![\"Yellowstone_Falls-550\"](\"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Yellowstone_Falls-550.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
While Congressional Republicans are wondering why the internet needs to be so fast<\/a>\u00a0for us users, Congressional democrats are pushing to provide free, broadband, Wi-fi service to users at all National Parks. \u00a0I’ll leave the former issue to the techies, but I will address the latter.<\/p>\n On January 27, 2016,\u00a0\u00a0Representatives Jarod Huffman (D-CA), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Niki Tsongas (D-MA), Derek Kilmer (D-WA) and Jared Polis (D-CO) sent a letter to President Obama<\/a>\u00a0asking him to seek “a significant funding increase for wireline and wireless telecommunications and broadband services within our nation’s National Parks.” \u00a0By “wireline” I’ll assume they mean buried fiber optic line, something that will have a limited short-term effect on the quality of our parks. \u00a0Likewise wireless towers can be pretty easily hidden among the parks’ existing structures. \u00a0Ultimately, I doubt this move will have much affect upon the physical esthetics of the parks unless implementation involves putting towers in remote locations,\u00a0so the entire acreage of each park is covered.<\/p>\n Park Service Director Jon Jarvis has already pledged to provide public Wi-fi to visitor\u00a0centers\u00a0by the end of this year. \u00a0The Representatives just want him to have more money to spend on the project. \u00a0While I can see the need for park scientists and managers and even businesses within the parks to have decent internet access to perform their duties\u00a0efficiently, \u00a0I wonder why park visitors need Wi-fi.<\/p>\n The Representatives say “improved connectivity will help to make our parks accessible and engaging to changing park visitor demographics”, improve public safety, provide greater interpretive services, and meet the needs of the visiting public. \u00a0Let’s take a look at these points:<\/p>\n Wi-fi Access Point<\/p><\/div>\n accessible and engaging to changing park visitor demographics.<\/strong> \u00a0Starting with fourth graders the Park Service wants to bring in more younger kids. \u00a0They and their parents are well attuned to having wi-fi and cell phone access continually. \u00a0While I am sure these visitors will appreciate this added amenity, \u00a0I fear that it will detract from the traditional park experience that has historically involved\u00a0leaving the TV at home. \u00a0A lot of people travel to the parks in an effort to get away from electronic gadgetry, but if wi-fi is\u00a0available many\u00a0will still use it. \u00a0In fact, some private retreats offer to take away the gadgetry\u00a0for a significant fee. \u00a0I don’t care to prevent people from using their gadgets, but I’m not too excited about spending tax dollars to make it easy for people to miss the advantages of being out in nature.\u00a0 As I see it, \u00a0providing wi-fi does nothing to engage people in the park experience beyond assuring them that they will not lose their social media access. \u00a0That assurance may convince some people that it’s ok to go to a park, but that’s as far as I see the benefit.<\/li>\n Even the authors of the letter don’t seem very convinced of their arguments, so they add one more: “improved telecommunications services at park units can have the ancillary benefit of improving connectivity in neighboring communities.” \u00a0This is an effort to link service at the parks to efforts to bring serious broadband service to rural communities across the country. \u00a0Even if true, the impact would be on the very tiny population at the doorstep of each National Park. \u00a0I don’t begrudge these people broadband internet, but there are many rural areas across the country that also need broadband internet. \u00a0The needs of people living near \u00a0the parks just don’t add much to the argument for broadband in the parks.<\/p>\n It seems to me that wi-fi at the National Parks is an ok thing, but any funding that is likely to go into this effort is likely to come out of efforts to reduce the maintenance backlog at the parks. \u00a0For me the wi-fi arguments are just not strong enough to override the arguments for getting the parks back into decent shape for visitors.<\/p>\n What do you think? \u00a0If you are reading this in an email, visit this post on The Blog <\/a>so you will be able to offer your comments and tell me what you think.<\/p>\n The photo at the top of this page is Lower Yellowstone Falls by By Rickymgb [CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a>] modified with the addition of power poles from Digital Juice.<\/p>\n The Wi-fi access point photo is By Robo56 [CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a> or GFDL<\/a>]<\/p>\n While Congressional Republicans are wondering why the internet needs to be so fast\u00a0for us users, Congressional democrats are pushing to provide free, broadband, Wi-fi service to users at all National Parks. \u00a0I’ll leave the former issue to the techies, but I will address the latter. More Funding to Wire the Parks On January 27, 2016,\u00a0\u00a0Representatives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2002"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2027,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2002\/revisions\/2027"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}More Funding to Wire the Parks<\/h1>\n
The Wi-fi\u00a0Argument<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\n
![\"Wi-fi](\"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/wi-fi-antenna-225.jpg\")
<\/a>The Way I See It<\/h1>\n
Credits<\/h1>\n
Please Share<\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"