Foundation Journal

During the October 17, 2014 Digital Inclusion Summit (see Jason Harper's report ) in Kansas City noted Digital Inclusion Strategist Angela Siefer identified herself as a “huge, huge advocate of city involvement in digital inclusion” projects towards improving affordable Internet access in low-income neighborhoods. This position represents a challenge to Kansas City to build bridges that close a digital divide in our community. Kansas City would do well to look at the example of Philadelphia and Minneapolis to launch big impact efforts, as Ms. Siefer pointed out in her presentation. And through the efforts of an emerging digital inclusion coalition that includes the KC Public Library, KC Digital Drive and Connecting for Good, a roadmap has been defined to bring city and other resources to this effort. Through a city-run project called "Keyspots" Philadelphia placed 80 free wireless hotspots in operation. Through their efforts they are offering 847 workstations across...

A recently concluded Digital Inclusion Summit in Kansas City highlighted the disadvantage residents face not having home broadband Internet access, especially school-age kids and job-seeking adults. As many as 25% of Kansas Citians and 70% of KCMO public school youth don't have home access , and it's good to know a digital inclusion coalition is emerging from the summit to fix this gap. Another fact from the summit shared during a presentation is that the uneven KC broadband landscape is common to other large metroplitan areas, like a report last week showing "some 800,000 New Jersey households with income of $35,000 or less, only 54 percent had broadband Internet access and 45 percent had no connection at all." So large projects to address the digital divide are needed. One such project by the Obama administration [possible NY Times registration required] proposes a solution to a problem "with fewer than half of American public schools connected to high-speed...

Comcast announced a low-cost Internet option as mentioned in today's Washington Post. "Under a back-to-school promotion running from now until Sept. 20, new Internet Essentials subscribers will get six months of free Internet access. In addition, those who were previously Comcast customers but were barred from signing up for Internet Essentials because they owed the company money for other services will now be able to subscribe to Internet Essentials — provided that their outstanding bill is more than a year old." Link to the full article -  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/08/04/comcast-is-expanding-its-10-a-month-internet-program-for-the-poor/?tid=HP_technology

Comcast announced the expansion of a low-cost broadband Internet service for low-income families yesterday. The service, labeled "Internet Essentials," provides a five-megabit per second high-speed connection for $9.95 per month, the option to purchase a $149.99 computer, and free training classes. The service is available to families with at least one child eligible for the National School Lunch Program , which provides free or low-cost school lunches. Comcast was required to develop this low-cost Internet service as a result of it's acquisition of NBC. A similar "Starter Internet" offering from Time Warner discussed on this blog  was announced with much fanfare from KCK and KCMO mayors last November. The $10 Time Warner offering expired in January 2013, but provided the service and a low-cost computer to eligible families participating in the same school lunch program. Comcast has some additional requirements which may limit eligibility for the service li...

An ultra-high speed Internet service is available to the North Kansas City school district after LiNKCity , the city's public Internet service provider, connected the school up to the city's fiber network. LiNKCity and Datashack , a private hosting provider located in North Kansas City, worked together to connect the school district to the high-speed network for free. The LiNKCity fiber network represents a solid alternative to the emerging Google Fiber network, but has been developed as a public utility.