Broadband Internet For Sevier County Tennessee
The Recovery Act set aside close to $7.2 billion dollars in Federal Grants. Now a Virginia based, DigitalBridge Communications, is seeking about $100 million of those dollars to assist 69 counties with rural Internet services, Sevier County is one of these.
The Mountain Press seems to highlight how the massive amounts of money can be used to expand AT&T and DigitalBridge Communications abilities with upgraded towers and other equipment. The article in no way sheds light if all the aide to these companies would decrease costs for rural families to get broadband services or when the services may become available.
Despite the ever increasing demand of schools requiring computers and broadband for homework research and computer generated school work, most rural families can not afford not only the broadband fees, they cannot afford the computers themselves.
The cost of a sub-standard computer, about $500. Add student edition of spreadsheet and word processor software for another $187. If your child needs database or graphical editing software you can easily add some big dollars to the mix.
Would be interesting to hear from Sevier County schools, students, and their parents as to how the Sevier County schools are making a positive effort to alleviate rural and some less privileged children from being alinated by their peirs, especially those hard hit by the economic impact of the last 2 years. Please send your comments.
