Good news & bad

At Wednesday's July 15th Town Council Meeting, 7 p.m. at City Hall, Josh Grandinetti and Andy Coumont will explain and demonstrate the fine points of their creation – Rockfordwa.com – the town's official website.

As always, the public is welcome to attend.

The sad news is, in spite Town Council Member, Micki Harnois efforts, and Horizons' team leader's hours of strategic planning, getting lower cost Broadband access for Rockford residents is not going to happen.

Broadband is provided by Air-pipe.com to customers who are within line-of-site of their equipment, atop the seed elevators near the entrance to town. And although even the lowest installation fee, $199 for three years, is beyond the reach of the majority, because it takes three years for the company to recover their equipment and installation expenses, fees cannot be lowered.

Two other high speed internet providers, Hughes and Wild Blue, are advertised online as also providing service to area customers, but connectivity varies by location and is not less expensive.

Add to that the $49.95-lowest monthly rate, and it's not hard to realize that the majority of Rockford's youth and senior citizens won't have Broadband access.

That Rockford's residents suffer poverty of Broadband access is not only sad, it's almost criminal. Statistics show that without competitive access to the Internet, every segment of society lags farther and farther behind their more fortunate peers; in job markets, in education, in government services, to say nothing of social activities.

Broadband users can read daily newspapers and trade journals from around the globe, and have access to information that can make or break a company dependent on breaking news. They can easily zoom in on any segment of the earth, via GoogleEarth; and talk long distance, via Skype, freed from enormous long distance fees.

The options and opportunities available to Broadband users leave dial-up and cable-dependent Internet users desperately handicapped. There is no foreseeable solution in sight for Rockford.

Both webmasters kept this fact in mind when they created the town's website. Utilizing the best available resources, they designed fast loading pages and options that will greatly benefit Rockford citizens.

These fine young men are hard at work now on a website for their web design business. Watch for the advent of http://www.andrewcoumont.com/.