Dave Hughes's Page

David R Hughes Col (Ret) U.S. Army
dave@oldcolo.com
http://oldcolo.com

Dave Hughes is a native Colorado West Point Graduate who served as a Combat Commander in the both the Korean and Vietnam wars. He is a graduate of the Army War College, possesses a Masters of Arts Degree, and served on the Army staff at the Pentagon in the 1960s and in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as a Politico-Military Analyst at the highest policy levels in Washington. He taught at West Point and serves on some of its alumni committees. He was a senior commander and Chief of Staff of a major combat formation at Fort Carson Colorado before retiring as a full colonel after 27 years active military service in 1973.

He has been researching, developing, and operating, online dial up, or wirelessly connected systems since 1979. His particular interest has been in rural areas and for education, such as the Big Sky Telegraph system in Montana which he designed to help link 114 one room school houses digitally, even before the Internet emerged. And most recently installing a wireless network among Sherpas in Namche, Nepal (at 13,000 feet), and helping the Dalia Lama's Tibetan Government in Exile in India develop Mesh Wireless Networking around Dharmsala, India.

He taught, according to scholars, the first online, for credit courses starting in 1982 called Electronic English, and later collaborated in the remote teaching by an MIT Physicist, Dr. George Johnston the Math and Physics of Chaos to rural students in Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado, and then later for their teachers for their own professional development.

He led the revitalization of the Old Colorado City Historic District of westside Colorado Springs from 1976 onward.

He did work for the Office of Technology Assessment in 1990, supporting Congressional committees, laying down the basis for how telecommunications could be used for K-12 education.

In 1993 Hughes was awarded the Telecommunications Pioneer Award in by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) of Washington, DC for his effective work in grass roots connectivity.
In 1998 Wired Magazine named Hughes one of the leading "Wired 25" pioneers in the world.

He has been published in April 1998 Scientific American and the MIT Press. He lectures world wide. He is known internationally and has been covered by the press repeatedly, from Japan to Instanbul, Turkey. Most recently he has been featured (all in Feb 2003) by a long Associated Press wire services story, the New York Times, Wireless Review, and IEEE Spectrum Journal. Welsh BBC has documented his wireless work for its applicability to rural Wales, which had no broadband connectivity. The hour long piece ran twice in February to 100,000 people.

The National Science Foundation has personally awarded Hughes, as the Principal Investigator, 5 grants, totaling over $2 million, since 1996 through his company. He is currently modeling the uses of wireless for the NSF for Environmental and Biological scientists in the rain forests of Puerto Rico, the glacier country of central Alaska, and the lake country of Northern Wisconsin.

Recently he has been retained by the Welsh National Assembly to assist in bringing broadband to rural Wales using wireless for key components, which project he is still advises.

Recently he was advising the Tsering Technical Services company of Nepal, on how to successfully install and operate a wirelessly-VSAT connected 'Cyber Café' on the Khumbu Glacier at 18,000 feet to serve the 25 climbing parties attempting to summit 29,000 foot Everest this May, the 50th Anniversary of the first climb by Sir Edmund Hillary. This story has gotten global attention. Japanese NHK is covering it right now.

In 2004 he was given a very high honor. He was designated a "Distinguished West Point Graduate" - only the 9th colonel ever to receive such an honor. He is the only DG among the thousands of West Point graduates, active and retired in the State of Colorado.
Hughes owns his own small company, Old Colorado City Communications, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, lives with his wife of 54 years in the Old Colorado City district of Colorado Springs, near to his 3 grown married children, 5 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren.