Police and firefighters using videoconferences for training. High school students taking college-level courses online. Residents telecommuting instead of racking up mileage and gas bills.
Carroll County officials envision these scenarios, and more, as potential benefits of a fiber-optic cable network winding its way through the area.
Today, representatives from county agencies - the government, school system, community college and library - plan to celebrate the developing 110-mile network.The network will connect more than 120 sites, including municipal and first-responder locations, and speed communication and information sharing. It will put an end to halting video streams, officials say, transferring information at about 650 times their current speed, possibly more. And, they say, it will save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
"We're creating a modern community, really," said Gary Davis, chairman of the Carroll County Public Network, the cooperative entity behind the fiber plan.
To Davis and others in Carroll, the move toward fiber represents a necessary step that will not only improve efficiency and education, but also draw business. It is a step several jurisdictions in Maryland - including Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties - have taken, some with private companies such as Comcast or Verizon installing the lines.
"It was one of the keys to help the county advance," Rob Stradling, Baltimore County government's chief information officer, said of the fiber.
But in counties such as Carroll and Harford, where telecommunications giants sometimes delay advances because populations are less dense, officials have decided to go it alone - and save money in the long run, they say.
"This is kind of a wasteland in terms of broadband access," said Robert Wack, a Westminster city councilman and member of the county's Cable Regulatory Commission.
"There are a number of counties in Maryland, and cities and counties throughout the country, that are installing and using fiber for their own needs," said Joanne Hovis, president of Columbia Telecommunications Corp., a communications-engineering consulting company that did a feasibility study for the Carroll project.
While many jurisdictions tend to lease lines for their Internet and phone needs, renting "a slow lane" from whatever company owns the circuitry, Hovis said, Carroll officials have opted to create their own highway.
