Boston gets federal money to try to get poor people on the 'Net
By adamg - 12/17/09 - 2:54 pm
Boston will get $1.9 million to bring broadband to poor neighborhoods. The money will "provide upgraded and expanded hardware, software, and public computing training in 26 public libraries, 11 public housing developments, and 16 Centers for Youth and Families in Boston," according to a statement from John Kerry’s office. "In Boston, 80 percent of public school kids have no broadband service at home in large part because their parents cannot afford it, and that's why we pushed like hell to invest in broadband deployment through the stimulus bill."
Remember when the city said it would get poor people online by building out John Tobin's Tom Menino's citywide wireless system? No, neither do I.
Via Colin Rhinesmith.
Comments
openairboston?
Are they partnering up at all with openairboston.net? Because big sections of Roxbury and Grove Hall already have signal with a connection named "openairboston," so it seems like openairboston is doing something right and might be something to emulate.
Good question
I tweeted 'em, will report back on any answer.
Don't understand
I don't understand. If they get cable they can get broadband, too. What's the problem?
You'd think, but not always the case
Cable is just the medium for the data.
All the network infrastructure to put data on the wire has to be there too and that costs big dollars. Cable operators will only roll it out when they know they have enough potential subscribers to make it worth their while. In my town for instance we had cable in 1979 I believe. Needham (not my hometown) started rolling out broadband over cable in 1996-7-ish (called RoadRunner then). DSL hit the scene in 1998-99 here and quickly grew. Once there were enough DSL subscribers to justify the investment, comcast rolled out broadband to compete against it. Now they have to compete with Fios which just hit the streets a couple months ago.
So the technology was available for years in other towns before it was actually available to us even though the cable was there for many years prior.
Don't know if that is the case in the city, but I suspect those with the bucks don't think they'll have enough subscribers to invest the dough.
No
The answer, of course, is that everyone in Boston DOES have access to broadband internet, many just choose not to pay for it.
did you just skip over the
did you just skip over the quote in the article?
Sure, your comment may apply to the 11 public housing developments if it goes into apartments, but upgrading the facilities at libraries and youth centers has very little to do with whether they can get cable TV there.
How can Boston's public
How can Boston's public school children be expected to learn to read and write without access to broadband internet access? When our Puritan forefathers came to this land, the first thing they did was set up broadband access so that every family could download the Bible in pdf form and listen to streaming hymns.
You might be surprised to
You might be surprised to learn that most of the better or even just the adequate paying careers require computer skills, and since more and more work is done online/in the cloud it's pretty vital that children from all backgrounds learn these skills.
These days even a low-skilled
These days even a low-skilled position such as a cashier at Shaws requires an online application.
you didn't read the Wordy Shipmates
Had they had the technology, the Puritans probably would have done exactly that.
They certainly pushed the limits of the revolutionary technology of their day - the printing press - as an instrument of social change and engineering.