broadband

Black Web 2.0, an Internet industry news site covering the African American community, published an item yesterday about the organization Wireless Harlem—which is working to increase broadband access in Harlem and close the neighborhood's "digital divide"—and its executive director, Michael Lewis.

Here's a re-cap of some of the initiatives Wireless Harlem is working on:

In Lewis, Harlem has a necessary advocate who goes to bat for them on broadband and other issues related to wireless access. WHI’s most successful program is Tech Saturdays, which provides Harlem families with free home computers (refurbished Macs and PCs) and instruction ranging from the use of open source applications to Internet safety to online honesty. Children’s Storefront (an independent, free school) is WHI’s primary partner in this venture as well as the provider of the venue for Tech Saturdays.The program is open to families with a child in grade 4 or above, and most recently started providing families of children K-3 with alphasmarts.

Last year, WHI retained Civitium, LLC, the market-leading consulting firm for community broadband initiatives to perform a wireless broadband feasibility study for the community of Harlem, New York. WHI believes this study will provide “the necessary foundation for potential roll-out of a community-wide broadband network.”

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Public Advocate candidate (and former two-term Public Advocate) Mark Green is jumping on the bandwagon with his his latest policy paper, “Government 2.0: New Technology for a New Democracy," the proposals of which generally fall in line with the good government initiatives—like open data, open 311 and universal broadband—being pushed by the city's tech community and certain elected officials.

The document includes 30 proposals for using "new technology to make government more accessible, transparent, participatory and collaborative," according to a press release sent out this afternoon.

We'll have an update on the city's open government movement later today or tomorrow, with reporting from Monday night's OpenGovNYC meetup. But in the meantime, you can read Mr. Green's full Gov 2.0 report here, or check out a few highlights after the jump.

A few weeks ago, we did a post breaking down what's at stake for New York City as it prepares for the fast-approaching Aug. 14 deadline to apply for broadband infrastructure funding through the federal stimulus bill's Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP).

You can learn more about that tomorrow, July 28, when Council Technology in Government Committee Chair Gale Brewer and the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications host a meeting about the city's BTOP application. It's scheduled for 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the third floor conference room of DCTV on Layfayette Street.

As Government Technology reported last week, municipal governments had expected to have 60 to 90 days to get their applications ready. But when the grant application guidelines were released on July 14, they provided only a month-long window, and now some local governments are scrambling to make the deadline.

In the weeks before the application guidelines were released, the city was collecting ideas from broadband service providers, non-profits and other agencies. At the time, DoITT's spokesman, Nick Sbordone, said the city wanted to "hit the ground running, so when these funds become available, we have a pretty solid idea of what some of the best practices are in terms of providing these services."

Read the letter Ms. Brewer's office sent out last week after the jump:

Today, July 14, marks the beginning of a grant application process for broadband funding under the federal stimulus bill. Here's a little bit about what's at stake.

The stimulus is providing a total of $7.2 billion in broadband funds to be allocated by various agencies through various programs aimed alternately at rural and urban areas. The program that matters most to New York City right now is the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), which, with $4.7 billion, is designed to support broadband infrastructure in underserved areas. The city wants to get a slice of a roughly $450 million subset of these funds to create in-home broadband adoption programs and make technology upgrades at public computing centers.

Currently, broadband adoption isn't getting much media coverage outside of the wireless industry and business press. But, in New York City, tech and Internet initiatives are becoming increasingly important to both city life and city government, even as the adoption rate lags in some communities.

We reported last week that the city has been gearing up to receive a bundle of federal-stimulus money that will be made available for broadband infrastructure through the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP). Out of a total of $7.2 billion in broadband funds from the stimulus bill, it's looking to get a piece of the $250 million to be set aside nationally to improve in-home broadband adoption programs for underserved areas, and of at least $200 million nationally for technology upgrades at "public computing centers" (libraries, senior centers, community colleges, etc.)

The BTOP funding is one of several big tech issues on the table this summer for New York, and techies have been waiting anxiously for the release of a set of guidelines outlining the application process. Today, as expected, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration made that document available on the brand new federal Web site, broadbandusa.gov.

The application process will run from July 14 to August 14. Here's a quick, general excerpt from the section about BTOP (the full document is 121 pages long):

We mentioned last week that the city is seeking proposals for stimulus-fund projects that will help close the gap in broadband access across the five boroughs. Here are some more details on the two Requests for Information the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications issued earlier this month.

The content of the R.F.I.s is pretty much the same, except one is aimed at broadband service providers, and the other is aimed at nonprofits and other agencies with which the city might form public-private partnerships to bring affordable broadband to low-income New Yorkers. (According to the documents, which you can find here, a study conducted in 2006 and 2007 found that there was a roughly 28-percent gap in the broadband-adoption rate between low-income and moderate- to high-income households, and that this gap would not become significantly narrower until at least 2012 unless programs for increased broadband adoption were implemented.)

The R.F.I.s state that the city intends to develop programs targetting public school students and their families, under-employed and unemployed adults, and adults over the age of 50, and that the programs would include the following core components:

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News reports on Gov. David Paterson's strategy for diversifying New York's economy, outlined Monday night in his speech at the Academy of Sciences in lower Manhattan, focused on his proposal for a 10 percent match of federal-stimulus money for the state's research facilities.

But NYConvergence points us to this part of the plan: Mr. Paterson is creating a new board, called the Broadband Development and Deployment Council, which will oversee the formation and implementation of a state broadband policy.

From a June 8 press release called "Bold Steps to the New Economy: A Jobs Plan for the People of New York":

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Would you like to use your laptop here?
(Central Park).

Some potentially good news for anyone who likes the idea of updating their blogs and Facebook accounts outdoors, as in on an actual laptop computer, perhaps while lounging on the grass or under the shade of a tree: The city is looking into bringing free wireless Internet back to parks and other public places.

The New York Post reports that the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications has issued a request for information seeking "ideas about providing free WiFi service at 40 hot spots in 32 parks and public spaces in all five boroughs."

According to the Post, a company called WiFi Salon had provided advertiser-supported service at 17 hot spots in 11 parks in every borough but Staten Island from late 2004 until last December, when it went out of business and the city concluded that its arrangement with the company didn't make sense in the first place. Now the city is looking for suggestions on ways to both turn a profit and keep WiFi free for users, a prospect that Councilwoman Gale Brewer, who chairs the council's Committee on Technology in Government, said would require both advertising revenue and city funding.