Grieder: Abbott s call for universal broadband access creates opportunity for bipartisan action
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott prepares to deliver his State of the State speech at Visionary Fiber Technologies, for the first time outside the Capitol, Monday, Feb. 1, 2021, in Lockhart, Texas.Bob Daemmrich, POOL / Associated PressShow MoreShow Less
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Brian Ligon, Communications and Marketing Director, gives a tour on Friday, October 25, 2019 in Mont Belvieu, Texas. Major internet service providers don t see enough potential return on investment to make their service available in rural areas. The town of Mont Belvieu decided to spend millions of dollars to build and maintain a municipal internet network, MBLink. MBLink provides affordable broadband internet for all of its residents who want it. (Shaban Athuman/Dallas Morning News/TNS)Shaban Athuman, MBR / TNSShow MoreShow Less
This show originally aired Sept. 3, 2020.
Many in Charlotte and across the country lived in the digital divide long before the pandemic. Now, it has become “a national crisis.”
School systems raced to get laptops and tablets into students’ hands, but that’s only half the battle. As many as 17 million students across the country lack adequate internet connection. In Charlotte, 45,000 homes are without broadband internet – largely in communities of color, resulting in a “digital redlining.”
My latest project for @theobserver/@Report4America on Charlotte s digital divide. It has not deepened since the pandemic but it has made it an emergency.
Podcast The Divide: NDIA s Angela Siefer on digital redlining 1/28/2021
Welcome to The Divide – a podcast from Light Reading exploring the ongoing digital divide: why it still exists, where it still exists and what needs to be done to fix it.
Today s guest is Angela Siefer, executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA).
We talk about what digital inclusion work looks like, how the digital divide is being made worse by digital redlining, and what needs to happen at a provider and policy level to change that.
Nicole Ferraro, contributing editor and host of The Divide and What s the Story? Light Reading
How do we build more resilient communities?
It’s a question that Matthew Stinchcomb, cofounder of the Lifeboats HV initiative and keynote speaker at the American Library Association’s 2021 Midwinter Meeting & Exhibits Virtual on-demand session “Resilience: How Libraries Can Partner to Reshape the Future,” thinks about often.
“If you look at the data on climate change and ecological destruction, there’s no doubt that it’s pretty dire. Continuing on our current path is untenable for humans and all living beings,” he said. “The current pandemic is showing just how irresilient many of our communities are and just how much inequity there is in our current economic system.”
Broadband Issues in Victoria Are A Hot Topic
This morning, Crossroads Today, released an article citing
Victoria ranked as the 21st worst connected community in the United States!
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According to the article, National Digital Inclusion Alliance surveyed 623 communities across the country and ranked Victoria the 21st worst connected community.
NDIA ranked all 623 of these communities by two categories; the percentage of
households without Wireline broadband subscriptions, defined by the ACS as “Broadband such as cable, fiber optic or DSL,” and the percentage of each community’s
households that lacked broadband Internet subscriptions of any type, including mobile data plans, the NDIA website reveals.