The Tracy Press | May 9, 2002 | Ben van der Meer
Pay your water bill, order a pizza, check little Tommy’s grades, all through the remote control.
That’s the scenario planners envision for Mountain House, and the miles of wires to make it happen are going in the ground as you read this.
“Anytime they open up a trench, we’re there,” said Warren Mitchell, general manager for Charter Communications, the cable company installing the town’s cyberspace wiring. “When all of this is in the hand of a remote control, that’s power.”
What’s being envisioned is a hard-wired town aimed at the sensibilities of those who consider fast modems, big bandwidth and minimal download times vital parts of everyday living.
Every home in Mountain House will be ready for cable and Internet connections as soon as someone steps in the door. Beyond that, Charter is also entrusted to create a town “intranet” that connects homes, businesses and public services.
Tom Reiman, president of a consulting firm assisting planners and Charter on the project, said the idea is to create a community through a keyboard.
“People definitely want access to regional and even international information from home,” said Reiman, president of Sacramento-based The Broadband Group. “What drives this is the local information they can access.”
The creation of a Mountain House intranet would allow a mother to check her son’s grades at school, an office manager to order catering for a company party and city officials to send residents a notice about upcoming community events.
Reiman said they could also access information resources for nearby cities and even San Joaquin County.
Other functions would allowing residents to use the city’s Web site to vote in city elections or check bank statements from a local branch.
Tuesday, San Joaquin County’s Board of Supervisors approved giving Charter a space for the small building housing the high-tech heart of the intranet.
The roughly 2,500-square-foot building will be north of Mountain House, near the under-construction water treatment plants.
“It’s going to be as state-of-the-art as it can possibly be,” said Paul Sensibaugh, general manager for Mountain House’s community services district.
But Sensibaugh said he’s got bad news for someone living near the town who wants in on doughnuts by e-mail; the network is exclusively for Mountain House residents.
Charter’s contract with the county requires the company to pay 5 percent of its revenues to Mountain House as a franchise fee.
Both Reiman and Mitchell said the prospect of a town so hard-wired is unusual, although not unique. Planned communities in Orlando and Southern California, Reiman said, have similar features, although not to the extent Mountain House will.
Given the propensity of network technology to make huge advances quickly, planners recognize that they run the risk of a town with obsolete wiring in a decade, Reiman said.
“There’s no question that a network being built today will need to be updated in 10 years,” he said. “That’s something we’ll address.”
But even homes with the wiring to do wondrous things won’t be prohibitively more expensive than conventional homes, he said.
“These homes aren’t just for the technologically elite,” he said. “We’ll be bridging the digital divide.”
To reach reporter Ben van der Meer, call 830-4223 or e-mail benvan@tracypress.com.