William "Billy" Ray has a question for all those hotshot telecommunications CEOs like John "Mad Max" Malone and "Conan" Raymond Smith:
"What are you waiting for?"
From his tiny base of operations in southern Kentucky, Billy Ray has accomplished a feat none of the telco or cable giants has yet been able to match - he's successfully Wired an entire town into a high-bandwidth, 2 Mbits-per-second data infrastructure. Moreover, he did it years ago - long before the big boys set out to find a pot of gold buried in the digital hills - using off-the-shelf technology.
As superintendent of the Glasgow Electric Plant Board, Ray manages a municipally owned utility that distributes electric power to the 14,000 residents of Glasgow, Kentucky, a little town about 100 miles south of Louisville.
Back in the late '80s, Ray realized that the Plant Board could save the people of Glasgow a few hundred thousand dollars a year by using coaxial cable to connect every electric meter in town to a two-way digital communications network. At first, Ray reasoned that the network would enable the utility to cut Glasgow's wholesale power bill by reducing electricity consumption during peak load periods. Later he learned that the same network could also be used to deliver high-bandwidth data services. So that's exactly what he decided to do.
Today, anyone in Glasgow can jack into a citywide local area network for only $US19.95 a month. All the local schools are Wired in, a few realtors in town are pleased with the online property database they've set up, and about 75 residential customers regularly cruise the network from home. But bigger and better things are on the way - MCI is considering plans to bring a full Internet gateway right to Glasgow's digital doorstep.
An engaging 40-year-old with a gentle Southern drawl, Billy Ray is leading Glasgow into the future like a digital Pied Piper. Thus far, it's been a slow process. Few people in Glasgow have ever owned a computer, and fewer still have ever used one to explore cyberspace.
"One of the biggest problems I've had while shepherding our project has been my impatience," Ray admits.
But he's keeping the faith. Ray doesn't want Glasgow's online network to be used merely as a supercharged entertainment system. Instead, he sees it as a powerful engine for local economic growth. "I have this longing to empower the regular guy," Ray says. "I want to eliminate the chasm between the élite and the regular people.
"I'm waiting for the day someone in town says, 'Hey, I want to create Joe Smith Inc., and I'm gonna be in the grocery business. I can use the network to compete with the Winn-Dixie supermarket, because they're lugging around that $14 million investment in each store and I've got $1,400 and a garage.'
"Then, we'll be talking about a completely different ballgame!" Ray laughs. It may well happen someday. After all, Glasgow has all the digital infrastructure a company needs to set up shop along the new media frontier.
In the meantime, Billy Ray is happy to play host to a steady stream of out-of-town admirers. "When you look at our resources and our knowledge base, it's ridiculous to imagine that we could've done all this," Ray says with a smile. "Yet it's flattering when you consider that people from hundreds of other cities have come here to see what we've built. Why do they keep coming? Apparently because nobody else is actually doing anything."
SCANS
Country Road Warrior
