SPEAKER: David R. Hughes - dave@oldcolo.com - http://wireless.oldcolo.com
TITLE: "A Wireless Internet at T1-Plus Speeds -- Spread Spectrum Technology Meets the Web."
LOCATION: The McKenna Group, 1755 Embarcadero Road, Palo Alto
As Silicon Valley communities -- and schools and organizations across the nation and beyond -- struggle to figure out how best to connect to the full potential of the Internet, there is one alternative that has received scant serious attention: wireless.
This is because of a belief that wireless is limited in range, slow, insecure and subject to disruption.
This perception is changing rapidly, thanks to a new configuration of a technology that has its roots in World War II and in an idea by the glamorous movie star, Hedy Lamarr -- who recently received a national award for her 1942 patent for a "secret communications system" that later evolved into "spread spectrum" wireless communications technology.
Today's configuration of that technology -- on which cell phones are based -- allows for extremely fast, broad-bandwidth connections to the Internet (T1 and faster) without costly hard-wire connections. Such technology is actively being installed in rural counties and undeveloped countries, from mountainous Montana valleys to distant Mongolia.
Dave Hughes, a retired U.S. Army colonol now living in Colorado, is an enthusiastic, colorful proponent of spread spectrum's potential -- and will be speaking about how it might be applied to Silicon Valley to reduce sharply the extent and costs of hard-wire, trenched-street alternatives to help achieve the "last mile" connectivity between communications backbone systems and homes, schools and businesses.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dave Hughes is a partner of Old Colorado City Communications, an Internet and custom-communications development company located since 1984 in the Old Colorado City District of westside Colorado Springs.
He has been developing, operating, installing, and supporting online systems since 1979. In particular he has concentrated on bringing high levels of connectivity at the lowest possible cost to the most remote, rural, small towns and schools of the United States and several foreign countries. Projects he has worked on include: the Big Sky Telegraph project in Montana, linking 114 one-room schools to the net; the teaching by an MIT physicist of the math and science of Chaos Theory to rural schools by telecom; and the development of vector-graphics software for the web, using Russian programmers in Moscow.
His priority is on "grass roots up rather than top down" development of community and educational networking. In 1993 Hughes was awarded the Telecommunications Pioneer Award by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) of Washington, D.C., for his effective work in grass-roots electronic democracy.
He is presently advising the FCC on use of wireless communications for education under the new Telecommunications Act. His company has been awarded $525,000 in grants by the National Science Foundation to do field testing and research of wireless technologies -- particularly no-license spread-spectrum devices -- for public education. Hughes is the Principal Investigator for those projects, which are currently being carried out primarily in and among small, rural schools of the San Luis Valley and large urban schools in Colorado Springs. Hughes also has been helping connect U.S. science to research institutions in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
Smart Valley's Smart Talks are a series of open-forum presentations given monthly by business leaders on topics ranging from National Information Infrastructure policy issues to entrepreneurial success stories. These events are usually attended by roughly 100-200 high-tech industry professionals.
Past speakers include: Marc Andreessen, Netscape Communications; Jerry Yang and David Filo, Yahoo!; Eric Benhamou, 3Com; Regis McKenna, RMI; Milo Medin, @home; and most recently Phil Goldman, WebTV.
Generally, audiences are technically savvy and are intrigued by how society is impacted by technology. Therefore, the more well-received presentations have been focused on how and why the technology was developed, how it can be applied and how it impacts the community.
Smart Valley, Inc. is a non-profit organization committed to creating an electronic community based on an advanced information infrastructure. This mission is being lived out through collaborative infrastructure projects in education, healthcare, local government, business and the home. Smart Valley has become the focal point for Global Information Infrastructure networking between member companies, as well as other regional, national and global entities.
The Palo Alto Medical Foundation is a non-profit organization that has provided health care, biomedical research and health education to the Palo Alto region since the 1920s. A huge component of health care is the exchange of information, and PAMF is dedicated to the concept that the highest quality of care results from a blending of human caring and efficient technology for diagnosis, treatment and communications.
Jay Thorwaldson, Director of Public Affairs, Palo Alto Medical
Foundation,
400 Channing Ave.
Palo Alto, CA 94301
email: jaythor@well.com