Wisdom from Trail's CIAO Pioneer

Contact Info:

• Ken McClean, President Community Information Access Organization
• Telephone: 368-6434 (w) or 362-5885 (h)
• E-mail: kmcclean@ciao.trail.bc.ca
• HomePage: http://www.ciao.trail.bc.ca

Interview Notes:

• Public documents to share include standard Constitution & By-laws, Appropriate Use Policies for students/teachers & general public, original CIAO proposal to the BC Ministry of Education.
• There are 2 sides to CIAO: School District (2200 students) and General Public (400 citizens).
• Equipment includes a Sun SPARC 10 server, 12 Telebit Routers (1 for each school in the District), and a 24 x 14.4 Kbps dial-up modem pool.
• Only one school per day has full Internet access due to bandwidth limitations between schools and to the Internet.
• 600 of the District's 800 MacIntosh computers now have some Internet access.
• In the late 1980s, schools in the area were involved in pioneering on-line communications systems such as COSY, X.400, ProvNet, and Southern Interior Telecommunications Project.
• The Community Learning Network (CLN) is not as effective as it could be because it is centrally controlled/located in Victoria.
• Schools in the region are not holding their breath waiting for the Provincial Learning Network (PLNet) to arrive. A $50,000 TeleConsult Feasibility Study went nowhere. Currently a consortium of 7 school districts is pulling together a Regional strat egy to connect their schools to the net.
• Organizational Start Date = April/93. Operational Start Date = November/93.
• CIAO has no paid staff. There is a core group of 10 volunteers and a volunteer drive is currently under way.
• CIAO has 2 major sponsors: Local School District and Economic Development Council.
• PowerLink -- a local commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP) -- recently filed a greivance with the Ministry of Education complaining that CIAO's government funding was unfair competition. Ken met with the ISP and was able to smooth the waters, cl arifying that CommunityNets help to fuel commercial service demand.

CIAO is introducing 5 different service offerings to help pay the bills:

• Lead = Free Guest Account (general local community/business information)
• Zinc = $25/year for unlimited text access to the Internet
• Silver = $50/year for a personalized "vanity" e-mail address
• Gold = $100/year for full SLIP/PPP access based on 20 hours/month.
• Training = $35/person, once/month.

Ken's Wish List is Affordable, Equitable Bandwidth!

• 56 Kbps access to the Internet currently costs $1000/month.
• Pressure the telephone company to provide affordable 10 Mbps access. BC Tel's ATM fiber optic network runs straight through the middle of Trail but it can't be accessed because there is no switch -- and BCTel says a switch would cost about $500,000.
• 56 Kbps/ISDN connections to all schools in the district.
• Use alternative bandwidth suppliers. People in Grand Forks have given up on BC Tel and are beginning to use cheaper cable/satellite connections from just over the border in the United States.