think, is that my family’s West Virginia background really prepared us to compete on a global basis. I was taught a lot about life and treating others how you would like to be treated yourself. I think there are many, many life lessons that I would not have traded for any other state in the world growing up.”
The Great Equalizer
Growing up, education was the great equalizer for Chambers’ generation. In the 21st century, however, he believes that education paired with the Internet is the key to success. “Both of my parents were doctors, and they taught me from the very beginning how important education is to our future. Education used to be the equalizer of life in the last century. In the future, it’s education combined with the Internet, both wired and wireless. It gives us accessibility to information, health care, education and entertainment and availability for job access that we would not be able to get otherwise.”
It’s this powerful combination that has inspired him to give offer some of Cisco’s capabilities to his home state. “When you think about it,” he says, “broadband is really the infrastructure for the 21st century much like highways, rivers and airports were for the last century. The applications are going to be all over the place for 21st century health care, education, for driving productivity up at 5 to 10 percent per year in terms of companies, cities and states and for changing the standard of living for all of us, including West Virginia and throughout this country and around the globe.”
A Model for Success
Chambers inherited his selflessness and determination from his parents. Both mentors to their son, his father shared an ability to forecast future trends while his mother instilled in him a softer side, teaching him the ever-important lesson to treat others the way he wants to be treated.
Another key player in Chamber’s life was his teacher, Mrs. Anderson. “I had a learning disability called dyslexia,” he confides. “Without parents who believed in me and also the ability to have someone who could help me through those challenges, I probably would not have been as fortunate to be able to attend nine and a half years of college or achieve some of the successes that I have been honored to receive over the past several decades.”
Aided throughout life with a supportive family, a close network of friends and the ability to see challenges as opportunities, Chambers has utilized his most valuable life lessons to further his career ambitions and to share his knowledge with others. While he says there’s nothing that can’t be done by working together as a team and refers often to his mother’s teachings of treating others the way one wants to be treated, perhaps his most poignant lesson to share is the realization that dreams can—and do—come true. “I think many times we don’t achieve what is possible personally, professional or business-wise because we don’t set our aspirations far enough and challenge ourselves to get there. It doesn’t mean we’ll always achieve those dreams, but without thinking optimistically and having a plan to get there, we fall short of our personal and professional goals.”
Giving Back to the Mountain State
Chambers’ devotion to the Mountain State is cemented yet again with the current broadband initiative. “I think we have many things to be proud of in West Virginia, and yet we have many challenges, just like other states do. Unless we are able to bring the power of the West Virginia human network together to compete in the U.S. and around the world as we move forward, we will slowly be left behind as a state.”
Using his position as a global leader in communications, Chambers represents his family’s loyalty to the Mountain State by giving back to his alma mater, WVU and numerous other education-related entitities. “I have always believed that those who are fortunate in life owe an obligation to give back because it’s the right thing to do and secondly it’s just plain good for business. I’m very proud to be a West Virginian and very proud of our state.”
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