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Contact: Chris McManes
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Spokane Mayor Meets with IEEE-USA to Discuss
Gigabit Networks
WASHINGTON (29 April 2005)
— Spokane,
Wash., Mayor James West and Susan Ashe,
Spokane’s director of legislative and public
affairs, met with IEEE-USA representatives on 26
April to discuss Spokane’s advanced
telecommunication initiatives and IEEE-USA’s
efforts to advance broadband around the country.
After reviewing the recent IEEE-USA white paper,
“Providing Ubiquitous Gigabit Networks in the
United States,” Mayor West saw synergy between
what Spokane is doing and IEEE-USA’s call for
widespread wired and wireless gigabit networks.
Dr. John Richardson, an IEEE Life Fellow who
co-authored the paper, participated in the
meeting.
“I think we can complement each other really
well,” Mayor West said. “Spokane is having great
success deploying technology, using it for
commercial and community benefit, and IEEE-USA’s
national efforts to tie more communities
together by advocating a national gigabit
backbone will be good for the nation and, as
such, good for Spokane.”
Spokane is an eastern Washington city of about
197,000 in a metro area of 400,000. By the end
of next year, it will be linked with Seattle,
Pullman, Wash., and Boise, Idaho, among other
cities, through the Pacific Northwest Gigapop
(“gigabit point-of-presence”). Dubbed
“Gigapop2,” this high-speed Ethernet link will,
for example, increase bandwidth between Seattle
and Spokane from 155 Mbps (megabits per second)
to 10 Gbps (gigabits per second). (A megabit is
one million bits; a gigabit is one billion
bits.)
Spokane’s Terabyte Triangle provides fiber
throughout downtown into more than 100
buildings, making older buildings wired for
business today.
“Those kind of things deliver on the promise
that we were all given many years ago, that you
could be in a small community and work in a big
community,” West said. “You could have all the
benefits of being in rural America and having a
comfortable lifestyle, while at the same time
being employed by a multinational corporation.”
IEEE-USA’s white paper is available at
www.ieeeusa.org/volunteers/committees/CCP/docs/Gigabit-WP.pdf.
IEEE-USA is an organizational unit of the IEEE.
It was created in 1973 to advance the public
good and promote the careers and public policy
interests of the more than 220,000 technology
professionals who are U.S. members of the IEEE.
The IEEE is the world's largest technical
professional society. For more information, go
to
www.ieeeusa.org.
IEEE-USA
1828 L Street, N.W., Suite 1202
Washington, DC 20036-5104
Phone: 202-785-0017, Fax: 202-785-0835
Last Update:
24 June 2008
Staff Contact: Pender M. McCarter,
p.mccarter@ieee.org
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