City leaders should get us high-speed Internet

Dear Editor,
One disheartening fact about the city of Gilroy is that it is
the least educated city in all of Santa Clara County, which reaches
from Gilroy south to beyond Mountain View in the north. One measure
of this is the number of people who connect to the Internet.
Dear Editor,

One disheartening fact about the city of Gilroy is that it is the least educated city in all of Santa Clara County, which reaches from Gilroy south to beyond Mountain View in the north. One measure of this is the number of people who connect to the Internet.

Our Internet service, by intent and neglect, is very poor in Gilroy. We should demand of the city, as it spends millions on a new police station, to push the utilities in Gilroy to broaden the availability of high-speed Internet service to the citizens. Is this a radical idea? It is no more radical than it once was to push for electricity and telephone service to residents.

It is known that about 47 percent of people nationwide using the Internet do it on “broadband.” The percentage is increasing, as more discover the incredible difference between DSL and cable modem connections compared to dial-up methods. Much of Gilroy was poorly wired in the past with undersized copper, which severely limits the range of DSL service. 

In fact, almost no one on the west side of Santa Teresa can get the service, including Eagle Ridge residents.

Furthermore, satellite companies such as DirecTV offer satellite Internet service, but the quality and reliability is inferior to both DSL offered by the Verizon phone company to a small number of residents, and cable TV, which offers Cable Modem (roughly equal to DSL) to a limited number of residents. Satellite Internet connections are also significantly more expensive.

Hundreds of cities across America have required high-speed Internet service for

residents.

In the state of Washington, a 37,000 square mile rural area with 60,000 residents is very inexpensively connected as part of the Columbia energy initiative. It is being done wirelessly, by planting small boxes around the area by the energy company. Many computers come today with wireless capability built in, so just living there brings wireless, broadband high-speed Internet connection. Why is it they realize this is extremely important, but we do not? 

Verizon could vastly open DSL easily to Gilroy citizens, by just putting in a few electronic repeaters around the city, as SBC has done all over San Jose. As it stands, you have to be close to the one and only repeater in the phone company office in downtown Gilroy. If you have the undersized wire, the possibility of connection is small. 

If freedom is your issue, there has been an incredible opening and access to knowledge through the Internet, but dialing up using low-quality voice telephone lines is a chore and the speed is dismal. Many people give up. It would be wonderful if this city, so backward in many ways of thinking, could raise its eyes beyond the gravel at their feet and just try a little to reach into the future for the benefit of our citizens, and our children. 

Tony Weiler, Gilroy