One of the core elements of learning now, and especially in the near future, is affordable bandwidth. Below is an article about a town that took great advantage of the pluses that “Municipal Broadband” has to offer. Everyone gets connected, everyone gets top bandwidth, and everyone pays an “affordable cost” for the service.
As noted here, and elsewhere, top affordable bandwidth is an economic boon/boom for communities that have it, as all sorts of “new jobs from home” become possible. Including creating networks of, say, tutors and learning facilitators, that can “work” in a nationwide context. (or worldwide if language differences can be overcome).
This long delayed vision has been clouded by monopoly practices of the huge Telecoms and ISP cable companies, aided and abetted by current FCC practice and rules. It doesn’t have to be this way, and the US can compete in world markets for online services a whole lot better if connectivity is accomplished by a range of providers, including especially the “mom and pop” municipal networks such as we read about below whose goal is affordable access for their community, not maximum profits for shareholders.
One egregious example of malpractice in ISP providers…Comcast currently offers a 1 Gig download service, Which is terrific, however, it’s throttled back to a slow upload speed, and involves a data cap of 1 TB per month. Yes, that’s right, one can download quickly, but of course, that just means one bumps up against the data cap more quickly!
Such predatory practices do not support mom and pop video creators who seek to stream their DIY studio content to the web, and of course discourages those contemplating starting their own online content business. Penny wise for Comcast perhaps, but a long term disaster for moving US economy into the 21st century and 21st century jobs. (read video streaming etc).
[gview file=”https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/The-One-Traffic-Light-Town-with-Some-of-the-Fastest-Internet-in-the-U.S.-The-New-Yorker.pdf”]