By TOMMY REZAC
St. Joseph Post
Residents in the Clinton County village of Turney are getting the opportunity to participate in a high-speed broadband experiment.
A research team called Project Overcome announced that their first project will focus on the area in and around Turney, thanks to an agreement signed with Wade Farms in nearby Stewartsville.
The project is being made possible by a one-year, $300,000 grant.
Christel Gollnick, a Navigation Team Member for Maximize Northwest Missouri and President of JUPER Communications in Clinton County, says the goal of the experiment is to figure out how to get faster internet speeds to rural patrons.
"Figuring out how to take some of the speeds from a fiber, so a location where fiber is," she said, "and then broadcast that wirelessly using some of the broadband that isn't being used elsewhere and see if we can't get faster speeds to some homes and businesses."
Project Overcome's novel technology, which relies on Radio Frequency over Fiber (RFoF) and intelligent routing to provide wireless access, is dependent on being mounted at a high elevation, which makes the Wade Farm’s grain elevator an ideal point of broadcast.
The goal is to test a wireless method in areas not yet served by fiber infrastructure that can reduce costs and simultaneously expand broadband service.
“It's also to really give some engineers and technology experts and community members who are interested in really improving their broadband situation," Gollnick said, "who really just need some seed money to try out their innovative ideas."
At least 17 million U.S. residents lack the basic Internet access necessary for remote work, online learning and telemedicine.
This inequity became even more critical over the past year due to COVID-19. The goal of Project OVERCOME is to oversee multiple efforts to deploy novel broadband technology solutions to underserved communities.
"Kids are behind and jobs are at stake," Gollnick said. "That's not a good situation for anybody. It really is becoming an equity issue. We need end-of-the-road, high-speed broadband access for everyone."
In addition to the broadband experiment, the Clinton County Initiative is calling on residents to help the Project Overcome team map the coverage in the county, as well as think about other challenges that could be solved by working together.
They invite anyone living and/or working in Clinton County to check their web pages and take a quick survey here.
While the issue of rural broadband access inequities won't be solved overnight, Gollnick says this experiment can be a helpful tool in finding some long-term solutions for Clinton County and northwest Missouri as a whole.
"Our hope at this point is to just simply found out, is it replicable?" she said. "Does it work, does it solve the problem and can we do it at a price point that really makes this a very reasonable and realistic way to solve a problem that's here right now?"
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