The Democratic candidates for Public Service Commission have developed a plan to advance technology infrastructure in North Dakota.
Tyler Axness and Todd Reisenauer say that though the PSC is responsible for telecommunications in the state, they seem preoccupied with the energy industry - forcing telecommunications to take a back seat. Axness says there are huge pockets of the state that are not connected to the Internet; including farmers that can't get broadband to run their home businesses, and more surprising urban areas as well.
"I was actually going to display a map of North Dakota that shows the inaccessibility of certain areas of the state when it comes to fast, reliable internet access. I cannot make this up: the reason there is not a map here this morning is because the business we've relied on throughout out campaign for our printed materials, well, we got in this morning and their internet was down. In downtown Fargo. Backlogging their ability to provide services to their customers throughout the day, if not the entire week. This is in downtown Fargo."
Tony Stein is a program director for the Dynamic CRM User Group, related to Microsoft Dynamics. He says his work is dependent on strong, reliable broadband service for video conferencing and data transfers.
"It's appalling to me that in this day and age, I am still forced to defend our great state because, we do have running water, we do have electricity - and yes, we are a little behind in the infrastructure for how we have broadband connectivity, but it's almost embarrassing to me. And now in my 15th year in being in the IT-technology space, I continually feel like we have to defend the great state of North Dakota when we have a humongous surplus, it never seems like we're doing enough to provide the experience that we as a small business need."
Axness says his and Reisenauer's plan will bring North Dakotans "out of the 1990s" and into the 21st century. Reisenauer says the plan has four components: standardizing residential internet speed at 6 megabytes per second, upgrading business class internet to speeds up to a gig, and incentivizing the infrastructure development with tax credits and low interest loans from the Bank of North Dakota. The fourth component would fully wire the oil patch...
"'Oh, there's a leak,' 'Well, does it have a sensor on it?' Some of us know that even if there is a sensor on there, if there's no communication system the sensor doesn't matter. You have to be able to have a network that passes that information to the right person. Because if it goes to a dispatch person at a company, they may not know what to do with it. So the intelligence to build a network is what's important here, and that's what Tyler and I are proposing with a fully developed communication network to the oil patch."
Axness is seeking the two-year term to the PSC against Julie Fedorchek. Reisenauer is running for the six year term against Brian Kalk.
