Image provided by: The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs; Warm Springs, OR
About Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 25, 2004)
Page 12 Spilyay Tyrooo, Wjrrn Springs, Oregon November 25, 2004- Internet: Communications Center will be open to tribal members (Continued from page 1) Current funding only pays for broadband access for poten tial subscribers who can see the radio tower on Eagle Butte. "We hope to extend (the cov erage area) as funds are avail able, either through revenue we generate, or, more than likely, we could go back to Tribal Council and say, 'Gee, would you like to fund this,'" Phillips said. "We haven't gone to them with a funding request yet. We figured we would get Phase I working, and we weren't going to ask for more money (yet)." With that additional funding, similar antennas would be placed on Eagle Butte to pro . vide access to the Warm Springs Industrial park, Dry Creek, Wolf Point, and Kah-Nee-Ta, as well as some homes on the way to Madras. While there is no indication of the number of residents planning to have their homes hooked up to high-speed Internet yet, the number of homes that actually subscribe will be watched. ' "We don't know out of this area how many 'can afford the service," Phillips said. "That will help dictate how far we can spread (the coverage) using that percentage. Whoever does, whatever rate it comes in, basi cally will pay the cost of run ning things, but if you don't reach a certain minimal level, obviously it's going to be tough." This plan appears to offer the most reliable form of Internet access available to the reservation, Phillips said. Cur rently, residents subscribe to dial-up access, 'using a modem, which he says is "very low qual ity," or they can use DSL Internet that Qwest Communi cations offers. Qwest's signal is generated from' a Vuifdirfg on c U.S. 26 in Warm Springs, but its signal can only be received within a mile of the building and weakens as close as a half-mile away. Or, there is satellite Internet access that is expensive, at $80 to $90 per month, and is Project to make old papers available WASHINGTON (AP) -The government promises any one with a computer will have access within a few years to mil lions of pages from old news papers, a slice of American his tory to be viewed now only by visiting local libraries, newspaper offices or the nation's capital. The first of what's expected to be 30 million digitized pages from papers published from 1836 through 1922 will be avail able in 2006. "Anyone who's interested -teachers, students, historians, lawyers, politicians, even news paper reporters - will be able to Small Hands Fact: Children from age two to seventeen start fires that endanger lives, cause injuries, death and burn millions of dollars In property. Fact: Children under the age of three cause a majority of these fires and lose their lives In the process. This does not have to happen. Parents need to teach their children about the dangers of fire and create a fire-safe home. Install Smoke AMERIND offers Home and Fire Safety Training to Children in Indian Country. Contact AMERIND'S Loss Prevention Team for more information: www.amerind-corp.org 800-352-3496 rail A: A Conor3um of Ttat PrctacKng Trttcs and Tfwir Fam::: 6 J ... jf mi: (l . (-, , , . ...... -t-j -. ;'. . , :v.'4'.':.v,s-" '.-.-.---'v-' j . J ( . ,, , , 4'f, i, t , ' . .-. . . .. , -"- t Six-foot microwave receiver atop Building. ineffective because of the lag time from the satellite. "This will be the first wide spread full high-speed access Warm Springs will have," Phillips said. Warm Springs residents who can't spend the money for broadband access for their own home or business will still be able to use it free of charge at the proposed community com munications center, which Phillips said he expects to open "sometime around June." Phillips said the center would act like a cross between an Internet cafe" and copy-online center; a "mini-Kinko's," if you wilL "The grant calls for 24 com puters, probably 20, roughly, accessible to the community, where people can come in, sit down, where they can get a fairly decent computer, high-speed go to their computer at home or at work and at a click of a mouse get immediate, unfiltered access to the greatest source of our history," said Bruce Cole, chairman of the National En dowment for the Humanities. He announced the project in a speech at the National Press Club. . Now, the only way to view the old papers is to pore through many thousands of microfilm reels at the Library of Congress, regional libraries and newspaper offices. The Library of Congress al ready has put together a small to Hold Lovo Detectors ... Plan an Escape Route Brian MorMraenSpllyay the Tribal Administration Internet access at no charge," he said. Additionally, the telecom cen ter could provide introductory classes on how to use the Internet or how a parent can monitor what their children view online, or print photos they might take with a digital cam era. Another advantage, Phillips said, is that Eagle-Tech can make computers for the center that can out-perform yet still be about 20 percent less expensive than commercially bought com puters. Besides the low costj the ben efit of having "homemade" computers, Phillips said, is that they can easily be repaired in Warm Springs, instead of in Madras or Bend. And that helps create an atmosphere that is less library and more user-friendly than even the norm. by computer sample. It has digitized issues of the U.S. military newspaper "Stars and Stripes" during World War I, February 1918 to June 1919. Cole said the National Digi tal Newspaper Program is to further the founding fathers' belief that knowledge of history was a necessity for government by the people. "American amnesia is danger ous," he said. "Democracy is not self-sustaining; it needs to be learned and passed down from genera tion to generation." ... Not pro Phillips said he met with a man who has opened telecom munications centers like the one in Warm Springs who said, well, it was OK to play. "I was telling him how it would probably be a library. You'd ask people to be quiet, and, of course, you'd want to avoid the kids with food and stuff gumming up the keyboards and the mice and all that," he said. "He said they opened up one place and had a spaghetti feed. The upshot is, I realized not to turn it into a room of nerds, where nobody wants to go because of all these rules. "Keyboards can be cleaned. They can be replaced, if you buy cheap ones, and let the kids be kids." Two possible sites have been selected for the telecommunica tions center, one, the first choice, is between the post office and the Warm Springs Market that is currently condemned and va cant, and a vacant house across the street from the first location. Along with staffing from Eagle Tech, the center will use volun teer labor. Through the Rural Utility Services grant, Warm Springs receives a microwave link, at 5.8 megahertz, from Quantum Contmunications' point of pres ence east of Madras, a 35-foot pole with a six-foot microwave dish pointed at the radio tower on Eagle Butte. The signal from Eagle Butte is then bounced off what is called a passive receiver ("It looks like a billboard. It's about eight-to-10 feet tall and 20-feet wide, and it's raised about 30 feet in the air," Phillips said.) located east of the water tank on the hill behind the Tenino apartments. The passive receiver has no power but only bounces the sig , nal from Eagle Butte' to Vsix-r' foot rtiiirowaveceivef atop '' the Tribal Administration Build ing. The signal is then distributed via fiber optic cable to the Ad ministration Building, the Com munityWellness Center, Indian La A Li'fj- (Mb. i -r. 10' Open 7 days a week, on HWY 97 in the old Outpost building, 475-9776 Open 7 a.m. til midnight, Mon-Thurs. Weekends 7 a.m. til 2 a.m. Health Services, Early Child hood Education and Tribal Court. The fiber optic cable, forming a backbone, has already resulted in a $2,000-a-month savings in telephone line ex penses to the Confederated Tribes. Through the wireless connec tion, The Museum at Warm Springs and the Retail Business Center are connected to the sys tem. One of the provisions of the grant, Phillips said, is that the high-speed Internet project be self-funding in two years. The telecommunications center will be half-public, yet half-commercial, in that it will recover the cost of such items as computer paper and photo-printing paper. Another way has been through the outsourcing of Eagle-Tech, which was formerly simply the information technology depart ment of the Confederated Tribes until the start of this year. "We do it as a business now," Phillips said. He said that within that two-year period, Eagle-Tech must demonstrate it can provide better service for the tribal en tities it serves and lower its own costs with revenue it generates. The "ultimate goal," Phillips said, is to pursue contract work, particularly in the federal-contracting area. "We probably won't get that serious about it until well into next year and finish our first two priorities," he said. "We've started a little already. We've probably generated around $50,000 to $60,000 in revenue on some small contracts we have." Eagle-Tech has contracts with Indian Health Services, the National Native American Hu man Resource Association. This work includes web-hosting and other tomp'uter or 'network' tasks. n's?'; t&itri "It's not extremely profit able," he said. "The opportuni ties in federal contracting are the ones that are mind-boggling." ft H fix Cold Beverages, Ice, Soda, Groceries & more No problem for phone, TV reception As infrastructure for high-speed wireless Internet is installed in spots around Warm Springs, television and radio reception will be unfazed and cellular phone reception won't be compro mised. A microwave signal is be ing transmitted into the res ervation, to the Eagle Butte, radio tower, off a passive receiver in the West Hills and to a dish on top of the Administration Building. But that signal is so weak, no one will be harmed, Lloyd Phillips, manager of Eagle Tech Systems, said, and the signal is on a frequency dif ferent from televisions, ra dios or cellular phones. "The passive receiver doesn't generate anything," he said. "It is simply bounc ing signals that are coming through. "The microwave, a lot of people are thinking, that's what I cook with. The power of this microwave is not more than a 100-watt light bulb at that distance, so it's very low power. "One guy in one meet ing (asked), 'Is that going to screw up my TV reception because that passive receiver's not too far from my house.' Basically the signal's already there. We've been transferring it for over a month. There's just no passive yet. We finished the passive a few weeks ago to bounce it off." The microwave signal op erates1 at 5.8' megahertz,; which1 radio, TV of cell " : phones use. "It's a band for a micro1 wave," Phillips said. "It won't be an issue of inter ference and no one's going to glow in the dark." N 1 24 NE Plum Madras 475-7560