Coverage continues this week for ConnectHome. Here is a report from the Hechinger Report. It includes a cool map showing the percentage of individuals that have high-speed Internet access at home across the United States. Additional coverage on ConnectHome from the U.S. News and World Report here. Also, check out this interview with Julián Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, who is now President Obama's second Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
“I believe that all of us have a role to play—the public sector, the private sector, and the nonprofit sector—in ensuring that there's broader connectivity to the Internet. I'm proud of this effort and proud of all the partners that are part of it. My hope is that by demonstrating success with ConnectHome, we'll see an expansion of this in the years to come,” he said.
In an editorial in the Boston Globe, Dante Ramos argues for the importance of demanding that high-speed Internet be a requirement: “When should Americans declare high-speed Internet a necessity — and revamp the laws to improve access and bring prices down? Now.,” he writes. “Viewing broadband as a necessity would morally obligate the FCC and Congress to demand better service than Americans are getting.”
Also, this editorial in Computer World about how “the FCC should follow through on the proposal to extend the Lifeline program to broadband, but more needs to be done to close a digital divide that has become a digital chasm.”
Be sure to review the annual survey, Internet Connectivity and the “Digital Divide” in California Households, from the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) that tracks the progress of broadband deployment and adoption throughout California.
Also, here are a couple of stories about getting students online. Read about the challenges in Kent, WA here and how student tech use at home is a tricky balancing act.