| reply to jonjon602
I never thought I'd see something from my home town mentioned on the Broadband Report! Any way, I'm not a big fan of Sitnews, but I certainly wouldn't mind free wireless. Last time I checked Ketchikan, Alaska had the highest rate of internet usage in the State. It rains an average of 14 feet a year, so it pays to have in door hobbies. Also the town is on an island so you have to take a boat or plane to go any where. Online shopping is almost a must in South East Alaska. Sadly as we have no fiber optic cable we have to use microwave for our lame DSL service that cost me $129.00 a month. Not to mention, you also end up with a lousy ping that isn't much better then a good Dial-up service in a big city.
This article was probably written as we our having local elections tomorrow. To be honest, most of the people who run for office tend to have backgrounds in logging, fishing, and tourism so I doubt a local wireless service would be their priority. Especially when the city it's self owns Ketchikan Public Utilities which supplies power, phone service, the majority of local internet service and soon digital TV. Even if they had the interest which I doubt, they wouldn't cut their own throat like that. Which sucks....
As for some of you making comments on who would want to come up to Alaska, I know there is a lot of people who would kill to come up here for a while. Alaska is a huge place, and vastly different depending on where you live in the State. Some people think it's just frozen Tundra. To think that way, would be like thinking it's the same in Maine as it is in Florida, as Alaska is 2/3rd's the size of the lower 48 States. Ketchikan is in the most southern part of the State, and has more in common with Seattle then Nome. I work at the airport here, and we get hundred's of people coming on private Jet's to visit here every year. Even Bill Gates, and Paul Allen even saw fit to visit. For some reason Paul Allen went shopping at our local Walmart with his folk and came back to his helicopter with like 30 Walmart bags of god knows what crap. He was kind of a jerk really. Any way, for some reason there are people willing to pay $1,400 a day to fish up here at resort's like Waterfall Lodge, and those people usually get pissed at our limited cell and wireless service up here. Oh well... |
