Gigabit Project

In case you saw the story in today's Southern  about the upcoming Gigabit project, there is a kickoff ceremony at 3 p.m. today at the Carbondale Main Street offices. Apparently, when completed, internet speeds in Carbondale will be 50 times faster than now, meaning that you will be able to download porn at lightning fast rates.  The article says that Frontier is the lead company for the project, in partnership with SIU and the city so am not sure if that means you will have to be a Frontier customer to take advantage of it.

It also appears that Carbondale's WiFi will get an upgrade, which would certainly benefit downtown as well. The city has some wireless access around the town square but it is generally hit or miss.

Frontier Communications Building

I had the opportunity to take the Hidden Carbondale tour yesterday (well, I had to pay for it so anyone could have had the opportunity) and while there were a number of interesting things I noted (such as Prairie Farms Cottage Cheese and Wal-Mart's Great Value Cottage Cheese both coming out of the same vat), the most interesting was the Frontier Communications building (the old GTE Building north of the Civic Center.

The building sat empty except for the Marketing Director for the local Frontier office, who gave us the tour and unlike all of the other places we toured, he seemed the only person in the entire building and I believe only a dozen or so people work there. An unused call center sits ready for any telemarketing or similar type of operation to move in and start work. From what I understand, the taller building of the two building complex, sits completely empty of staff, filled with offices and desks no longer used.