Free wireless broadband service will be intro-duced in those areas of Lexington in time forthe Alltech FEI Equestrian Games, Mayor Jim

Newberry announced at a news conference in thelobby of the government center this morning.Newberry announced about $1.1 million in state andfederal public safety grants and a $550,000 grantfrom the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation,saying that these funds and a collaboration betweena consortium of public, private and educationalagencies, including the University of Kentucky andthe Blue Grass Community Foundation made theannouncement possible.

The city has been working for years on a plan tobring broadband to the downtown, and last yearmade the first step, bringing arehabilitated broadband tower online in the down-town area and making it available to law enforce-ment only by VPN.

But visitors to the downtown have been unableto connect to any free city wifi.

Using newly engineered broadband on city traf-fic lights and Kentucky Utilities-owned lampposts,the network will allow law enforcement to have bet-ter and more integrated response and to share infor-mation more easily between patrol car terminals.The $1.1 million collection of state and federal grantswill help with that.

As an added benefit, the traditionally digitallyunderserved neighborhoods of the East End and

Cardinal Valley will get both a freebroadband wireless connection and a concentrated

effort, through the Blue Grass CommunityFoundation’s administration of the $550,000 KnightFoundation Grant, to help residents use the connectionfor educational, informational and vocational uses.

“Knight Foundation believes that access toinformation is a core community need, as essentialas good schools, safe streets and clean air,” saidJorge A. Martinez, Knight Foundation’s director ofinformation systems.

A map of which areas will be served by the freeconnection is still being developed and will be avail-able online. City officials, in a news release, said that“The new network will add the underserved areasin the East End and Cardinal Valley, the corridorsand the college town area between the University ofKentucky campus and the business district. The col-lege town area also has been a focus of the city’swork to improve South Limestone Street.”

The network will, in essence, be an extension ofthe University of Kentucky’s signal and users wouldlog on as guests, much as users on the campusalready do. ■

Kakie Urch is Asst. Professor, New Media School ofJournalism and Telecommunications, University ofKentucky

4 ACE Weekly January 7, 2010

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Broadband to Expand in LexDowntown Lexington, the East End and Cardinal Valley should be hotby late summerBy Kakie Urch

Mayor Newberry’s press conference announcing Lex’sexpanded broadband

While we’re talking about Wi in the sky,let’s state out front that I was one of thelucky ones.

It was pretty clear that the ice had taken mybroadband cable, slouching all aglisten slowlytoward the first floor, but somehow, thanks to thegrace of a neighbor’s unsecured connection, I wasable to remain online during the storm that Gov.Steve Beshear has termed the worst natural disasterin recorded Kentucky history.

But many people, some of them with chil-dren, sick or elderly family members, and somewithout power or heat, weren’t as lucky.Everything that came through a cable, wire or

pipe was out of service. And the neighbor wasn’thot. If a municipal wifi system had been in place,thousands of Lexingtonians would have beenable to more quickly receive emergency informa-tion, continue to work in some cases, and defi-nitely keep in touch with support networks thattake some of the burden off the city.

The Internet was invented to keep the world’scomputers talking during Armaggedon. When theDefense Department envisioned Cold War worst caseoutcomes, it figured it needed a way to keep the com-puters talking to each other until the people couldpoke their heads back out of the shelters. Sounds a lit-tle like last week, with lots more radiation.

It’s not just for natural disasters or say man-made disasters — I remember about once everythree months that we’re just 20 miles from theigloos of mass destruction at the Bluegrass ArmyDepot in Richmond —or terrorist disasters, Godforbid, in the homeland. Though all that wouldbe a nice use of the technology that was inventedfor disaster.

Municipal wifi is good for business, good foreducation, good for creativity and good for theentrepreneurship that by nature is going to springup even more rapidly as people find ways to fightback against the economic end-of-times.

Municipal wifi has also shown in other mar-kets to offer people an educational and economichand up. I’ve seen with the children in Title Ischools that if you put a bunch of poor kids arounda computer, they become a bunch of interested,engaged kids who see with curious eyes and end-less possibilities. With people at MIT working on aproject to give the developing world $200 laptopsand companies like Dell and HP looking at a soft-

Wi in the Sky By Kakie Urch (Reprint Ace Feb 2, 2009)

ACE Weekly January 7, 2010 5

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ening market in the developed world, sure-ly a wider spread of computer access issomething Lexington should embrace.

What Lexington needs is a commitmentto the digital infrastructure to continue andexpand its history as a city of “clean indus-try.” We’ve long heard the tale about how thecity fathers hunkered down at a country clubtable eons ago and decided to invite IBM into keep the smokestacks out.

That was a smart move. And this time,the city is actually following straight into thebasket for the rebound.

What Lexington needs is wifi andaccording to Rama Dhuwaraha, the top tech-nology person at the Lexington-FayetteUrban County Government, what Lexingtonwill get, by summer, is wifi. Free wifi.

The University of Kentucky has ledthe way in recent years, both with its on-campus wifi and its remarkable digitalcampus plans. Dhuwaraha (with strongsupport from Mayor Newberry)and UK’sDoyle Friskney have forged a model of apublic-private partnership. And it willmake your laptop hot, allowing access tothe UK guest signal throughout down-town. The city and the University, lastsummer, took up a “town-gown” MOA— Memorandum of Agreement — to usethe abandoned SkyTel equipment (soldto the city for $10) to begin to offer wifidowntown, for free.

That’s a great sign and one that weshould make sure happens, quickly, with aneye to expansion, if possible, to the entirecounty. UK and the city are just putting thefinishing touches on the adjustmentsrequired to the towers.

Microsoft has identified some of the“hottest” cities — where there is the most andmost affordable (i.e. free) wifi available as

Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, Portland, OR,and Atlanta. Those are some pretty decentqualities of life, with Austin being one of thecities the Urban County Government andother leaders visited in person to gather ideas.And all of them, like Lexington, have the cre-ative and economic engine of a university (oruniversities) at their center and outskirts.Education is infrastructure, as Lexington (andnow a new president) definitely acknowl-edges...and the information that is educationtravels through the air on this wifi.

Dhuwaraha says that the signal will be

free to users and city and university plan tosplit ongoing costs 50/50. And free is the“only model that’s going to work because ifyou charge for it, people will just go some-where it is free.” Should the city make thecommitment to “facilitate commerce andmake this a quality of life thing?”Dhuwaraha says yes.

Amongst the most technological,there is some debate about whether weshould act now or wait and see ifLexington, like Baltimore, becomes one ofthe lucky test markets for Sprint’s 4G net-work that provides the fast fastindoor/outdoor multimedia signal thatcan carry fat fat packets at the speed oflight, and will, industry publications andstudies assure, supercede wifi.

(For a cost, of course. You’d have to addto your Sprint bill, add a Clearwire charge tothat and run it all through your smartphonethat’s $150 minimum, $300 if its name startswith an “I”). To that, I present the thou-sands and thousands of people, many olderor living in poverty, who are clinging totheir rabbit ears as the digital televisionswitch is delayed. So let’s act now to put inplace critical digital infrastructure that wecan use in this economy, in this cycle, in thisadministration of possibilities.

Also Dhuwaraha says, with an eye tothe future, UK and the city have already hasapproached 4G vendors like Clearwire aboutcoming to Lexington. What vendors want tosee is a critical mass of people already usingthe service before they come in, he says. Andhere’s where UK and Lexington are workingtogether best for the future: they are propos-ing to vendors to come in and use the FEIEquestrian Games as a testing and provingground for their new services. Now, that’sthe way to think like Austin!

So, whether or not anything is everbuilt at the corner of Rosenberg and Vine,and whether every Kentuckian is one daytoting an iPhone as we did a longrifle, weshould be able to sit in the middle of thathole this summer, get a signal, get somework done and check the Snow EmergencyRoute maps.

[Reprinted Ace, February 2, 2009]Kakie Urch is an assistant professor in the

School of Journalism and Telecommunication atUniversity of Kentucky.

“So, whether or not anything is ever built at the cornerof Rosenberg and Vine, and whether every Kentuckian is

one day toting an iPhone as we did a longrifle, weshould be able to sit in the middle of that hole this

summer, get a signal, get some work done and checkthe Snow Emergency Route maps.“ —Ace, What

Lexington Needs, February 2, 2009

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