The following stories have been tagged digital divide ← Back to All Tags

Susan Crawford and Bill Moyers Discuss Internet Access in America

Sun, February 17, 2013 | Posted by lgonzalez

Susan Crawford sat down with Bill Moyers to talk about Internet access in America. The two touch on net neutrality, the digital divide, and how access is now a critical component to our economic development.

In the words of Bill Moyers, "This is pretty strong stuff." Bill and Susan also talk about how we have come to this point through lack of competition advanced by telecommunications companies' lobbying and legislative ennui.

They spend some time looking at Lafayette, Louisiana, one of the cities that we covered in our 2012 case study, Broadband At the Speed of Light: How Three Communities Built Next-Generation Networks.  The two also dig into ways policy change can improve access and efforts we can all make to heighten awareness of the issue. This is a great dicussion for any one, regardless of their place on the Internet access learning curve.

Video: 

UC2B in Urbana-Champaign Tackles Digital Divide With Network Revenue

Wed, February 06, 2013 | Posted by lgonzalez

The UC2B project broke ground in the fall of 2011 and is a joint effort by the cities of Urbana and Champaign and the University of Illinois. The project is funded with a $22.5 million federal stimulus grant, a $3 million grant from the state of Illinois, and a list of other grants from local agencies.

From the beginning, the project policy board resolved to set aside funding from the network to address the local digital divide. According to a Janelle O'Dea article in the Daily Illini, 2-5 percent of the annual revenue from the network will go into this fund. The policy board is now fielding ideas from the public. There will be a series of community meetings and the first brought several ideas. From the article:

Meeting attendees presented several ideas for how to spend the fund. Some suggested purchasing new computers for resident use and training residents to use computers.

Artice James, president of the Champaign chapter of the National Council of African-American Men, suggested using the funds to provide job training for the installation of fiber optic material to area homes. James said he hoped many of these jobs will employ minority residents.

Alkalimat also commented on the issue of creating permanent jobs for Champaign-Urbana residents. He said he could see potential for creating a group similar to Best Buy’s Geek Squad.

UC2B's approach brings more people to the network in a self-nourishing fashion. The local community knows where the digital divide is in their area. Funding and decisions come from the people who will live with the benefits of the network. UC2B is another example of how local communities can build networks to effectively address the digital divide.

Scarlett McGrady Explains Virginia's Wired Road

Tue, January 29, 2013 | Posted by christopher

The Wired Road is an ambitious fiber optic and wireless project offering Internet access to several underserved areas in rural Virginia. For the 31st episode of our Community Broadband Bits Bits podcast, Scarlett McGrady joins me to discuss its history and impact on the region.

McGrady is the Director of the Grant Community Computing Center [link to Facebook page], which providers a variety of services including computer literacy courses.

The Wired Road has long had gigabit capacity for those who are within range of the fiber optic connections. Anyone who can take a service from the network has to choose a service provider as the network is a pure open access approach: the community-owned network does not offer any services directly to subscribers. Instead, the Wired Road builds the infrastructure to enable independent service providers to offer services.

We discuss the Wired Road and the many ways that rural residents enjoy using the Internet to improve themselves and their businesses. You can find our previous stories about the Wired Road here.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show - please e-mail us or leave a comment below. Also, feel free to suggest other guests, topics, or questions you want us to address.

This show is 20 minutes long and can be played below on this page or subscribe via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Search for us in iTunes and leave a positive comment!

Listen to previous episodes here. You can download this Mp3 file directly here.

Thanks to mojo monkeys for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

Jason Bird Explains how Princeton Kept Jobs in Community with Publicly Owned Fiber Network

Tue, January 22, 2013 | Posted by christopher

Jason Bird is the Electrical Superintendent at the city of Princeton Utilities in Illinois. He joins us for the 30th episode of our Community Broadband Bits Podcast to explain why Princeton built a rather unique network. Princeton has built a fiber network to connect some of the local businesses and uses broadband over power lines (BPL) to provide a low cost option for area residents.

Princeton offers another example of how a community can build and own the infrastructure while partnering with a local company that will provision the services. This approach appeals to many towns that recognize the benefits of ensuring the network is owned by the community but do not want to provide services themselves.

This network helped save hundreds of jobs and has benefited the community in many ways -- just one of which is that they were selected as a site that allowed families to videochat with our troops deployed abroad over the holidays.

Read our coverage of Princeton's network here.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show - please e-mail us or leave a comment below. Also, feel free to suggest other guests, topics, or questions you want us to address.

This show is 21 minutes long and can be played below on this page or subscribe via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Search for us in iTunes and leave a positive comment!

Listen to previous episodes here.

Thanks to mojo monkeys for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

Princeton, Illinois, Uses Electric Wires to Deliver Low Cost Internet Access

Mon, January 14, 2013 | Posted by lgonzalez

Recently, we covered the city-owned fiber optic network in Princeton, Illinois. The network has been serving city facilities, schools, libraries, and businesses since late 2003. The network contributes to economic development by delivering high capacity telecommunications services at affordable prices to local businesses. The City built and owns the network but services are delivered by a private sector partner.

Princeton is also working to bridge the digital divide in its community. The city offers an inexpensive Broadband Over Power Lines (BPL) service to residents and small businesses, using the municipal electricial grid.

BPL was once touted as a great hope for rural connectivity. The technology allows users to send telecommunications over the electrical lines already in place across the country.  After several deployments revealed problems with radio interference, performance issues, and unreliability, the great hope considerably dimmed. However, the technology still has its place.

BPL lives on in Princeton as a supplement to its fiber network. According to Jason Bird, Director of Utilities, subscribers like being able to access the Internet from any room in their home that has an electric outlet. Capacity is very limited - only 1 Mbps service for residential service - but the price is right for those who do not have a large demand for speed. Residential service is $24.95 per month and commercial service is $99.00 per month.

The technology was attractive to the city utility because it was economical and quick to install. Prior to the BPL network, most people in town still used dial-up. As we reported in our post on Princeton's fiber network, the city has forged a long relationship with IVNet, an Illinois ISP. The BPL network is another successful joint project that has been helpful to the community. The two shared the cost of constructing the BPL network and profits are shared with IVNet retaining 70% of the profits.

The future of current BPL networks is uncertain with the loss of interest in devloping the technology. For now, however, Princeton customers have the benefit of a locally managed network to keep them online. 

Photo courtesy of ILPlanner, used under Creative Commons License.

AT&T's Many Broken Merger Promises

Fri, December 07, 2012 | Posted by lgonzalez

AT&T and others regularly woo their regulators and policymakers with promises to built increase investments or expand networks in return for deregulation or merger approval. A recent Gerry Smith Huffington Post article examines a familiar pattern of broken promises made by telcos, what has developed into a chronic wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am attitude by these massive corporations.

We actually have a name for this, Kushnick's Law: "A regulated company will always renege on promises to provide public benefits tomorrow in exchange for regulatory and financial benefits today." 

Smith revisits promises made back in 2006 when AT&T merged with BellSouth. AT&T promised to roll out broadband to every customer in its territory by 2007. Tell that to Cedric Wiggins from rural Mississippi. From the article:

But five years after that deadline, Wiggins, 26, is still waiting. Inside his trailer, his only affordable Internet option is a sluggish dial-up modem that takes five minutes to load the online job listing sites he has visited since being laid-off as a truck driver in May. Every few months, he calls AT&T to ask when he will receive a faster connection. The answer never changes.

“They said they don’t offer it in my area right now,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do.”

Smith found that promises made to gain merger approval are traditionally broken and/or so weakly constructed that the players can comply with little or no effort. Empty promises continue to be accepted by the feds and conveniently forgotten, except people like Wiggins.

No one knows the pattern better than those on the inside:

“We have a problem at the commission, historically, with following-up on merger conditions,” said Michael Copps, who served on the FCC from 2001 to 2011, and who voted to approve the AT&T-BellSouth merger. “A lot of these conditions that get attached are not that great, and they are not always really enforced.”

AT&T tells Smith it kept its promise, but would not respond when pressed for details about where it had expanded. Self reporting is accepted from the FCC on merger conditions, putting the burden on the public to demonstrate noncompliance -- though most of the public is rarely even aware that such promises were made.

Promises are often littered with loopholes. From the article:

AT&T committed to provide Internet service at minimum speeds that were hardly faster than dial-up, they say, while pledging to deliver “alternative technologies,” including satellite Internet, through as much as 15 percent of its territory. And at the time, satellite Internet was already available through nearly all of BellSouth’s turf, making AT&T’s commitment “utterly meaningless,” said Dave Burstein, editor of the telecom industry publication DSL Prime.

Smith also looks into a 2009 promise made by CenturyLink in order to get approval to buy Ebarq in the South and Midwest. CenturyLink promised to bring wired Internet access to 90% of the population within three years but 87% of those customers already had it. Meeting that commitment was almost meaningless. 

Monopoly Money

But we cannot simply leave the blame at the feet of the FCC or other agencies. Smith details how the gigantic AT&T/BellSouth merger almost fell through, but for the efforts of AT&T's lobbyists. FCC Commissioners received a letter signed by 29 members of Congress - all but two had each received significant contributions from AT&T and BellSouth PACs and PAC employees over three election cycles, according to InfluenceExplorer.com.

When the deal was finally approved, expectations were high:

AT&T had made “real, tangible, and important broadband commitments” and there would be “no exceptions for sparsely populated areas,” Copps said at the time.

AT&T’s commitment “will only further encourage the deployment and adoption of broadband networks into yet unserved or underserved areas,” Chairman Kevin J. Martin and Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate said back then.

The 2006 CEO, Ed Whitacre, doubled his salary to $31 million, stock price almost doubled, and $5 billion in dividends went out to investors. The following year, stock went up another 16% and the company paid another $8.7 billion in dividends. Clearly, AT&T reaped the rewards for making promises, but it is equally clear that they also reaped rewards for breaking promises. Even 2006 backers of the deal now realize AT&T has not lived up to its commitment:

“It gives me heartburn,” said Tyrone Ellis, who as chairman of Mississippi’s public utilities committee in 2006 wrote to the FCC to urge approval of the deal, citing the promise of rural broadband throughout AT&T’s territory. “They didn’t follow through. But I don’t have the power to force their hand. The FCC does.”

Meanwhile in Mississippi, Wiggins and his neighbors sit on the unfortunate side of the digital divide. Looking for a full time position, paying bills, conducting business, public safety, and the ability to communicate with loved ones are all hampered by the lack of anything beyond dial-up or expensive satellite.

lFCC Logo

For years now, the FCC and other agencies have allowed harmful consolidation while failing to attach meaningful conditions. We just examined how Comcast gamed the FCC to take over NBC -- the public gained practically nothing in allowing a massive company even more market power. 

The problem with such massive companies is not just that they can squash competition and raise prices with impunity. Their scale and dominance allows them to shape how the entire industry is regulated by the public. They buy legislation in DC and state capitals with near-impunity. They slow innovation, harming the economy. 

Communities are smart to depend on themselves for essential infrastruture, not promises from distant mega-corporations. 

Comcast Gamed FCC for Internet Essentials "Concession" in NBC Merger

Mon, December 03, 2012 | Posted by lgonzalez

Last year, when Comcast unveiled its Internet Essentials program, the corporate powerhouse received accolades from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. The program was promoted as an example of corporate philanthropy helping to bridge the digital divide.

Comcast received all kinds of positive media coverage for its program. Most of that coverage failed to note that the FCC required Comcast to integrate the program as one of the supposed concessions offered in return for Comcast being able to take over NBC -- giving the largest cable monopolist in the US even more market power.

DSLReports has publicly exposed what many of us suspected all along -- the program was not a concession on Comcast's part. Internet Essentials was originally conceived as a program that would offer slower connections to certain low income households at affordable rates that nevertheless remain profitable for Comcast.

A recent Washington Post Technology profile on Comcast's Chief Lobbyist David Cohen, notes how the program was actually conceived in 2009, but:

At the time, Comcast was planning a controversial $30 billion bid to take over NBC Universal, and Cohen needed a bargaining chip for government negotiations.

“I held back because I knew it may be the type of voluntary commitment that would be attractive to the chairman” of the Federal Communications Commission, Cohen said in a recent interview.

Eligibility depends on four factors:

  • Participants must reside in an area serviced by Comcast
  • Participants must not have an overdue Comcast bill or have unreturned equipment
  • Participants could not have had Comcast service within the last 90 days
  • Participants must have at least one child in the house that qualifies for free or reduced lunches

Comcast Logo

When the program launched in 2011, only households with children qualifying for free lunches under the National Free Lunch Program were eligible. After residents in Philadelphia expressed their derision at the narrow eligiblity, Comcast broadened the criteria to include those that qualified for reduced lunches. Even with this one requirement relaxed, eligibility is narrow. From a 2011 DSLReports article released when the program was new:

Once you've eliminated those who don't qualify for the school lunch program, eliminated those who already have service (not uncommon even in poor homes), and eliminate those who also owe Comcast money (also obviously not uncommon in poor homes), how many customers will Comcast actually wind up having to serve at the $10 price point? Even then, they'll only have to offer it for a few years, making it significantly less of a difficult merger condition than it might originally appear.

The Philly.com article notes that Comcast estimates 2.3 million people nationwide are eligible for the program. Even though meeting the participation criteria is incredibly difficult, Comcast blames low participation rates to on the people they are supposed to be helping:

Comcast says it has found that the biggest barrier to Internet Essentials' adoption is that many people in poor neighborhoods don't understand the Internet (emphasis added by me).

"They think it may be used for Comcast or the government to spy on them," said David Cohen, the program's chief booster and an executive vice president at Comcast.

I am one of those 2.3 million, used to help Comcast increase its market power with the NBC merger. Very few of us think much about the government or Comcast spying on us. In fact, we spend most of our time thinking about paying the bills. If Comcast or the government DID spy on us, we know they would be pretty damn bored.

As a lower-income single parent of two children that qualify for reduced lunches, our household qualifies largely because a subscription to paid TV is a luxury that we have chosen to avoid for several years. But believe it or not, I DO understand the benefits of Internet access and so do all the parents of all the kids that I know who are similarly situated. In fact, the kids understand the Internet, too.

As an experiment, I called Comcast and am happy to report that a very nice lady helped me. After answering all the questions she presented, my application for the Internet Essential program is on its way. 

I hate to report stories like this for multiple reasons. First, there is the conscious decision on the part of Comcast to cynically delay a program supposedly designed to benefit the most vulnerable populations. Then there is Comcast's obvious goal of positive media attention for their hated brand rather than effectively advertising the program to the vulnerable populations.

DSL Reports Logo

There is a policy lesson that DSLReports nails:

On the plus side, some people got less expensive broadband, which certainly isn't a bad thing. On the other hand, you've got a Comcast lobbyist who delays a program for the poor in order to profit handsomely by buying NBC, and an FCC claiming credit for a show pony program just to earn political points and to avoid imposing tougher conditions. As we'ved noted previously, hollow programs that do little but sound great has been a constant theme at an agency too timid to actually regulate.

The obvious question that has been utterly ignored by just about all the press coverage of this program is if Comcast makes a profit on its $9.95 service, why is the price so high for everyone else? Comcast, AT&T, and others are constantly crowing about how much competition supposedly exists in U.S. broadband but their profit margins and capacity to incease rates year after year proves the opposite is true.

We need to continue pushing the FCC to protect the rights of all Americans, not just a few big cable and telephone companies.

Raleigh Plans Hobbled by State Ban on Municipal Networks

Mon, November 26, 2012 | Posted by christopher

A recent article and video from Government Technology highlights the ambitious plans of Raleigh to harness the Internet to improve its attractiveness to forward-looking companies.

Unfortunately, Time Warner Cable convinced North Carolina's legislature that communities could not be trusted with the decision over whether it was a wise decision to invest in telecommunications networks.

So despite Raleigh's smart plans to build a fiber optic infrastructure that could be used to connect local businesses and spur new enterprises, it is prohibited from doing so. It can still offer services for free, which is why it can and does offer free Wi-Fi in some areas of town, but it cannot offer the services that would be most beneficial to the kind of companies that are most drawn to the Research Triangle Park area.

We look forward to a North Carolina that recognizes these decisions should be made at the local level, not by lobbyists working the state or federal capitals. But until then, we'll have to celebrate the jobs created by municipal networks in other states, where communities have the power to determine their own digital futures.

Community Broadband Bits 20 - Amalia Deloney

Tue, November 06, 2012 | Posted by christopher

Amalia Deloney (follow on Twitter) joins us for our 20th Community Broadband Bits podcast to discuss how her work with the Media Action Grassroots Network and the Center for Media Justice overlaps with our focus on community broadband networks.

We talk about the digital divide, particularly in relation to the attempted merger between AT&T and T-Mobile that would have raised prices among vulnerable populations. We also discuss the present campaign for Prison Phone Justice to ensure families are able to talk to incarcerated loved ones at affordable rates.

While many of our readers are mostly concerned with how we access the Internet, telecommunications impacts millions of Americans in a different way -- they cannot, or can barely afford to talk to each other because the cable/DSL/wireless networks are ignoring, or worse - exploiting - their needs. We want to build networks that will connect everyone.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show - please e-mail us or leave a comment below. Also, feel free to suggest other guests, topics, or questions you want us to address.

This show is 20 minutes long and can be played below on this page or subscribe via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed. Search for us in iTunes and leave a positive comment!

Listen to previous episodes here.

Thanks to Fit and the Conniptions for the music, licensed using Creative Commons.

Google Fiber Spurs Digital Divide Discussions

Mon, September 10, 2012 | Posted by lgonzalez

“I’m concerned that the digital divide” — the gap between electronic haves and have-nots — “will be exacerbated by the fact that you’ll have extremely fast Internet in some neighborhoods while people in neighborhoods with fewer resources will be left even further behind,” said Christopher Barnickel, an assistant director at the Kansas City, Kan., Public Library.

Christopher Barnickel, speaking with Scott Canon of the Kansas City Star, echoed the growing concerns of many in Kansas City. The Google fiber initiative, meant to offer the fastest broadband, may leave many behind. Google is connecting neighborhoods that met a minimum threshold for service, creating concern that low-income neighborhoods will not meet that threshold. Of the 202 possible neighborhoods, 22 will not be connected.

We discussed in a previous post how Google is in the unique position of being able to offer their gigabit service for such a low price. But one of the reasons they make it work is by building only in areas where people are ready to sign up today. Their agreement with the City is very clear that they do not have to serve everyone.

Google's Kansas City preregistration just ended. But Canon's words from 2 weeks ago remain important: 

Two weeks remain for dozens of neighborhoods to sign up enough potential customers to qualify for Google’s service before a Sept. 9 deadline. But many neighborhoods — chiefly the least prosperous pockets of the metro area — remain far behind the pace needed to hit the Google-established thresholds of customer penetration.

That means many of the free connections Google agreed to make to public buildings, library branches and community centers won’t happen.

At that time, the map was fairly divided among income lines. 

West of Troost Avenue, the map is mostly green, indicating neighborhoods with plenty of eager customers. East of Troost, pre-registrations largely are low. In Kansas City, Kan., the map looks more quilt-like. Places where incomes are lower seem to have little chance of getting Google’s Internet service.

But we will know more on Thursday, when Google announces the schedule of when neighborhoods will be connected.

In addition to private citizens' concern over whether or not they will get the chance to access the new gig network, schools are worried about a new divide they had previously worked to diminish:

The city’s school district is worried that many of its buildings will be left without the fiberoptic connections that will blossom in areas that are better off.

“We worked hard to close the technology divide between our kids and more-resourced communities,” said school district spokesman David Smith.

All students in the district high schools, for instance, are issued laptops.

“It is unimaginable to us to have that divide reopen,” Smith said.

Some say the bridge over the digital divide now seems like a mirage.

“It does not have the feel of the universal access that was part of the initial description,” said Karen Hostetler, a resident of the East Argentine section of Kansas City, Kan.

Kansas City Logo

The municipal government of Kansas City should be responsible for making sure every school has the connections they need. Leaving it up to a distant, private company's marketing gimmicks rather than taking responsibility for a core city function is really poor public policy. It is also smart marketing for Google, which seems to be the message reporters are spreading.

Some have organized grassroots efforts to sign up more pre-registrants in low-income areas and results are mixed because obstacles in economically challenged areas are numerous. Some are not aware of the initiative, others don't trust door-to-door volunteers, and still others don't have the pre-registration fee of $10.

At Juniper Gardens, a University of Kansas research center dealing with children’s developmental disabilities, it has sparked a tone of worry. The downtown Kansas City, Kan., office is staffed by people fearing it won’t get Google Fiber or its potential for long-distance, high-definition video to analyze kids and train their parents.

“The potential is great,” said Jay Buzhardt, a professor at Juniper. “We just don’t want to miss out.”

While we remain hopeful that the Google effort in Kansas City helps to demonstrate the importance of next-generation broadband, we also believe the hype around it is hitting noxious levels, often from commentators who have no idea what they are talking about (and are attacking Google to defend the companies like Time Warner Cable that indirectly pay their salaries). Therefore, it was with relief that we read Timothy Lee's Ars Technica article explaining to free market glibertarians that Google's Kansas City network is fundamentally not an example of the free market working.

In fact, the local government is subsidizing this network in ways that local governments generally do not. Google has used its fame and its technical prowess to get a great deal from the City in terms of access to public right-of-way and instant inspections. 

We are strong supporters of local authority and do not believe that such a subsidy is poor policy per se. And we do defend the ability of communities to choose to partner with corporations in this manner. However, when we see that Kansas City will not get universal access and has no real decision-making power in regard to the network, we have to wonder how good of a deal they are getting. Kansas City, Missouri, may have been the better negotiators, as Google is installing an additional conduit and is charging them less than industry standards to do so.

In the short term, they get an incredible network and tons of publicity. But in the long term, we'll see -- because these networks will still be important in 10, 20, 30 years. And who knows what Google will be doing then.

Breaking the cable/DSL monopoly/duopoly is very difficult given the power of the massive corporations responsible for it, but we continue to see the largest gains going to the communities who have shouldered the greater risk of building their own network to achieve self-determination.

But viewed differently, the greatest risk lies in hoping distant corporations will provide the network a community needs to succeed in the digital economy.