Conxx Presentation

On April 18th, representatives from Conxx, Inc. gave a presentation to a general meeting of Network Sierra, which was also attended by several members of county government. Conxx provides a turnkey system for replacing the telco infrastructure in a county or region. Their technology was developed in Alagany County, Maryland and they hope to replicate it in rural areas around the country. As Marv Dealy reported in his Byte by Bite column:

While a bit larger than Tuolumne County, comparisons between the two could be made and the information was compelling. To summarize, this company is providing services to the county, to businesses and to residents that include Internet connections with speeds up to 26 mb at very affordable rates. The system can also provide other services traditionally only offered by a telco like AT&T, such as voice circuits, T1, DS3/OC1, Frame relay, ATM and more. The system uses towers and antennae, fed by wire when available and linked with microwave when not, to broadcast a cloud, and the company said that the trees in Maryland are just as tough as the ones surrounding Craig Will's house, high in the mountains up Highway 108, and that they don't present a problem.

The discussion turned to how such a system could be financed in our county, and it appears there are pots of money that, if the pots can be connected, could do the trick.

Here are the Powerpoint slides used in the Conxx presentation.

Note: Use this link if you have trouble viewing the slides in this post.

This is the first fully integrated technology solution that I've seen that seems to address the needs of Tuolumne County. It's not inexpensive (~$5 million) but such sums have been provided to other rural areas through grants. It's important to stress that we don't expect that any significant amount of money will be available from Tuolumne County. We will however, require support and cooperation from the county in order to proceed with such an ambitious plan. So far, I'm cautiously optimistic that such support will be forthcoming.