PONTIAC ? Oakland County will name on Halloween a private company to provide wireless broadband connections to five municipalities in the state?s second largest county.
The word came Wednesday from Phil Bertolini, Oakland County Deputy Country Executive, who heads up the Wireless Oakland initiative. He said county executives hope that the pilot project will lead to blanket coverage of Oakland County?s 910 square miles by 2007.
In Oakland County, some 1.2 million residents could get a portion of the wireless bandwidth free if the Wireless Oakland plan comes to fruition. Bertolini said the plan won?t use taxpayers dollars to do this, rather the free service will be a result of working with the private sector, which will sell higher bandwidth and advertising to subsidize the zero cost service.
Oakland also will provide low cost personal computer and training to low income families to bridge the digital divide. With the state losing some 300,000 manufacturing jobs in the past couple years, giving everyone in the county regardless of financial means access to the Internet and PC skills will get them ready for the jobs of tomorrow.
?Our youth, if they don?t have access to computers and technology, they will not go anywhere,?? Bertolini said. ?Our third goal is do a wireless technology tool kit for government so that local governments also will embrace the technology.?
