The Broadband project of the Orcas Research Group is established to facilitate the implementation of a modern computing and telecommunications infrastructure consistent with enabling island businesses to successfully compete for markets on the mainland.

1. To provide information to county businesses and service organizations on broadband opportunities.
2. To assemble a working group of community advocates for modernizing our telecommunications infrastructure.
3. To develop a long-term plan for computing and telecommunications in San Juan County.
4. To identify and successfully compete for sources of funding to support telecommunications modernization.
5. To put in place a sustainable telecommunications infrastructure that will support a stable island economy.

1. Chameleon Technology has been extensively involved in providing wireless networks across Washington State and has provided us with two publications including a whitepaper entitled Bringing software-based security and roaming to WiFi networks and a Press Release describing an installation in Kennewick, WA that was implemented with the Benton PUD.

San Juan County, as a community of islands, faces a unique challenge in building a stable economic base. Our businesses and community services are at a disadvantage to our counterparts on the mainland due to the overhead of increased transportation costs and delays. It is difficult, for example, to interact with our county government without using a half day to travel to Friday Harbor and return. Travel to the mainland typically takes a day. Travel to Seattle usually requires an overnight stay. Likewise, travel by our customers from the mainland is difficult to accomplish in less than a day. Despite this additional overhead, a few companies have been established on the islands, primarily because of the beneficial aspects of our local culture. Simply stated, it is a great place to live and raise a family.

It is not likely that our ferry or airline service will improve sufficiently to alleviate this problem. Our best strategy is to build a new, more efficient broadband telecommunication infrastructure. Today, this is very expensive. A few organizations lease T1 lines in an attempt to get sufficient bandwidth to operate. DSL is available in a few places, but this is a minimum capability to operate a modern business and is not sufficient for many desirable applications. Satellite connectivity is expensive and less desirable than DSL. Fortunately, our business and service organizations are clustered in small towns, within a radius of one mile from the center of the major town on each island. Fortunately, our local power company has had the long term vision to embark upon a plan to interconnect the islands with fiber optic cabling as part of their scheduled utilities upgrades. It is therefore within our reach to leapfrog current broadband approaches to install very high speed connectivity in our town centers.

Even without connectivity to the rest of the Internet, very high speed connectivity between the islands opens the opportunity to improve the efficiency of many aspects of business between the islands. This is most obvious in possible interactions with our county government offices. Ultimately, we hope to be able to replace the telephone with face-to-face video interactions using shared software applications to perform many of the tasks that previously required visits to Friday Harbor. In addition, our democratic process will be served by additional participation in public meetings via teleconferencing. While these are the most obvious applications, many others exist and will emerge as our schools, libraries, emergency services and other public entities find ways to operate more efficiently using this new media. Finally, interisland commerce will be served by introducing business interactions made possible by reducing the need to travel between islands.

Ultimate high speed connectivity to the Internet will bring the most benefit to our residents. It is this that makes efficient commerce with the mainland possible and will finally eliminate the disadvantage that our local businesses currently must overcome. This is the essential infrastructure which is needed to spawn better jobs for our workforce and which will offer the opportunity for advancement beyond low-paying service level jobs.