Connecting Community Organizations to the Google Fiber Network

Vineyard Estates Pre-Registers for Google Fiber
Image of Google Map showing
Vineyard Estates neighborhood
The Vineyard Estates neighborhood on the east side of Kansas City, where the Harvesters food bank is located, reached its goal of pre-registering 10% of the residents for the Google Fiber service, along with 179 other KCK and Kansas City, Missouri neighborhood.

The Google Fiber plans for residential locations range from $70 for high-speed Internet service to $120 for Internet plus cable TV per month. Since Harvesters is a business it will not eligible to be connected for service, according to the terms of service. And Google has not defined subscription rates for businesses yet. However, since Harvesters is a community organization it's likely to be wired along with "libraries, schools and community buildings in qualified fiberhoods," as stated in a Google report on the conclusion of the pre-registration effort.

Harvesters is one of over 200 food banks in a nationwide network of food banks represented by Feeding America. With a link to the Internet 100 times faster than a normal connection it's possible Harvesters could host an application or service that benefits other food banks.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Community Media: Serving More Than a Geographic Region

Community media outlets like KKFI 90.1 FM in Kansas City have thrived for decades, maintaining a well-established broadcast model: high-quality studio sound broadcast to a wide geographic area serving the "community." Non-profit community radio station like KKFI, along with college radio and small commercial radio stations keep costs low by renting small studios and operating with few paid employees. These stations attract small audiences but differentiate themselves by focusing on community issues, music and culture. This focus is what defines community media, along with -- in the case of community radio -- maintaining cooperative ownership, not corporate ownership. Community radio operators always knew that "community" was more than a geographic region; it was the various cultural, ethnic, social and artistic communities for which locally-produced radio shows target. KKFI has local radio shows by or directed to African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and immigrant
Read more

Quest for a new volunteer management system at KC area food bank

Image
Note: This document is an early draft of a business case to upgrade a volunteer management system. It is not intended to be a fully organized statement of requirements, but more of a collection of features and a document for discussion. Overview Harvesters, the Kansas City area food bank, would like to improve the capability of the Volunteer App, the volunteer management system used to schedule, track and recruit volunteers and groups.  The Volunteer Services department would also like to improve the efficiency and accuracy of volunteer management by adapting their processes with new features and functions from an updated application. The current, custom Microsoft Access-based system developed a few years ago provides a rich-featured, robust solution to track individuals and groups volunteering at Harvesters. The system tracks all volunteers working in the Volunteer Outreach Center, as well as those donating their time and skills for events and in departments throughout Ha
Read more

Lee's Summit Proposes the Sanity Approach to Waste Reduction

Image
Finally! The city of Lee's Summit, Missouri took a responsible approach to trash service by replacing an all-you-can-dump-with-no-free-recycling-option to a "volume-based" approach similar to the successful service used in Kansas City, Missouri. After the service is changed, then those residents who have paid $2.50 per month to trash companies like Deffenbaugh can rely on the new service for free recycling, plus get the satisfaction that waste will be reduced and recycling increased. ...the City Council directed city staff to issue the state-required two-year notice to all solid waste haulers providing services in the City that the City is considering implementation of a comprehensive, citywide, solid waste program.  The program currently proposed by city staff includes volume-based pricing for residential trash service with unlimited, curbside recycling at no additional fee .  Under this proposed program, residents would only pay for the amount of trash they discard ;
Read more