Communication

One of the things that was brought up at length at last nights panel meeting was the poor state of communication in northern Reynolds County. The EMS Technical Advisory Committee spent a lot of time talking about how difficult (if not impossible) it is for the various first responders to talk to each other. Part of the EMS package that was proposed is for additional towers and new radios so everyone can keep in touch. There was also a lot of talk about the need for better cell phone coverage in the area. I must admit I find it interesting that the people making the most noise about bad cell phone service are folks that do not live in Lesterville. We know that the service is bad, I have to drive to Wilderness Lodge to get a signal, so we have learned to live without a cell phone on our belt all day.

I bring all this up because at the start of the meeting it was stated that the answer to Sen. Engler's question about my broadband proposal would be put off till next week. I'll remind you that he wanted the Forrester Group to ask Ameren if my proposal to have Ameren install a Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) was possible. I got the feeling from a private conversation last night that Ameren has said that they don't have any interest in working on this project.
I'm disapointed if this is the case, but I will try to remind the panel that in my proposal I stated that if Ameren couldn't (or now it appears won't) supply a BPL network that I wanted them to investigate Wi-Max. Wi-Max is the big brother of Wi-Fi. Its a wireless internet protocol that covers a lot larger area than Wi-Fi.

I always felt that the biggest problem with Wi-Max was the cost of building the tower. But if the EMS proposal includes towers, I would hope that a Wi-Max antenna could be installed along with the EMS radio antennas. It was stated that one of the members of the EMS Technical Committee was Dee McCormick. Dee owns the Ellington Telephone Company and I know his firm also installs towers around the mid-west. So I assume that he might be an involved in the building of the EMS network.

Since no one locally (or in Jeff City) can do anything but twist arms to get better cell phone service, it seems to me that a wireless internet system would offer the possibility of VOIP (voice over internet protocol). I'm sure you have seen the commercials for Vontage or heard of Skype, two of the VOIP systems. I don't know at this time if it is possible to buy a phone that works on VOIP without being connected to a laptop, but if this doesn't exist I'll bet it will soon. The point being that the local area could have better communication by putting Wi-Max on the new towers. So I will try to see if I can get this across to the panel at next weeks meeting while they decide what to fund.

One last thought for today, an Ameren representative stated last night that they do not know how much interest the $5 million will generate. This has been stated before and is posted on their FAQ page. What bothers me is no one wants to say that it is invested at x% or state that on February 1 the fund had x number of dollars. You know that any number of people within Ameren have access to these numbers, so I don't understand this "Sgt Schultz" game of "I know nothing".

I'll post some further thoughts about last nights meeting later.