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MoveTheTower Newsletter - http://www.highway60.com/MoveTheTower

February 7, 2005

Wireless Internet May Be Coming to Richland County! - Tom Jackson of the Southwest Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SWWRPC) has scheduled a meeting on Friday February 11, 2005 10:00 AM-Noon at the Lone Rock Community Building 130 E. Liberty St. The purpose of the meeting is to try to "kick start to community and economic development through truly high-speed wireless broadband internet access for a rural county".

I know that most of the readers of this newsletter want to save the Wisconsin River from the Sauk County tower. And most of you probably are not very interested in wireless Internet. However, the two are closely related. The more this new technology and its impact is understood, the more it becomes clear that the Thuli Road tower is a huge mistake that should be stopped. The economic development advantages of high-speed wireless Internet cannot be ignored. For example, high-speed wireless access to the Internet would mean that everyone in the county would have a more economical alternative to the telephone companies for their phone service. The decision by the Sauk County Board of Supervisors on December 21 to condemn the Thuli Road property to build their tower also condemns the economic future of Sauk County.

Below is a quote from the first issue of the MoveTheTower Newsletter on September 11, 2004
http://www.highway60.com/MoveTheTower/newsletter_040911.htm

"The Spring Green tower is only the tip of the iceberg of a larger issue. Sauk County is spending $6,000,000 on their aging and redundant communications systems that only the county can use. No resident will be able to communicate using these towers and antennas. While Sauk County is doing this, other cities and counties across the country are deploying state-of-the-art wireless networks to provide free or low-cost high-speed access to the Internet! Is Sauk County's spending our tax dollars to build the WRONG network? The county's "plan" to build this network is two years old. In the meantime new wireless technology has become available that is cheaper, faster, easier to deploy and is based on standard Internet technology that every resident can take advantage of, as well as the county emergency services. This is the same technology that is being proposed by the Department of Homeland Security."

The network the county should be investing in is a high-speed wireless Internet network using 802.11 WiFi and 802.16 WiMAX technologies. WiMAX is a tsunami wave of technology that the Sauk County supervisors can hide from, but they will not be able to run away from their misguided decisions. The meeting in Lone Rock this week is sign that wireless Internet is coming, but not to Sauk County.

The 21 uninformed supervisor votes for the Thuli Road tower were also votes against the economic future of Sauk County. At least 8 of the current supervisors will need to be replaced in the election next year in order to Move The Tower and to bring wireless Internet and economic development to Sauk County. Last fall after a meeting at the Spring Green Village Board I was telling Art Carlson, the Spring Green supervisor, about the advantages of wireless Internet. After listening for awhile, Art said to me, "The Internet? I'm not even sure people need the Internet". Art was one of the 21 who voted to trash the riverway and waste millions on the wrong technology.

Can the residents of Sauk County really do nothing and think that the current supervisors will make the right decisions for our futures?

Mark Culverhouse

PS I have posted Mark Cupp's final remarks to the Board of Supervisors before they voted against preserving the river: http://www.highway60.com/MoveTheTower/markcupp_letter_041221.htm
I recommend it to all. Here is a small excerpt, "And then I thought of one of my favorite Wisconsin River quotes by Aldo Leopold, “Yet, there remains the river.  In some places, hardly changed since Paul Bunyan’s day.  At early dawn, one can still hear it singing in the wilderness.  Perhaps our grandsons, having never seen a river, will never miss the chance to set a canoe in its singing waters.”

You can read more about this exciting wireless project at:

• http://www.highway60.com/MoveTheTower/bioelectromagnetics_letter_0412.htm  
  A December 2004 letter from Ken Schlager, Ph.D., P.E., President, Bioelectromagnetics, Inc. to Tom Jackson on their engineering study recommending a mesh technology network
• http://www.highway60.com/MoveTheTower/bioelectromagnetics_letter_mesh_0412.htm
  A December 2004 letter from Ken Schlager, Ph.D., P.E., President, Bioelectromagnetics, Inc. to Tom Jackson Subject "Hierarchical Mesh Network Opportunity for a Wireless Broadband Communications System serving a rural WI county"
• http://www.swwrpc.org/econ_plan.html 
  SWWRPC Economic Development Planning, "WIRELESS BROADBAND OPPORTUNITY TOPIC OF FEBRUARY 11 MEETING"
  "Ken Schlager, PhD, P.E. and President of Bioelectromagnetics, Inc., will make a presentation on the Telecommunications for Rural America project he has underway in Rusk County, Wisconsin.  Schlager has funding available and seeks a second county interested in wireless broadband service to prove the technology will work in hilly as well as flat topography and could serve any rural region of America. The Southwestern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission organized the meeting."
• http://www.highway60.com/MoveTheTower/dearsupervisor_040925.htm
  This is my letter to the Board of Supervisors responding to CIC administrator Tim Stieve's misinformed remarks to the board on the costs of a wireless Internet system in Sauk County.
• http://www.highway60.com/MoveTheTower/dearsupervisor_041030.htm
  This is my letter to the Board of Supervisors advising them to read the Koehnen engineering report and hire a qualified communications engineer to review the CIC project.
• http://www.highway60.com/MoveTheTower/newsletter_040911.htm
  September 11, 2004 MoveTheTower Newsletter

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