Let’s leapfrog Thomasville in the 21st century equivalent of roads, rail, and airports: Internet speeds!

Here’s another point from Chris Miller at the 2011 Economic Summit, according to the VDT story by Dawn Castro 18 May 2011, :

“Thomasville didn’t have hi-speed internet, so the process of moving products quickly was not possible,” he said, “With Rose Net hi-speed broadband, it is now able to work 25 times faster. That one simple step boosted economic product growth, and as we all know, the technical industry creates a wage growth path.”

Georgia Internet Speed Results by www.speedmatters.org

So if the Chamber wants, as it says, knowledge-based businesses and jobs, maybe it should work to get us out of the Internet backwoods. Notice Thomas County prominently faster on that map than Lowndes County. Chris Miller used to work for Mindspring and Earthlink, so doubtless he understands the regulatory capture games the duopoly plays to keep selling us substandard speeds, and how to leapfrog that to real connectivity.

As previously mentioned, if we’re going to copy Chattanooga about something, how about not their useless school consolidation, and instead their gigabit Internet. Posting this stuff sure would be easier even on Thomasville’s 22 Mbps down 3Mbps up CNS than on AT&T’s allegedly 3Mbps down 0.3Mbps up DSL, which really gets more like 2Mbps down 0.15Mbps up much of the time.

VLCIA brags about the transportation advantages of I-75 and I-10 and the airport and rail connections. How about we speed up so we can brag about the 21st century equivalent of those things: Internet connectivity.

Anyway, congratulations again to the Chamber for holding the 2011 Economic Summit.

-jsq

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