First Mile Origins
Richard Lowenberg began promoting the term and concept of "First Mile"
telecommunications and economics in the early 1990's; elaborating on
the term in the 1995, U.S. EDA funded, "Rural Telecommunications Investment Guide" (scroll
to bottom of the Technology page for specific reference); in a
presentation at the Community Networking conference in Taos, NM, in
July 1996; and years later (2003) in a Gartner Group report for CENIC,
leading to the naming of the California "First Mile" initiative.
Richard Lowenberg is an artist, eco-systems designer and tele-community planner, relocated to Santa Fe in mid-2006 . He is the former Executive Director of the Davis Community Network, CA (1996-2006). Before that he was a founding Programs Director of the Telluride Institute (1984-96), and director of its InfoZone Project (the first rural Internet POP, with first rural community wireless WAN in the U.S.). He served as a National Research Council committee member on the study and publication of "Broadband: Bringing Home the Bits"; and is on the (Advisory) Board of the Association for Community Networking. Richard's personal projects studio and web site is the RADLab.