As public schools nationwide embrace instruction via iPads, laptops and other technologies, many are realizing they lack the necessary broadband speed to perform even simple functions. This is crimping classroom instruction as more teachers pull lesson plans off the Internet and use bandwidth-hungry programming.
Faulty Websites Confront Needy in Search of Aid
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
Three months after the disastrous rollout of a new $63 million website for unemployment claims, Florida is hiring hundreds of employees to deal with technical problems that left tens of thousands of people without their checks while penalties mount against the vendor who set up the site. Efforts at modernizing the systems for unemployment compensation in California, Massachusetts and Nevada have also largely backfired in recent months, causing enormous cost overruns and delays.
Unfair Phone Charges for Inmates
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
The Federal Communications Commission ended a grave injustice when it prohibited price-gouging by the private companies that provide interstate telephone service for prison and jail inmates. Thanks to the FCC order, which takes effect next month, poor families no longer have to choose between paying for basic essentials and speaking to a relative behind bars.
How your cell number pinpoints your identity
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
Your mobile phone number is totally unique anywhere in the world. Unlike government IDs, which can be forged and are difficult to verify online, your mobile phone number is unique to you and easy to confirm.
Big City Community Networks: Lessons from Seattle and Gigabit Squared
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
We recently learned that the Gigabit Squared project in Seattle is in jeopardy. Gigabit Squared has had difficulty raising all the necessary capital for its project, building Fiber-to-the-Home to several neighborhoods in part by using city-owned fiber to reduce the cost of building its trunk lines. There are a number of important lessons, none of them new, that we should take away from this disappointing news.
AT&T’s Sponsored Data is bad for the internet, the economy, and you
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
AT&T’s Sponsored Data program is a way for AT&T to levy taxes on companies who can afford to pay. That has huge implications for the free market of the internet.