Good morning, I hope you are all well. Today is Martin Luther King Jr. day. Like most Americans, I admire Dr. King. I will spend a big part of my day listening to "The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr." One of the largest issues facing our poor and minority communities today is called the digital divide. The digital divide is defined as the gulf between those who have ready access to computers and wired fiber-optic internet, and those who do not. Why do I specifically say "wired fiber-optic internet" here? Because the way that wireless is being done is so expensive, and performs so much more poorly than fiber, that it will actually make the digital divide worse. Wireless is convenient, but after all it's a shared bandwidth technology and fiber has virtually unlimited bandwidth. Also, you need the fiber to back everything else up anyway so when our lawmakers pretend that wireless will replace fiber it's a false assumption and it shows that they really still don't get it. After all, wireless is only as good as the wires that are backing it up.

In my last update, we talked about how the city finally released their dark fiber map. Dark fiber is the fiber that isn't being used that we've already paid for in our taxes. The city is literally just letting large portions of it rot instead of leasing it out to co-ops, non-profits, local net-neutral providers in favor of hoping to exclusively lease it to the big telecoms. Their hoarding of this resource is not only bad for the economy, hampers competition, and is wasteful, but they're leaving thousands of dollars on the table in leasing that would allow the network to pay for its own expansion and help us address the digital divide via real low-income connections. As you guessed the low-income offerings from all of the big telecoms are virtually worthless. So I am asking you today to write to our council and mayor and demand that they adopt an Open Access policy immediately. This is something the COB can easily do with a few policy changes and the current staff they have. I will give you their individual addresses below in an easy line that can be copied and pasted into your e-mail as I learned recently that the group e-mail they receive is still processed in a 1995 era batch style, and they receive it all as a big lump when you use their group address once a day. This makes it easy for them to miss communications sent to the group address. I would love to know what responses you receive as well, as many of them simply never respond and/or have outdated "canned answers" to issues. 

laanderson@cob.org, hahuthman@cob.org,mlilliquist@cob.org,
hestone@cob.org, smfleetwood@cob.org, gknutson@cob.org,
ptmvargas@cob.org, dchammill@cob.org