Collegiate Times

The town of Blacksburg will host a forum on Saturday to discuss growth in broadband connectivity.

The forum is hosted by the Blacksburg Electronic Village, a nonprofit supporting technology initiatives in the town.

The town of Blacksburg approved a long-term plan to increase Internet connection speeds to allow for speeds of one gigabit per second.

“What we want to do is let the community know that the town has set their sights on that goal,” said Brenda van Gelder, director of Blacksburg Electronic Village.

Van Gelder also said she hoped the forum would attract town residents interested in assisting the project.

The forum will also host local Internet service providers, who will set up booths and present attendees with information about their broadband services both now and in the future.

Van Gelder also said the town is looking to invest in infrastructure to fill in service gaps in the downtown area. There are some public Wi-Fi signals, including the Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library, but coverage is limited.

“There could be a robust infrastructure covering the entire downtown area. That would be much more useful than what is currently there,” van Gelder said. “There're bits and pieces here and there, but there's ways to connect that all together.”

“We're all accustomed to having wireless when we're on campus, where we can sit outside with our laptops and do things,” van Gelder said. “And we'd like to be able to do that downtown.”

“Right now you have to log into Moe's network if you are eating at Moe’s, and if you stop two doors down you have to log into a different wireless network. It's kind of a pain, so we'd like to have a seamless downtown wireless, just to simplify things for people downtown,” van Getler said.

The forum will take place in Kent Square's atrium Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to noon.

A version of this article appeared in the Mar 18 issue of the Collegiate Times.