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Wisconsin public Internet fights telecom attempts to kill it off
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Jun 13, 2011 11:23am |
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| Category | Proposed Legislation |
| Author | Matthew Lasar |
| News Date | Monday, June 13, 2011 01:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | WiscNet is negotiating with the leadership of Wisconsin's state legislature. Here's how the situation stands now: at the urging of Wisconsin's state telecommunications association, Republican legislators have introduced an omnibus bill that would sever WiscNet from the University of Wisconsin at Madison's Division of Informational Technology, and bar it from taking any money from UW.
The proposed law even goes so far as to prohibit UW from taking National Telecommunications Information Agency (NTIA) broadband stimulus grants, or joining any entity that offers broadband to the general public.
These measures would force UW to return an estimated $39 million in such funds to Washington, DC, warned Tony Evers, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, last week. And they would force schools to turn to Badgernet, Wisconsin's state wide-area-network, which depends heavily on AT&T as its primary vendor.
75 percent of Wisconsin's schools and 95 percent of its public libraries now get Internet access from WiscNet. Like CSNET, WiscNet became a model for educational systems across the country. It also became a target for the Wisconsin State Telecommunications Association. |
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