[GB-Today] Monday Musings

[Susan Estrada]

Monday Musings
January 17, 2005

On January 17, we celebrated the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. and it 
seemed appropriate to muse about the digital divide.

Dealing ACES

Last Wednesday evening, I attended a special meeting of the Fontana city 
council where there were discussing their broadband to everyone plan, 
ACES.  The mayor made an interesting comment about how difficult it was for 
cities today to plan adequately.  With the telecommunications landscape 
changing dramatically, the cities are looking at losing their "control" 
over the local cable TV company, those associated revenues, and the 
abilities to bring city meetings and key events into the home in the 
future.  Fontana is thinking about building its own fiber infrastructure to 
each home and business in the city and allowing all comers to provide 
services over this infrastructure.  The bottom line to Fontana, in the 
mayor's eyes, is that this is the only way he can insure that each member 
of the public has access to broadband for all services.  As an aside, 
Fontana is a community in transition but still has a large poor immigrant 
population.

More interesting, Verizon said it would provide services over a Fontana 
city-owned fiber infrastructure.  SBC said that they would not provide 
services on anything but their own network and would not use the Fontana 
network if built.

You can read more about the ACES project in the hot-off-the-presses CENIC 
magazine, InterAct, at 
<http://www.cenic.org/pubs/interact/interactvol5.pdf>http://www.cenic.org/pubs/interact/interactvol5.pdf 
.


Where in the World is Humboldt?

Humboldt County has been busy on their strategy to turn their rural 
community from a resource-based economy (logging) to a more 
technology-based economy.  Check out their final report of the recent 
assessment of telecom and broadband.

<http://redwoodtech.org/HotTopics/documents/96_LINWreport010405.pdf>http://redwoodtech.org/HotTopics/documents/96_LINWreport010405.pdf

http://redwoodtech.org/HotTopics/documents/97_final_report.doc

And, encourage your community to do its own 
assessment.  http://www.cenic.org/guide/  It's one sure way to make a real 
plan on how to bridge the digital divides in your community.


Contraptions

Someone needs to make broadband applications easier.  It is crazy to 
believe that we need to train people how to use a keyboard to communicate 
or use applications delivered via broadband.  Crazy!  So where are the new 
contraptions?  We need more stuff like Sony's LocationFree TV .

What about Motorola's OJO personal video phone for communicating with the 
family back in 
Mexico? 
<http://broadband.motorola.com/consumers/products/ojo/index2.html>http://broadband.motorola.com/consumers/products/ojo/index2.html 
Or how about Apple's iChat AV?  http://www.apple.com/ichat/

Here are CNET's projections about the Next-Big-Thing.  See any broadband 
contraptions there that will help us build bridges over the divide? 
<http://www.cesweb.org/attendees/awards/next_big_thing.asp>http://www.cesweb.org/attendees/awards/next_big_thing.asp

And, finally, check out BT's ideas about telecare and 
telemedicine. 
<http://www.hi-europe.info/files/2004/9983.htm>http://www.hi-europe.info/files/2004/9983.htm 
. There's also MediCompass that encourages patients to interactively manage 
treatment of chronic 
illnesses.  <http://www.medicompass.com/>http://www.medicompass.com/


Quote of the Week

Representative Tom Davis, the chairman of the House Government Reform 
Committee which provides oversight of IT matters said, "We're still an 
analog government in a digital economy and culture."

Have a great week,
Susan



************************************************************
Susan Estrada
Director,  CENIC's One Gigabit or Bust Initiative
susan at cenic.org
760-510-8406 x1#
http://www.cenic.org/GB/index.html
************************************************************ 
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