I’ve been following the proposed state tax incentives the General Assembly is considering providing to a mystery company widely considered to be Apple. The list of incentives appear to be pretty hefty, considering Apple’s proposed facility will employ 50 full-time employees at the most.

I know of a datacenter in RTP capable of hosting 84,000 computers that is managed by about 20 people. An Apple iTunes Store datacenter could run very comfortably with a staff of 20. So anyone expecting lots of jobs from this company is fooling himself.

The incentives bill intends to lure this company to an area of the state with high unemployment. This would typically mean a rural area of the state, and thus not an area likely to be wired for high-speed Internet access. An area without high-speed Internet access makes an iTunes Store datacenter a non-starter. Let’s hope the lawmakers keep that in mind as they attempt to keep affordable broadband out of our cities and rural areas.