Wi-Max in Jeopardy

It was an exciting prospect last year - South Carolina would become a 'hot' state and their would be economic rewards to fill the states coffers which could justify some potential tax breaks. All because of an ambitious, doable, progressive plan that could offer all South Carolinians Internet access through ETV.

Well in today's State paper - as we are yet so close to achieving something potentially life changing for the people of South Carolina - Legislative cromagnum Men in the pocket of large corporations are challenging the claims of the technology at the expense of their constituencies and various coalition of South Carolina Businesses in support of the plan for the sake of their current lucrative contracts with various state agencies and offices.

“WiMax has been talked about like it’s the next best thing to Penicillin,” said Rankin, who headed a legislative study committee this past summer that examined the WiMax “wireless cloud” proposal. “And (lawmakers) are being told, ‘Hurry up. We don’t have time to wait. We don’t have time to study WiMax and whatever else is out there.’”

Legislators were told:

In December, a Washington-based wireless expert, Joanne Wilson, warned lawmakers that “WiMax is yet another example of over-hyped technologies that have not yet been commercially proven.”

It should be noted that Ms. Wilson works for ArrayComm who has a stake in WiMax technologies as a major player and holder of many lucrative contracts already. And let's not forget that Ms. Wilson was an employee of the very corporation(s) that is complaining about the potential move for WiMax.

According to John Warner, founder of Innoventure and SwampFox (both of which has become a privatised department of commerce since that department under the current regime has atrophied to the point of irrelevance):

“This is a transformational opportunity that won’t come again,” said John Warner, founder of InnoVenture, an Upstate organization dedicated to helping create high-impact companies. “It would be a shame that at the end of the day, we let this chance go by because we didn’t have the vision and leadership to step up and grasp it.”

Said another South Carolina industry association leader Thomas Persons:

“If we don’t continue putting this on the front burner, we could miss this deadline and an unbelievable possibility,” said Thomas Persons, president of the S.C. Technology Alliance. “The bottom line is we could be the first state with the ability to connect everyone statewide to the Internet.”

Surprisingly these legislative ding dongs are suggesting something that brings to question why they bother having an (R) after their name:

Sens. Rankin and Glenn McConnell have expressed disappointment that ETV had neglected to tell lawmakers that “self-transition” is a possibility. They also said ETV should have done a better job of explaining options to lawmakers.

“This thing is very complex. And there’s a lot of misinformation about all of this,” McConnell said. “I don’t understand why ETV has not been more clear and definitive about this. I’m working to get answers and am not about to vote to transfer taxpayers’ assets without knowing what is going on.”

Moss Bresnahan, president of ETV, said self-transition could be very expensive, would eliminate the state’s ability to earn millions through a lease agreement and may not include the same array of new services.

Incredible, Republican'ts would dare consider mandating that the government do something, at the expense of the tax payers and with the potential of loosing millions in revenue that could be passed along to the tax payers and business community in tax reductions or to fill the drying well that is the State's Treasury, this is what they accuse the Democrats of doing! And I'm a democrat, and my party sees that taking this route would be asinine!

Boy, Somebody needs to put these idiots on their "Legislative Hit List," the problem is if the Governor's willing to have a backwards policy towards his Department of Commerce he probably supports these goofball statements.

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