INTERNET: Investment in regional businesses

Washington watchers have spent past months scrutinizing a federal plan to bring better Internet links to areas like ours. That's important. For without that necessary infrastructure we will fail to retain, expand and attract businesses to the Silver Valley. We all suffer as a result.

Bringing more broadband to the county will not be cheap. It will require a combination of public and private expenditures to deliver computing services that are now as important to commerce as water and electricity. That's why county commissioners are supporting XO Communications' initiative to build a high-speed fiber network across our region. The Northern Lights Project will deliver state-of-the-art, fiber optic broadband service between Seattle and Chicago and every place in between, delivering opportunities in business, medicine, education, the arts and entertainment.

It won't be XO alone building this vast undertaking: If it happens it will be because the federal government decides to foot two-thirds of the cost. Along with our Idaho Congressional Delegation, my fellow commissioners and I urge the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to fund this measure.

High-speed Internet service will be as important to the next century as the interstate highway system was to the last. We must act now.

VINCE RINALDI

Commissioner, Shoshone County