Flickr Photo by Chi KingThe Federal Communications Commission is seeking public comment on how to draft America's national broadband plan. It's essential that they hear from us.

If you're an NTEN Member -- or have been lurking around for awhile -- you know that Universal Broadband Access is an issue we care deeply about.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 set aside $7.2 billion for broadband stimulus. It also requires the FCC to begin drafting a national broadband plan. The plan will help determine the future of Internet access across the country.

As organizations with a stake in the future of communications, we must ensure that the commissioners hear our call for fast, affordable, ubiquitous, and open Internet access.

You have until Friday, June 8, to file comments online at the FCC website.

I learned about the public comment period in an email from Free Press. They're doing some fabulous organizing around universal access and have provided some basic talking points for comments to the FCC. Read the quick facts below, see Free Press for more info, and comment today!

Check out this event taking place in San Mateo next month. It's free for nonprofit staff!

TPS: Broadband Innovation, taking place May 11, 2009 in conjunction with the 3rd annual Tech Policy Summit conference, is designed to assist community and business leaders by offering best practices for improving Internet access and adoption. Produced by Tech Policy Central, the daylong event will provide an in-depth look at state and federal efforts to improve broadband deployment and the call to develop a comprehensive national broadband strategy.

Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) will keynote the summit, which will also feature policy experts from AT&T, Comcast, One Economy, Connected Nation, Level 3 Communications, IBM, The Children's Partnership and the California Emerging Technology Fund, among others.

Registration is free to nonprofit, academic and government employees and the corporate rate is $195.

View the agenda and sign up online at http://events.techpolicycentral.com

In November, I was lucky enough to sit on a panel on text messaging for advocacy at the Convio Summit. My co-panelists, Matt Wilson from Mobile Commons and Kristin Kich of NARAL Pro Choice America both had some great case studies about using mobile to build lists and generate actions.
There were lots of great questions during the session, including the very appropriate one about just who is texting anyway. Much like social media, there's an assumption out there that the only people who are texting are kids. That was probably true as recently as 2006/07. But it's not anymore!
Nielson Mobile has just released statistics that indicate that EVERYONE is now texting. In the last quarter of 2007, the number of text messages consumers sent outpaced the number of calls they make and receive. According to 160Characters, the number of text messages has been steadily increasing:
Qtr 3, 2007: 226 calls / 193 texts
Qtr 4, 2007: 213 calls / 218 texts
Qtr 1, 2008: 207 calls / 288 texts
Qtr 2, 2008: 204 calls / 357 texts
Of course, it's still heavily skewed towards the kids. Teens age 13-17 send and receive an average of 1,742 text per month, compared to "just" 231 calls. But the dominance of text messages is clear in several age categories:
All Subs: 204 calls / 357 texts
12 & Under: 137 calls / 428 texts
Ages 13-17: 231 calls / 1742 texts
Ages 18-24: 265 calls / 790 texts
Ages 25-34: 239 calls / 331 texts
Ages 35-44: 223 calls / 236 texts
Ages 45-54: 193 calls / 128 texts
Ages 55-64: 145 calls / 38 texts
Ages 65+: 99 calls / 14 texts
So if you've been thinking that text messaging wasn't a good way to reach to your audience, you may want to think again. The President-Elect doesn't have a mobile strategy for nothing.

Access to the Internet is one of the issues we care about most here at NTEN. The United States is a lowly 15th in the world when it comes to broadband access, and that's almost certainly having an adverse effect on how thousands of nonprofits are able to serve their clients and stakeholders.

It's so bad, FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps has admitted, "America's record in expanding broadband communication is so poor that it should be viewed as an outrage by every consumer and businessperson in the country."

What are we going to do about it?

As a pretty competitive person, I was motivated by the Communication Worker's of America's newest campaign, Speed Matters. The campaign tests your Internet connection and compares it to the communities around you, as well as the rest of the world.

Flickr Photo: Lizette GrecoWhat will a truly online world look like? A world where each and every one of us has quality access to the internet?

Sam Churchill, dailywireless.org, has compiled some graphs and rankings on the current wired and wireless states of the world from a Forbes article. We need to analyze this and wonder why the United States is dropping in these rankings. But what I found most interesting in the article is an organization that had its launch at the Personal Democracy Forum: Internet for Everyone.

Flickr Photo: hykuCongratulations to the Philadelphia Wireless team! An agreement was announced Tuesday that saves the wireless network Earthlink was set to dismantle. Event better, the city was able to deliver on the original promise of the network: a free service available to any user.

I'm excited that Philadelphia is back in the game and look forward to seeing the innovative work that Greg Goldman and his team at Wireless Philadelphia are doing to bridge the digital divide.

Full press release here.

On June 12, 2008, Earthlink Wireless plans to disconnect their municipal WiFi service in the City of Philadelphia. As of today, no alternative has been found, though the city is still exploring several avenues.

I've written several posts about why we at NTEN think wireless internet access is so important. Nothing I could write will ever be as powerful as a good story, well told, so check out this 13 minute documentary about Wireless Philadelphia: Change is in the Airwaves: A Documentary about the Philadelphia Wireless Initiative from George Rausch on Vimeo.

Flickr Photo: reway2007How long has it been since you heard the term "digital divide"?

We don't talk about it like we used to. Back in 2000, dozens of foundations and many more nonprofits were focused on making sure that everyone had access to a computer and the Internet. Mainstream media coverage came fast and furious.

Somewhere along the way, the digital divide fell out of vogue. Still, in every community across this country, there are children and adults who do not have a computer or cannot access the Internet.

Flickr Photo: ChotdaAs many of you know, I love bacon. Ask me for my recipe for maple and bacon cake (with maple frosting!) some time. Maybe one reason I love bacon so much is because Bacon is the source of one of my favorite sayings. In 1597, Sir Francis Bacon said:

Knowledge is power.

It's practically a moral code at my house. But I've also been thinking about it in the context of nptech lately.

When the Internet first went mainstream, there was a lot of talk about how it would democratize information: more of us would be able to access more information more easily and we'd all become more powerful. Access to information is the key to Thomas Friedman's argument about how and why the Berlin Wall fell and why China is opening up, for example -- and communications technologies are behind all that.

In the early 2000s, I thought a lot about this. Yes, we did know more. More people were able to share what they knew, and more of us could access it. But it wasn't the dynamic, sweeping, grand experience that a phrase like "democratize information" might suggest. Here's why:

1. Lots of information opened up, but lots more is still locked behind walls in old delivery models. You still have to subscribe to many publications. You have to travel to get particular volumes or pay lots of money for experts to tell you what you need to know.
2. Access is not pervasive enough. The folks who, arguably, most need free and easy access to information and knowledge have the least access to the chanels that can deliver it. If you are poor in urban America, or if you live in rural areas, you can't afford or simply cannot get Internet access.

In the last year though, we've seen signs that the democratization of information is about to happen in a very real, rapid, Founding Fathers kind of way.

Flickr Photo: hykuIf you live or work in the Philadelphia area, set aside some time on the evening of June 3 for a public forum on the future of wifi in that city. The event is organized by the Media Mobilizing Project and Temple University's School of Communications and Theater and will feature several speakers as well as an open forum for discussion. I could preach again about why I think muni wifi is so vital to the nonprofit sector, but the event organizers put it best:

The promise of a city where everyone has the potential to be connected, opens new doors for economic, social and political participation.