Clients

Bringing the Intranet concept home - A utility company thinks Intranets are for everybody

Using an Intranet to connect members of an organization or business may not be the rule yet, but it's not exactly new. But an Intranet that networks an entire community? That's rare.

A precocious and ambitious example is evolving in exurban Atlanta, where the disparate pieces came together slowly and weren't entirely anticipated at the start. The driving forces are a mix of community preservation, air pollution, urban planning theory, business opportunity, rapid development hampered by long commutes, and high technology.

Newnan, GA population 12,000 is 30 miles southwest of downtown Atlanta. It has classic antebellum homes and a small-town square with "the ubiquitous Confederate solder monument," says Jeff Strane, business development manager of Newnan Utilities. It also has all the modern problems of a small town, including a need to maintain a sense of community. The answer, or part of it, was the Newnan Network.

Newnan Utilities is the municipal water and power agency. In December 1996, Newnan Utilities offered cable TV, judging it to be a logical extension of service lines. That's also when the utility decided to become the local Internet service provider. As long as the utility had to lay cable, it made sense to install a state-of-the-art network with the greatest versatility and expansion capability.

Newnan settled on a 10-megabit, broadband, hybrid fiber-optic cable that can carry two-way digital Internet, video conferencing, interactive TV, distance learning, and HDTV. Internet access is about 50 times faster than a typical 28.8 kps modem. The utility's goal is to retrofit all of Newnan-every household and business, and to use its network to augment the town's sense of community. To that end, it is building a community wide Intranet.

Newnan residents have taken to the network rapidly. The county public school district is already wired in, Strane says, as are all the libraries. Of the 6,700 cable TV customers, some 1,600 have cable modem service. About 56 percent of local homes have been wired into the Newnan Network in less than two years.

Pathway Communities, a local developer, is taking the idea a step further. Pathway had already built Peachtree City, a subdivision 20 miles south of Atlanta, where cars are discouraged by design. Three years ago, Pathway began planning a development, SummerGrove, that would facilitate telecommuting, and will have its own Intranet.

Why care about telecommuting? "Atlantans have the longest daily commute in the world-34 miles," observes Richard Skinner, Ph.D., president of Clayton College & State University in nearby Morrow. That contributes to Atlanta's other major problem: air pollution. "If we don't solve our transportation and air quality problems soon, we're going to come to a screeching halt," Skinner explains.

The Metro Atlanta Telecommuting Advisory Council was created in 1992 to promote telecommuting. The common factor for Pathway and MATAC is Skinner, who is MATAC's president as well as Clayton State's. SummerGrove is planned for southeast Newnan. When completed in eight to ten years, it will have about 2,400 residents. The key selling point: every home will be ready for telecommuting and built for the Newnan Network, with wiring for TV and video, and for telephone and data communication. The basic package includes a service hub (where the network cable, DSS service, and phone lines enter the home), cable wiring and outlets for three rooms each of video/TV and telecom service.

But public emphasis has been less on technology and more on social connectivity. The utility is already hosting a separate, smaller Intranet, summergrove.net, to connect subdivision residents. Whereas Newnan's community Intranet will access community wide resources and list local events and organizations, SummerGrove's Intranet has its own resident directory, bulletin board, chat rooms, and online kids' club. The Intranet is a tool to help residents interact, to set up clubs or pool parties, share interests, look up dates for local meetings and school events, find babysitters, get homework help, or catch up with neighborhood news. This is supposed to reinforce the sense of community encouraged by the subdivision's layout and the positioning of homes, both designed to increase face-to-face contact among neighbors.

The theory that Intranets can be used to increase social connectivity sounds great, but there are no studies to date showing that this is the case, Skinner admits. However, some studies do show that social isolation increases as people spend more time on the Internet. Skinner says technology should "foster human relationships. This is the grand experiment."