A local editorial slammed an Illinois broadband project...
A local editorial slammed an Illinois broadband project as a “failing business,” inspiring strong defenses from a project official as well as a project consultant. “Champaign-Urbana residents have been hearing for several years now about what a big success [Urbana…
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Champaign] ‘Big Broadband’ is going to be,” a Thursday editorial of the News-Gazette said of the program known as UC2B (http://bit.ly/10NROBe). “But the only thing people know for sure is that, as things stand now, it’s a big mess.” The editorial has “little basis in verifiable facts and represents an editorial board that is playing to its ever dwindling base,” Mike Smeltzer, UC2B principal investigator and campus information technologies and educational services director of networking at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told us in an email. He said the project is not running out of money and it has anticipated the end of its federal stimulus broadband grant money through NTIA’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program. The editorial attacked the project for dismissing Power Up Electrical, which the editorial cited as defending its service, and called it a sign that the “installation process has been so bad.” Smeltzer noted the project didn’t renew the contract of a “terrible” contractor and asked what the editorial board would have project leaders do instead. Joanne Hovis, president of consulting firm CTC Technology & Energy, has worked with the project and also expressed confusion at the editorial. “It’s been a really well regarded project that’s extremely well run,” she told us, citing the leaders’ “phenomenal job.” The editorial struck her as “somewhat ill-informed,” she said, adding, “It would have been irresponsible not to terminate a contractor who was underperforming.”