Comcast Launching $9.95 'Internet Essentials' Broadband for Low-Income Families

by Michael Santo
from http://hothardware.com/

Comcast is launching Internet Essentials, a new initiative offering discounted Internet access and home computers to families that meet low income requirements. The program was mandated as a requirement of Comcast's acquisition of NBC Universal, earlier this year.

In that way, it's very similar to AT&T's Naked DSL program, which AT&T was required to offer as a condition of its merger with BellSouth. Internet Essentials will be available wherever Comcast offers broadband, which means 39 states. To promote the program, Comcast has launched websites in both English and Spanish.

To qualify for Internet Essentials, a family must meet the following requirements:

• Has at least one child eligible to receive a free school lunch under the NSLP (as an example, according to the Department of Agriculture, a household of three would have to make less than $25,000 a year in income);
• Has not subscribed to Comcast Internet service within the last 90 days;
• Has children in grades K-12
• Does not have an overdue Comcast bill or unreturned equipment.

As part of the program, families will receive literacy training and Internet service for $9.95 a month (plus tax). Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen said, "When we look around the country, we see the disparities that exist. Quite frankly, people in lower-income communities, mostly people of color, have such limited access to broadband than people in wealthier communities."

Families will also receive a voucher which will allow them to purchase a new computer for $149.99 (plus tax).

As an example, according to the Department of Agriculture, a household of three would have to make less than $25,000 a year in income to qualify. Qualifying students will receive an application at the start of the upcoming school year.

How 1Gbps fiber came to Cleveland's poorest, free of charge

By Nate Anderson
From http://arstechnica.com/

In the middle of one of America's poorer cities, residents are about to get an unexpected gift: one gigabit per second Internet access over fiber optic cables courtesy of Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University.

According to the school's vice president for Information Technology Services, Lev Gonick, 72 percent of the homes around campus have no Internet access of any kind; 60 percent are on food stamps. "On a national scale, neighbors of the University have as much Internet access as Panamanians or Vietnamese," he wrote last year in a blog entry announcing the school's new project.

That's slowly changing as the university embarks on an ambitious research project to roll out 1Gbps Internet access to the immediate neighborhood, possibly extending this testbed network to 25,000 total Cleveland residents in total.

While most of the US has to live without any fiber at all, residents near University Circle are getting two strands apiece.

How much will it cost the residents? Nothing. The project is a research-driven attempt to find out if broadband can deliver more than e-mail and Web browsing. Can it provide what the community truly needs—public safety, more educational opportunities, and better medicine?Case Western Reserve doesn't yet know, but within a year, it plans to find out.

Fiber: can it make a neighborhood safe?

The school has a long history of working with fiber internally. Back in networking's Dark Ages—1989—the school had gone so far as to wire fiber to every outlet, offering 10Mbps Ethernet connections at a time when Cat3 was still the main twisted pair standard.

In 2001, Gonick became CIO and the university decided that the future was 1Gbps. It set about upgrading every outlet on campus to that speed.

By 2009, it realized that this bandwidth bounty could be pushed into the surrounding community and used as a testbed to find out just how a transformative truly high speed broadband might (or might not) be.

Given the school's location, public safety was the first priority for the deployment. No less than six separate public safety communities exist right in University Circle, and a fast broadband network could make it easier for them to share video feeds, share dispatching technology, and improve their coordination. In the neighborhoods around the school, a fat broadband pipe could make it easy to do remote video monitoring—in fact, two local apartment building owners have already told Gonick that they plan to use the new fiber build to help monitor each other's buildings. (See a video tour of the neighborhoods around the school below.)

Case Western Reserve researchers also want to see how the network is used for health care, education, and power. Smart grid technologies are one key component of the deployment; residents will have access to high tech thermostats, for example, which can display their home's energy use compared to that of their neighbors or to the neighborhood. On health care, providers like the Cleveland Clinic will use the network to see what sort of cost savings and care benefits might be wrung out of HD video conferencing with patients and automated home health monitoring gear.

The school has partnered with a host of community institutions on the project, encouraging each to develop its own "killer app" for the network within the next 18 months that the project will run. After that, the university hopes to get out of the business of running the network.

The entire network is being run on the "open access" model in which any provider—clinic, pay-TV operator, education network, power company—can access the connection. Gonick tells Ars that three video providers are already interested in selling their services over the link, providing a perfect example of how open access fiber can sever the link between infrastructure and provider that exists in most current cable and telco deployments.

The result, if all goes well: competition.

The buildout

The network build is now underway. The first "beta block" of 104 homes is currently being wired, while a second block has already been identified for future service. A demonstration center is already lit and running, with the official ribbon cutting for the beta block scheduled for May 23.

When it comes to the commercial competitors, such as traditional ISPs and pay-TV providers, the reception has been a bit cooler. Gonick stresses that this is a research program and is totally appropriate for a university to do, and he notes that the school has not "hidden this project at all" from local ISPs.

Jeff Gumpf, the IT architect for the school, tells Ars that the system is meant to last three decades or more, a decision that dictated the network design. Case Western Reserve first consulted with Herman Wagter, who ran Amsterdam's CityNet fiber-to-the-home build (and just described that process in great detail for Ars), about the architecture. Gumpf and Gonick took his advice: two fiber strands to every home, each running back to the main equipment room (point-to-point, rather than shared, fiber).

This approach costs more in the short term due largely to the cost of all that additional fiber, but compared to the cost of digging up the streets to lay more fiber in the future, doing it first is a terrific bargain. Only one strand will be lit initially, with the second strand in place simply to future-proof the deployment.

Case Western Reserve had trouble finding the gear that each home would use to terminate the fiber connection. Here, Wagter helped them out again, hooking them up with European equipment maker Genexis, which makes power-efficient, installer-friendly home gateways that take a fiber connection on side and spit out voice, data, and video connections on the other.

The plan has already garnered attention from Washington; indeed, it is the first example cited in the National Broadband Plan's "Research and Development" chapter. In essence, Case Western Reserve is doing the research to find out how one of the plan's key priorities might affect local communities—the plan to wire up all "anchor institutions" in the US with 1Gbps fiber, then treat them as "middle-mile" ISPs who can help push that bandwidth out into the surrounding community by partnering with companies and municipalities.

Gonick has already done his homework when it comes to working with the politicians; he wants the entire deployment to be "mayor-proof," not tied to any particular politician whose successor might kill the scheme. The City of Cleveland is on board with the deployment, as are local hospitals, equipment vendors, and community groups, but none can simply veto the plan.

When it comes to the commercial competitors, such as traditional ISPs and pay-TV providers, the reception has been a bit cooler. Gonick stresses that this is a research program and is totally appropriate for a university to do, and he notes that the school has not "hidden this project at all" from local ISPs.

However, when Case Western wrote to those local ISPs for letters of support... it didn't get a single one. Anchor institutions around the country, take note.

Together with Google's similar 1Gbps fiber testbed announcement, such research projects have important roles to play when it comes to policy decisions. Just how important is it to run super-fast fiber to US homes? What will people do with it? Can it truly transform poor or crime-ridden areas? And just how important is an open-access network?

Apart from the Google announcement, similar research is only being done by universities and by those few municipalities who run their own community networks. Case Western Reserve's is one of the most ambitious, and its data should start rolling sometime in 2011.

If the idea works, and if other schools, libraries, and community centers across the US start rolling out similar projects, the landscape for Internet access could change dramatically over the next decade. If it doesn't... well, better to find out now.

We’re Not In Kansas Anymore. Well, We Are — Google, Kansas

by MG Siegler
from http://techcrunch.com/

Last month, Google announced plans to sell 1 gigabit-per-second fiber optic broadband to consumers. The plan called for it to be rolled out to no fewer than 50,000 homes in the initial test, and maybe as many as 500,000, but didn’t specify where it would be rolled-out. Topeka, Kansas wants in. Bad.

The city’s mayor today signed a proclamation that for the rest of the month, Topeka will be known as “Google, Kansas.” Yes, you’re reading that correctly — Topeka is now “Google.”

Now, to be clear, this isn’t a legal name change. Lawyers advised the mayor and the city council that they wouldn’t be able to change the name for just the month and then change it back (no word on if they also advised them that it would be well, stupid) — so instead their going with this proclamation asking people to simply call the city “Google.”

While this is a silly way to get Google’s attention, the benefit could be huge. The 1Gb/sec fiber is roughly 100 times faster than what most Americans get today for Internet speeds. That’s especially true in rural areas. And while Topeka may not be the most rural city in the country (it is the state capital and has over 120,000 citizens), they could undoubtedly make good use of this ultra fast connection. Google’s fiber connection is still more than 20 times faster than even most fast broadband connections.

Humorously, this isn’t the first time Topeka has tried something like this. Apparently, in August 1998, the city has a proclamation to change its name to “ToPikachu” — yes, after the Pokemon character. So this move seems roughly 100 times more sane than that one.

Also funny — apparently this special city council meeting lead to the postponement of another one, where they were actually going to talk about real issues. Ah, local governments.

Internet Speeds And Costs From Around The World

From: i.imgur.com

Gmail Users Have Higher Credit Scores than Yahoo Mail Users

by Pete Cashmore

Does your email address reveal something about your credit score? According to Credit Karma, an online credit checking service, it might.

The company has taken data from its users and split it up by email address, finding that Yahoo Mail users have the lowest credit scores of all. Bellsouth and Comcast users have the highest credit ratings, while GMail () users rank third. MSN, Hotmail and AOL users take 4th, 5th and 6th position respectively.

Assuming the data is accurate (and the sample size is large enough – 20,000 credit scores), the more interesting question is why. Could it be because AOL, MSN and Yahoo email addresses are often linked to IM accounts, where the demographics skew younger? Do those who use their ISP-provided email address skew older? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

[via HN]

Stimulus billions fund rural broadband Internet

For businesses in rural America, fast Internet connections remain a scarce luxury. A $7 billion stimulus program aims to narrow the digital gap.

By Sharon McLoone, CNNMoney.com contributing writer

Gault models one of her designs. She sells her custom clothing online to customers around the U.S.

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) -- Fast Internet access is a luxury most businesses take for granted these days, but in remote areas of the country, the staticky crackle of a dial-up modem connection remains a familiar sound. A $7.2 billion stimulus initiative aims to expand broadband access and speed up the modem's extinction.

Two federal agencies, the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) and the Agriculture Department's Rural Utility Service, each landed billions from the Recovery Act to fund new broadband infrastructure projects. Applications are due this week for the first wave of grants and loans from those programs.

For entrepreneurs in rural areas, a broadband connection can be an economic lifeline. Alexis Gault lives in Asheville, a city of 74,000 at the mountainous western edge of North Carolina. After losing her $8 an hour job as a photographer's assistant, she decided to turn her part-time hobby into a full-time career. Gault launched Lush Life Originals, a custom clothes line she sells online.

Designer Alexis Gault relies on Internet access from a nonprofit local provider to keep her business connected to its customers.

She relies on a speedy Internet connection to send clients e-mails with high-resolution images, maintain her Web site, and keep up with her site's e-commerce. But it's not a connection she takes for granted: Gault's Internet provider is a local nonprofit, the Mountain Area Information Network (MAIN), that relies on grants and fundraising to supplement its service fees.

"Time is literally my money. If I'm not sewing, I'm not making money," Gault says. "If someone orders something and it's not in stock any more, I don't have to run to the library to use their broadband connection to update my Web site."

Charter Communications offer DSL (digital subscriber line) service in Gault's neighborhood, but she is not able to afford its higher monthly fees.

Wally Bowen, MAIN's executive director, sees a direct connection between Internet access and economic prosperity. "One thing that we've learned is that people started making significant progress in their lives when they started using the Internet," he says. "They were able to start new businesses, manage their health care insurance and medicine online, and get more job training."

MAIN has been operating as a nonprofit in North Carolina's rural mountains since 1996. The group got its start with an NTIA grant to build infrastructure to give the area's residents dial-up Internet access through a local phone call. MAIN also introduced Internet access at local public libraries and community centers.

In 2003, MAIN expanded to offer high-speed wireless connections. Today, the organization serves 1,200 dial-up subscribers in 14 counties, 400 wireless subscribers across four counties, and hosts some 450 Web sites. Outside of MAIN, residents face few choices. DSL lines and higher-speed broadband are available from larger firms in the town center and immediate outlying area, but not much further.

"Six out of 10 people who want our wireless broadband service can't get it," Bowen says.

He sees wireless technology, which get around the region's hollows and hills, as the best and most immediate broadband solution for residents. But there's very limited spectrum available for him to offer customers service, a problem he's looking to the Federal Communications Commission to fix. The FCC took action last year to free up more spectrum for situations like these, but it has yet to issue protocols on how technology should operate within the spectrum. Until it moves forward with those rules, none of the spectrum that was freed is available for use.

MAIN, working with several partners, is angling for a $50 million grant from the $7.2 billion stimulus funding pool for broadband projects. That coalition is looking to build an optical fiber network that would bring broadband access to residents in three counties. MAIN is also seeking a separate grant to build out wireless broadband to local public housing, community centers and fire stations.

Without the federal funds, MAIN can't afford to roll out those services. Things would remain "status quo," Bowen says.

That's an option the U.S. can't afford if it wants to retain its global lead as a technology innovator. America is now ranked 15th in the world on broadband access, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It was No. 1 in the mid-1990s.

The digital gap within the country is widening. More than two-thirds of U.S. households now subscribe to a broadband service, compared to just one-fifth five years ago, according to recent data from Leichtman Research Group. But in rural America, only 31% of residents have a broadband connection, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The rural West leads in broadband connections, while the South is the worst laggard, census data says.

Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open Technology Initiative at Washington think tank New America Foundation, says lawmakers need to recognize that the state of the nation's broadband is an enormous, looming problem.

"Countries decades ago realized that you need to invest in highways if you want to have a modern economy," Meinrath says. "Those countries that didn't invest have been left behind. In the digital era, there will be those countries that don't invest and get left behind."

Do-it-yourself access

Not every region in need of a broadband buildout has turned to the government for money.

The city of Powell, Wyo., raised $6.5 million from private investors to build a high-speed fiber-to-the-home network for its 5,500 residents. The network took three years to build, and just launched in May. Qwest Communications (Q, Fortune 500) provides communications services in the area, but Logan says Qwest's connections are slower than the city's project.

"We've figured out an innovative way of funding this without taxpayers' money and without state, local or federal money," says Powell City Administrator Zane Logan.

TCT West, a regional communications company based in Basin, Wyo., is the city's service provider and has an exclusive contract with Powell for six years. "We're providing the infrastructure in the city, and we are giving TCT the ability to provide services and set rates," says Logan. "The idea was to keep businesses downtown and to attract more professional, technical-type businesses."

Logan has been down a similar path before. He was hired in 1992 as the city's electrical superintendent and worked to completely overhaul the local grid, from the substation to residents' houses. "It took 12 years, but one of the reasons I did that is because when a business comes to town they want to know who is your power company and how reliable is it," he says. "That got me to thinking about telecom."

He thinks the city's Internet gamble is already paying off: "Existing businesses here are expanding," Logan says. "People can stay at home and get as good and fast of a connection as in a big city."

Powell's broadband project has another economic fringe benefit: TCT West has been hiring Powell residents for customer service, installation and tech support.

Building a better map

The first step toward improving the nation's broadband infrastructure is finding out where the problem spots are. Some $350 million of the Recovery Act's $7.2 billion funding pool has been earmarked to map the country's broadband use and highlight which regions have high-quality access. The idea was put forward in a bill signed by President Bush last year, but the measure didn't allocate any funding for the initiative. The money showed up in President Obama's stimulus package.

Drew Clark, executive director of BroadbandCensus.com, a trade publication tracking the broadband stimulus funding, says better mapping data could be a boon for small businesses.

"A public and transparent map will be useful to helping businesses invest," he says. "You want to locate your business where there is broadband or where there's likely to be broadband. You need to know where the interstate highway type of connections are and where the dirt roads are."

The Federal Communications Commission has also been charged with presenting lawmakers with a national broadband plan by Feb. 17, 2010. One of its goals is to get affordable broadband to as many people as possible. The FCC is taking a flood of public comments on the matter and must digest them as part of putting together its recommendations. The issues it is grappling with include defining terms like "affordable broadband" and "underserved."

"We can restore economic vitality to underserved areas that for decades have not had the benefit of this IT knowledge base," says MAIN's Bowen. "People like [Microsoft cofounder] Bill Gates and others in Silicon Valley are bright people, but they had access to social capital to incubate and nurture them. The social capital has been drained out of rural America for several decades now. We can fix that."

To write a note to the editor about this article, click here.

Time Warner and Embarq can't compete with city-owned ISP, trying to outlaw it

by Nilay Patel

Man, Time Warner Cable -- you are some shady players. Hot on the heels of the ISP's decision to withdraw DOCSIS 3.0 trials from areas that have rejected its tiered billing plan, we're hearing that TWC's teamed up with Embarq to persuade the North Carolina state government into banning community-owned broadband services. Why? Well, turns out the 47,000 residents of Wilson, NC got tired of paying for slow broadband, so the city government launched its own fiber ISP called Greenlight that offers some pretty solid packages ranging from $99 for 81 cable channels, unlimited phone service, and 10Mbps (down and up) internet to $170 for every single channel including premiums and 20Mbps up/down internet. (There's even a "secret" 100Mbps up/down internet plan.) Of course, these prices blow TWC and Embarq out of the water -- the comparable basic Time Warner plan has fewer channels and less bandwidth for an "introductory rate" of $137 -- and rather than compete, the two giants decided to lobby the North Carolina legislature into proposing bills that outlaw community services like Greenlight. The argument is that the big companies can't turn a profit and compete against a community-owned enterprise that essentially sells service for cost, but we're not buying it -- if anything, TWC and Embarq can invest the extra profits they've been earning in other areas into building services that would blow Greenlight out of the water. Yep, it's definitely some dirty pool -- does anyone have any positive feelings left for these behemoths?

[Thanks, William]

US Broadband Internet Satellite Scheduled for Launch in 2011 (PC World)

- A California satellite technology provider has signed a deal to put a planned broadband Internet satellite into orbit above the U.S. in the first half of 2011.

The ViaSat-1 satellite will be launched on board an Arianespace rocket from the European space port in Kourou, French Guiana, according to the terms of the deal that was announced on Thursday.

The satellite will an overall throughput of 100G bps (bits per second) and that should enable it to support 2M bps service to about 2 million subscribers when operational.

It is expected to be the highest capacity satellite in the world at time of launch, and that should mean the price of transmitting each bit of data is about a tenth that of current services. In turn this should enable broadband Internet services at much lower prices than now, according to the company.

While ViaSat will own the satellite it intends on relying on other companies to offer the Internet service.

ViaSat is a California-based company that specializes in satellite communications systems with an emphasis on military, security and corporate applications. It already leases space on commercial satellites to operate a mobile broadband networks for both fixed locations and those that move like ships and aircraft.

The ViaSat plans are running in parallel with an effort by Eutelsat in Europe to launch a high capacity broadband satellite there in 2010.