An Editorial...Salivating Over Broadband Service

If you could make a list of "most wanted" items for Grove residents, at the top would be broadband internet access. A small portion of the city, about a three mile radius from McDonald's, has AT&T/SBC DSL, which has been around for 10 years or more and is very reliable. Charter Cable offers broadband to a limited service area and has no expansion ideas. Cox says they might have it by year's end, but only to it's service area. Green Country offers wi-fi to a selected area from three or four tower locations, but it is up and down much of the time. Out-of-town owners complicate the repair process.

The city has been working for months to bring a wi-fi system to Grove which would cover the entire city and even surrounding territory such as Monkey Island. The base customer would be GMSA, whose meter readings would be automatically performed using the wi-fi system. The city would borrow $750,000 through GIDA and pay it back from customer revenues over a five-year period. The Bank of Oklahoma has already offered the loan.

Now come the sticky parts. Is Wi-Fi obsolete to a new product, Wi-Max? What lies beyond? And can the city generate enough customer revenue to pay back a $750,000 loan with interest?

We encourage you to go on line to Google, and type in "Wi-Max" and see more than you ever wanted to know. This product is here, and a vast improvement over wi-fi. But whatever product is chosen, radios have bugs…from lightening, hail storms, electrical surges, etc. and they tend to break down. The city would not dare enter this minefield without a full-time expert on the payroll. And, the city would do well to hire an impartial consultant now, to investigate what system is best for Grove and how it could be "future proofed" against constantly changing technologies.

As for the $750,000 loan, if broadband is in such demand here why haven't SBC or Cox or somebody in private industry jumped at the chance to install a system here.
A close look at this loan and the numbers required to make it work are in order.

As much as we are salivating over a new broadband system that would put Grove in the front of the technology train, we would urge a careful examination to avoid mistakes on the equipment and financing package. Members of the Council and GIDA owe the community a hard look at this before proceeding.