Monday, June 13, 2011

WISGOP Attack On WiscNet The "Height Of Irony"

In a kiss up to the telecom lobby and all of their big money, the state Republicans have made the most illogical and irrational decision to all but destroy WiscNet, the UW operated network which supplies internet service to 75% of the state's public schools and 95% of the public libraries.

Once the Republicans are through trashing the system, these systems will have to likely pay two to three times what they are currently paying for it.

In another flash of brilliance, this stunt by the GOP will force the state to return $39 million in federal funds.  I'm not an expert in that particular field, but I would imagine that $39 million could have been put to use to create quite a few jobs.

This favor for the telecom lobby is so far out there that even tech journals are picking up on the story and shredding the GOP payback to shreds. While the whole article is fact filled and can cause severe rage at their folly, the most notable section is this part at the end:
"It would be the height of irony if sections 23-26 of the University Omnibus legislation were passed, as those provisions would prohibit the University from being directly involved in proving out further developments of innovations in the Internet that it helped create," he wrote. "This would deny the University the ability to participate in the innovation cycle that created the market for commercial providers (including those who support the 11th hour insertion of sections 23-26) to provide their services in the first place."

As for WiscNet's Lois, he seemed cautiously optimistic, at least on Saturday. "The legislators have heard the WiscNet community. They've said 'you can't do this to us'," he explained. "We're trying to come up with a reasonable compromise."

UW's Lewis thinks that most of those section paragraphs could disappear, save language forcing a return of the grants. This would force the layoff of personnel already involved in rolling out broadband to those four areas.

"This thing is entirely inappropriate," Lewis declared. "If our slogan is 'Wisconsin is open for business,' we're going in the wrong direction."

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