Adoption

As the next installment of a decades-long series of data collections, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) proposes to add 66 questions to the Census Bureau’s November 2017 Current Population Survey (CPS) to gather reliable data on computer and broadband (also known as highspeed Internet) use by US households. To aid the Administration’s plan to incorporate broadband in the upcoming infrastructure initiative and ensure the digital preparedness of the nation’s current and future workforce, NTIA data will reveal consumers’ changing demand for broadband, as well as their online activities.

The information may inform decisions about the scope and scale of the needed infrastructure, particularly in remote and sparsely populated areas where broadband deployment may be difficult and costly. It may also shed light on opportunities to increase digital literacy and use among Americans who currently use the Internet sparingly, if at all.

Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collection should be sent within 30 days OIRA_Submission@omb.eop.gov

Free Basics, Facebook’s free, limited internet service for developing markets, is neither serving local needs nor achieving its objective of bringing people online for the first time. That’s according to research by citizen media and activist group Global Voices which examined the Free Basics service in six different markets – Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, Pakistan and Philippines – to see whether it was serving the intended audience. Free Basics is a Facebook-developed mobile app that gives users access to a small selection of data-light websites and services. The websites are stripped of photos and videos and can be browsed without paying for mobile data. The Global Voices report identifies a number of weaknesses in the service, including not adequately serving the linguistic needs of local populations; featuring a glut of third-party services from private companies in the US; harvesting huge amounts of metadata about users and violating the principles of net neutrality.

Louisville (KY) has garnered much praise for an award-winning data map that visualizes the modern day effects of redlining — a practice that dates back to the 1930s, and involves racial and socioeconomic discrimination in certain neighborhoods through the systematic denial of services or refusal to grant loans and insurance. This map, dubbed Redlining Louisville: The History of Race, Class and Real Estate, takes historic data about redlining found in the national archives in Washington (DC) in 2013, and combines it with a timeline of historic events, data about current poverty levels, neighborhood boundaries and racial demographic info. With a host of tools including buttons and sliders, users can clearly see the correlation between the deliberate injustices of the past and the plight of struggling neighborhoods today. For Louisville CIO Grace Simrall, the map is proving an asset in the city’s ongoing work to improve digital equity. City officials have also looked at the map as lens through which to examine digital inclusion, the effort to provide all residents with equal access to technology, as well as the related skills to benefit.

Seattle’s Information Technology Department has won two awards from the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors for its efforts to foster digital inclusion within the city. The awards are:

• 2017 Community Broadband Strategic Plan of the Year, for Seattle’s Strategic Plan for Facilitating Equitable Access to Wireless Broadband
• 2017 Community Broadband Digital Equity Project of the Year, for Seattle’s Technology Matching Fund

If you care about robust broadband, if you care about being able to use the internet without your service provider compromising your privacy, picking winners and losers online, if you want infrastructure built in your communities, then you cannot remain on the sidelines. File comments in our open internet proceeding, let your federal Reps or Sens hear about what you think and what you need. Make your voice heard. I, for one, welcome hearing from you, consider your voices and opinions significant and view what you file as substantial. We are not doing our jobs as regulators, if we aren’t listening to you, we are not representing your interests if we fail to understand or consider what you are facing or what concerns you.

I am here tonight in Marietta (OH) because I am using my two ears and will now limit what else I say with my one mouth. My unwavering promise to you this evening, is that I will take what you say back to Washington (DC), and ensure that your stories are told and that they are part of our public policy debate.

[Commentary] Thanks to a 2016 change in Federal Communications Commission policy, a small school district in central Virginia may have found a way to the bridge the “homework gap.” The homework gap is the lack of digital access at home that can hurt students’ academic performance and interfere with their ability to complete assignments.

Brette Arbogast, director of technology for the Appomattox County School District in Virginia, saw problems with E-Rate in 2015, in part because of a lack of competition among technology companies bidding on school business. Arbogast figured out his school district could save a lot of money if it built a network itself rather than hiring a private internet-service provider. Though the savings potentially amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, without internet access in students’ homes, the program would do nothing to address the homework gap. A recent amendment in FCC policy was a game changer. Until last year, E-Rate-funded networks could only serve the grounds of schools or libraries. In 2016 the FCC reformed the rules so that networks funded with E-Rate could reach off-campus to serve students during non-school hours. The district quickly capitalized on the change. The school district became a certified ISP and an E-Rate provider – a process that takes about a year. Once they had built the network to serve the school, they cooperated with a municipality that helped finance Wi-Fi radios, which the school connected to the network. Those Wi-Fi devices provide internet access to students in their homes after 4 p.m., thus getting them online to complete their homework.

[Craig Settles is a broadband industry analyst and consultant to local governments]

[Commentary] Combine broadband with a 3-D printer, and you transform data into objects that can fix a tractor or help a child thrive. Rural communities are showing that high-speed access isn’t just a theoretical benefit – it has measurable results in the physical world.

[Craig Settles is a broadband industry analyst, consultant to local governments]

When residents at San Francisco’s Hunters Point East and West low-income, federally-subsidized housing complex went online, many had access to free gigabit speed internet for the first time.

This isn’t wi-fi that’s shared throughout the building, but rather each individual unit is getting its own internet connection. Hunters Point is the first housing development to get the service, where nearly 300 people live across 212 units in 27 buildings. But by the end of 2018, more than 1,000 additional units of San Francisco income-subsidized housing will receive free gigabit internet, servicing nine more developments in the Tenderloin neighborhood and four more in the Bayview area. The internet provider behind the effort is local San Francisco outfit Monkeybrains, a company that specializes in fast internet transmitted through wireless antennas. Instead of breaking up a sidewalk to lay fiber or cables, Monkeybrains beams high-speed internet through antennas installed on rooftops. For the Hunters Point buildout, technicians are stringing cable from the rooftop antennas to connect every unit.

California faces a growing class of “under-connected” households that rely only on smartphones for online access, a trend that may worsen the state’s economic inequality, according to a report released by UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. In 2017, more Californians — 87 percent of the state’s households — had broadband Internet connectivity at home. But of those, 18 percent had smartphones as their only computing devices, more than double the 8 percent just two years earlier.

While smartphones provide a cheaper, more portable way to get online, their limited computing power hinders the development of basic computing skills, leaving smartphone-only households much less likely to be integrated into California’s booming tech economy, experts said. Thirty-four percent of those without broadband at home cited the expense. They also acknowledged they felt disadvantaged in developing new career skills or taking classes, according to the poll, which surveyed more than 1,600 adults in six different languages.

Students increasingly must gain 21st century technology skills to succeed in life after high school. Despite the technological shift driven by rapid innovations, approximately 5 million US households with school-age children still do not have access to high-speed Internet at home. The paper gives school leaders guidance to improve digital access in their communities.

In addition, CoSN puts forth recommendations for districts to build and strengthen their networks and identifies funding opportunities for school systems to improve digital equity. These include leveraging capital expenditures, operational expenditures, federal and state funds, bonds, levies, grants, and in-kind and school-to-business partnerships to address digital equity. “School-to-Home” details the main barriers to extending broadband to homes nationwide. These include assessing size of the connectivity problem and addressing the need for adequate Internet access at home and in the community, particularly for students from low-income homes. Despite cost and lack of fiber or high-speed Internet availability, some districts are improving Internet access by promoting public Wi-Fi access, providing Internet in school parking lots and athletic fields, and establishing portable loaner Wi-Fi hotspots for student use to take home to do school work.