Will the 700 Mhz Band Bring Broadband to Rural Areas?
Parts of rural America have broadband internet access and I guess you could say it is available to everyone if you consider the satellite services which cover the entire country which are ridiculously expensive for the initial setup and monthly service. There also is a patchwork of local providers offering wireless internet services off of water towers and grain elevators and buildings. These services are limited in the amount of bandwidth they can offer, not because the wireless gear is not capable of high speeds, but because the actual t1s or t3s to provide the backhaul to the internet are so expensive.
The nice thing about this particular spectrum is it will go through trees, walls, and just about anything for a long distance from a central broadcast point. So the cost of deployment is reduced because one central broadcast station will cover a large area and the cost of setting it up and providing internet access is spread over more customers. This is all contingent upon local providers being able to gain access to the spectrum in their area.
Google started a discussion about this spectrum and tried to influence the FCC to require the purchaser of the spectrum to provide access to third parties at wholesale prices. I am not sure what wholesale prices means but to a company like verizon it means another chance to gouge anyone who wants put up the amount they will arbitrarily come up with.
I think if some company is going to rent a piece of this spectrum in their area it should be cheap, cheap to the point it is a negligible expense in the operation of an ISP's costs to provide internet access. The telcos like to promote themselves as service providers. If one of them gets this spectrum let them do a real service to this country and provide cheap access to everyone who is willing to do something valuable with the spectrum in their area.
Each election cycle politicians have spouted crap about bringing broadband access to rural areas. first of all, I do not think they really know anything about the business and the technology. Secondly, they have ignored the large group of small companies that have already been providing broadband access in rural areas. Finally, they have been all to happy to take money from telcos that maintain a stranglehold on access out to the internet by charging too much for broadband circuits to carry rural traffic to the internet.
Michael Dappert is a co-founder of Winco, Inc., a provider of wireless internet access to small communities in West central Illinois. More articles and discussion can be found at Mike's Garden Blog and discusses a wide range of topics at Flyoverfolks.com
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The Origin Of Golf
golf is a sport in which individual players or teams of players strike a ball into a hole using several types of clubs. golf is one of the few ball games that does not use a fixed, standardized playing field or area; defined in the Rules of golf as "playing a ball with a club from the teeing ground into the hole by a stroke or successive strokes in accordance with the Rules.
Golf
Golf is a very old game of which the exact origins are unclear. Golf is played in an area of land designated a golf course. Golf courses have not always had eighteen holes. The first game of golf for which records survive was played at Bruntsfield links, in Edinburgh, scotland, in A. The word golf was first mentioned in writing in 1457 on a Scottish statute on forbidden games as gouf, possibly derived from the Scots word goulf (variously spelled) meaning "to strike or cuff". But there is an even earlier reference to the game of golf and it is believed to have happened in 1452 when king James II banned the game because it kept his subjects from their archery practice.
The origin of golf is open to debate as to being Chinese, Dutch or Scottish. However, the most accepted golf history theory is that this sport originated from scotland in the 1100s. A game somewhat similar to golf was first mentioned in Dōngxuān Records (Chinese: 東軒錄), a Chinese book of 11th century. However, modern golf is considered to be a Scottish invention, as the game was mentioned in two 15th century laws prohibiting the playing of the game of gowf. Some scholars have suggested that this refers to another game which is more akin to modern shinty, hurling or field hockey than golf.
Golf
The word golf derives from the Dutch kolf meaning stick, club or bat. There are reports of even earlier accounts of golf from continental Europe. The oldest playing golf course in the world is The old links at Musselburgh Racecourse. Evidence has shown that golf was played on Musselburgh links in 1672 although Mary, Queen of Scots reputedly played there in 1567. As early as the 15th century, golfers at St Andrews, in Fife, established a customary route through the undulating terrain, playing to holes whose locations were dictated by topography. The major changes in equipment since the 19th century have been better mowers, especially for the greens, better golf ball designs, using rubber and man-made materials since about 1900, and the introduction of the metal shaft beginning in the 1930s. Also in the 1930s the wooden golf tee was invented.
In 2005 Golf Digest calculated that there were nearly 32,000 golf courses in the world, approximately half of them in the United States. The countries with most golf courses in relation to population, starting with the best endowed were: scotland, New Zealand, Australia, Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Canada, wales, United States, Sweden, and England (countries with fewer than 500,000 people were excluded).
James Young Clark is a successful Webmaster and publisher of www.AGolfersParadise.com. He provides more information about golf and golf issues that you can research in your pajamas on his website.
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