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1994-02-20
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NATIONAL PUBLIC TELECOMPUTING NETWORK
---
Rural Outreach Program
The development of NPTN community computer systems has, up to this point,
primarily been an urban phenomena. The sad fact is that it almost, by
necessity, has to be that way.
Linking rural locations into the major electronic highways is a non-trivial
event. Few rural locations have easy access to an Internet node and, even
if they did, even fewer would have the personnel necessary to manage
ongoing connections to a Unix-based wide area network. At the same time, we
can not ignore the needs of rural America. Indeed, if this country is going
to enter the Information Age with equity, all elements of society must be
included--rural as well as urban. The problem is how to go about doing that
in a cost-effective manner.
NPTN is pleased to announce the receipt of a $25,000 grant from the Morino
Foundation of Falls Church, Virginia to develop a Rural Community Computer
Program.
At the heart of the project will be the "FirstClass" software program
developed by SoftArc, Inc. of Toronto. This package will provide multi-user
virtual Internet connectivity to almost any location, no matter how remote,
at a very reasonable cost. It will essentially run on off-the-shelf
Macintosh computers, and will require no network or computer knowledge more
advanced than basic Macintosh point-and-click skills. Rural users will
connect to their community computers via local phone calls and will have
access to almost all the same features as the "big city" systems--
including NPTN's wide array of cybercasting services. Each rural community
computer will, in turn, connect to the Internet (and to NPTN services) via
periodic phone calls (uucp connections) to the closest Internet node.
Thus a rural teacher, for example, will not have to place a long distance
call to a Internet node every time a student wants to use, for example,
NPTN's suite of K-12 educational services. Instead he or she will call
their local machine, which will in turn connect to the closest Internet
node twice a day (or four times a day, or once an hour, or whatever) to
keep itself updated.
NPTN is planning to produce, in effect, "pre-fab" rural community computer
systems based on this approach. For a set amount of money (target range is
under $10,000) a rural community will receive an Apple Macintosh computer,
500mb hard drive, modem interface cards, modems, cables, FirstClass
software pre-installed and pre-loaded with NPTN information services, and
all NPTN Cybercasting services for one year. The rural community need only
provide the incoming user telephone lines and a periodic connection to the
next closest Internet location.
Participation in this program will be initially limited to rural and
small-town institutional clients such as libraries, school systems,
governments, etc. and product delivery is expected to commence in January,
1994.
---
Tom Grundner
President, National Public Telecomputing Network Box 1987 - Cleveland, Ohio
44106
e.Mail: tmg@nptn.org Voice: 216-247-5800 FAX: 216-247-3328