Group items tagged

State and local laws that make it difficult — if not impossible — for new competition to emerge in broadband markets should be reformed, according to Crawford. For example, many states make it very difficult for municipalities to create public wireless networks, thanks to decades of state-level lobbying by the industry giants. In order to help local governments upgrade their communications grids, Crawford is calling for an infrastructure bank to help cities obtain affordable financing to help build high-speed fiber networks for their citizens. Finally, U.S. regulators should apply real oversight to the broadband industry to ensure that these market behemoths abide by open Internet principles and don’t price gouge consumers. Should broadband Internet service be considered a public utility like water and electricity? “We treated the telephone industry like a utility and people don’t seem to be surprised by that,” says Crawford. “High-speed Internet access plays the same role in American life. It’s just that these guys have succeeded in making us think that it’s a luxury.”

According to Crawford, the interests of cable and telecom giants like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, and AT&T, are not aligned with the interests of the public. Those corporate giants are concerned first and foremost with maximizing the profits of their shareholders. And all too often, profit maximization — especially in a market that lacks robust competition — is not consistent with providing the best possible service at reasonable prices.

“You let a little bit of competition exist so you can point to it and say ‘Ha, we’re competing!’ But otherwise it’s mostly controlled by one company.”

Search giant Google has been working on Internet expansion technologies for at least a few years and its latest project could involve spending $1 billion on 180 satellites, according to the Wall Street Journal. Just like the balloons in Google's Project Loon, the satellites would be used to extend Internet access to large groups of people in remote areas

Since Project Loon was first revealed and subsequently rolled out in a test run over New Zealand, many people have praised Google for its Internet expansion initiatives. The majority of people on earth do not have access to the Internet and with Project Loon ability to provide 3G-like speeds, people could at least get online for simple tasks if there is no ground-based Internet provider.

the project will start with 180 small, high-capacity satellites orbiting the earth at lower altitudes than traditional satellites, and then could expand.

"Wired connectivity only goes so far and wireless cellular networks reach small areas. Satellites can gain much broader access."

If Google succeeds, it "could amount to a sea change in the way people will get access to the Internet, from the Third World to even some suburban areas of the U.S.," said Jeremy Rose of Comsys, a London-based satellite consulting firm.

They're just like the railroad in that if you were a farmer in the 1890s, the only way to get your goods to market would be to work through the railroad. ... We just can't operate without it. They're also like them in that they're expensive businesses to build in the first place — it's very hard to come in and compete against one of these guys once they've built one of these giant networks. They're also like the railroad in that it takes intentional policy to make them stretch all the way across the United States.

We seem to currently assume that communications access is a luxury, something that should be entirely left to the private market unconstrained by any form of oversight. The problem is that it's just not true in the modern era. You can't get a job, you can't get access to adequate health care, you can't educate your children, we can't keep up with other countries in the developed world without having very high capacity, very high speed access for everybody in the country. And the only way you get there is through government involvement in this market. That's how we did it for the telephone, that's how we did it for the federal highway system, and we seem to have forgotten that when it comes to these utility basic services, we can't create a level playing field for all Americans or indeed compete on the world stage without having some form of government involvement.

"Unless somebody in the system has industrial policy in mind, a long-term picture of where the United States needs to be and has the political power to act on it, we'll be a Third World country when it comes to communications."

Perhaps the mark of an effective teacher is not that there students have all the right answers but that there students know how to ask the right questions.  

Until recently, asynchronous online discussions have been largely limited to text-based interactions. The continued development of “web 2.0” technologies, or “read/write web” tools, is changing the online interactive landscape, however. Free web services like YackPack (www.yackpack.net) and Vaestro (www.vaestro.com) permit users to engage in audio-based discussions with others using only a computer microphone and a web browser. The audio recordings are immediately stored to a server on the Internet, rather than being saved on local hard drives and then subsequently uploaded to a server. The process is amazingly easy and straightforward, providing multiple benefits for users as well as instructional possiblities for educators.

The respective slogans of both YackPack and Vaestro succinctly communicate their similar goals of empowering users to engage in web-based discussions via audio recordings.

These interactive podcasting tools are admittedly examples of potentially “disruptive technologies” which may strike fear into the hearts of some school administrators and classroom teachers. The basic reason for this boils down to issues of control. Could students make poor choices and choose to record offensive or inappropriate comments using these tools? Of course. But as educators, shouldn’t we strive to provide environments where students can make REAL decisions of import and value, so they can learn how to behave appropriately in different contexts? The virtual world is here to stay, and educators at all levels need to get more serious about helping student learn to safely and effectively navigate that environment. An analogy to swimming may be appropriate here. If students are living on the coast, and are exposed daily to the dangers as well as opportunities of the ocean, shouldn’t any responsible caretaker strive to help those students learn to swim? Our answer must be “yes.” Interactive podcasting is one read/write web technology that can be used to help achieve this goal in the virtual enviornment.