Broadband Meetup in Poughkeepsie

The worldwide digital technology revolution began with internet connectivity, and broadband is the name of the connectivity game today. In the Hudson Valley enterprise scale businesses and institutions in health care, government and education have, by and large, invested in broadband, having installed service at speeds greater than 100Mbps. Smaller businesses have been slow to adapt and residential broadband is virtually nonexistent.

The lack of widespread broadband has economic development ramifications. This special Hudson Valley Tech Meetup designed and curated by Gerry Pallor of RXI Digital (http://www.radxsports.com/) will discuss how expanded broadband connectivity can help grow the digital tech sector. We will look at the roles of telecoms and cable television, wired and wireless, public and private, artists and engineers. Various business models and regulatory frameworks will be examined. Discussion will focus on strategies that might work for entrepreneurs and how community leaders, educators and public officials can lay the foundation for business growth, job creation and cultural diversity.

SPEAKERS

Tim Smith (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-smith-a9358816/) is Regional Vice President of Sales in the Hudson Valley and Connecticut for Lightower Fiber Networks (http://www.lightower.com/). Lightower owns and operates the densest all-fiber network in a service area spanning 17 states from North Carolina to Maine and west to Ohio. Its network has more than 33,000 route miles providing connectivity in more than 22,000 service locations. Lightower’s high-performance networks are diverse, flexible, and scalable up to 100 Gbps for Ethernet, internet access, and private networks. Interestingly enough a local business, Hudson Valley Datanet, was one of the companies that merged to form Lightower.

Christopher Fisher (https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-b-fisher-1a587b13) is a partner with the Cuddy Feder (https://www.cuddyfeder.com/) law firm specializing in communications law and policy. He is also the President of the New York State Wireless Association (http://nyswa.org/). He regularly supports his telecom clients in state and municipal applications and proceedings for broadband infrastructure development. He specializes in wireless technology and the federal, state and local regulatory framework in which it operates. He is currently working on projects with converging wireless and wireline technologies and facilitating local best practices to achieve meaningful broadband expansion.

Clayton Banks (https://www.linkedin.com/in/claytonbanks/) is co-founder and CEO of Silicon Harlem (http://www.siliconharlem.net/), a New York City business providing broadband consulting services and conducting educational programs in the uptown community. Mr. Banks is a Member of the NYC Commission on Public Information and Communication. He is a tech entrepreneur and broadcast professional who has held senior executive positions at Comedy Central, Sega Channel, and Showtime among others. He is a former Harlem Business Alliance Person of the Year. He will offer insights from his experience formulating business models based on broadband connectivity.

Gerald Pallor (https://www.linkedin.com/in/geraldpallor/), organizer of this session, is a regular at Hudson Valley Tech Meetups. He was a videographer and television producer for forty years, the last fifteen focused primarily on sports programming. His RadXSports (http://www.radxsports.com/) show aired on multiple cable networks in the U.S. and Canada and the RadXSports You Tube Channel was among the first class of You Tube Partners. In the past few years he has focused on building content services that deliver customized messaging to highly targeted audience. Broadband access is essential to this work.

SPONSORED BY Lightower Fiber Networks (http://www.lightower.com/)

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