Facts & Figures Library - Broadband

From the 19th floor of Consolidated Edison’s headquarters in Manhattan, generators were dispatched to supplement a burning substation. Emergency alerts were relayed to major customers and companies. The go-ahead was given to cancel Little League night games on Staten Island to conserve the wattage used by field lights.  Con Edison, with an ability that might strike some as Big Brother-like, even exercised its ability to periodically shut off central air-conditioning units in some 20,000 homes and businesses to ease the burden on its system.  So it went throughout the area, as accommodations were made to try to avert brownouts or blackouts.

A day after establishing itself as an independent authority, Bristol Virginia Utilities received word Friday it will receive a $22.7 million federal grant to expand its fiber-optic network.  The National Telecommunications and Information Administration will provide the money through the federal stimulus program, U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher, D-9th, said in a telephone interview.  “I think this really is a benchmark for us,” Boucher said. “Having broadband creates growth. Broadband is an essential ingredient of growth and communities without broadband, in this century, will be as disadvantaged as communities without electricity or telephone service in previous centuries.”

As government agencies push what have traditionally been paper-based processes and services online, public libraries are seeing more demand for access to technology so that citizens can interact with their government. But there's a catch-22: Public libraries are faced with reduced funding and shorter operating hours.  A report released this month shows that while the public is increasingly using the Internet at libraries for job and e-government resources, funding cuts at state and local levels are forcing libraries to "literally lock away access to these resources as they reduce operating hours."

The situation has played out hundreds of times. From his office, a doctor asks a woman on the computer screen before him one final question: Are you ready to take your pill?  Then, with a click of his mouse, a modified cash register drawer pops open in front of the woman seated next to a nurse in a clinic — perhaps 100 miles from this city — with mifepristone, the medicine formerly known as RU-486, that is meant to end her pregnancy.  Efforts to provide medical services by videoconference, a notion known as telemedicine, are expanding into all sorts of realms, but these clinics in Iowa are the first in the US, and so far the only ones, experts say, to provide abortions this way.

Today, Minneapolis is one of few American cities whose WiFi plans are actually succeeding. Minneapolis studied the missteps of other urban networks before signing a 10-year contract with Minnesota-based USI Wireless. The private company manages and profits from the 59-square-mile Wireless Minneapolis network, while the city leverages it to deliver government services and build digital inclusion.  Minneapolis CIO Lynn Willenbring told The Atlantic how her city's wireless network helped Minneapolis through a disaster even before it was built. She also talked to us about bridging the digital divide and letting for-profit companies do what they do best.

The village of Baseri, near the Indian city of Agra (famous for the Taj Mahal) seems hardly the setting for a technological revolution. Inhabited by generations of farmers, Baseri has seen little of the rural development witnessed by many other regions in India. Yet each day, Ajay Singh, a farmer living in Baseri, scours the "world of earnings" (Rozgar Duniya) jobs-for-youth website, and sends mobile alerts to young villagers, who then come to his Internet kiosk to apply. "Once selected," said Singh, "they get a call letter alert also on their mobile; this is of great help since the candidates don't have to continuously check the website."