It would be interesting to know how many people took notice
recently when the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors passed a
resolution declaring that high-speed Internet access is now one of
life’s basic necessities.
“Essential 21st century infrastructure” said the resolution the
board passed in May. Broadband Internet, which only arrived for the
masses 13 years ago, is now considered an essential of daily
existence, a basic necessity like running water, electricity or a
phone.
Some of us may have watched the supervisors’ vote on our
computers at home, where we can follow the board now live on
streaming video broadcast over the Net.
So what? You ask. Who cares about watching the board of
supervisors online or anywhere else?
Somebody does. Watching county government operate in real time
on your computer is new, something you couldn’t do just a year ago.
How important this is to the average citizen is hard to say, but if
you’re a news reporter, say, covering an issue before the Board of
Supervisors it means you now have the option of witnessing the
action at home sitting on your couch drinking coffee and taking
notes rather than having to get dressed, buy gas and drive all the
way to Santa Rosa hoping you don’t get stuck in traffic and miss
the whole thing.
Besides shrinking your carbon footprint it’s also a pretty
miraculous convenience to be able to get something as mundane as a
county planning department staff report on your laptop instead of
having to go over to the Permit and Resource Management Department,
stand in line to find the document and pay to Xerox it.
Our local elected officials felt it was necessary to pass a
resolution acknowledging the miracle of cyberspace because too
many people don’t get it — literally, that is; they don’t have
access to a computer with a broadband Internet connection. They are
missing out. The train is leaving the station and they’re not on
board.
“We’re trying to close the digital divide,” between the Internet
haves and have-nots, said Sonoma County Community and Government
Affairs Manager Jim Leddy. “This is an effort to create the
infrastructure to hook up communities that don’t have access to
high-speed Internet.”
Such people are now called “the under-served,” which makes
them sound like a special class or problem group like the homeless
or the mentally ill. Many of them are in the western and coastal
portions of Sonoma County, where life may be good but would be
better if they could surf the net.
“It gets to be a pain in the neck,” said a Westside Road
resident who can’t get a broadband connection at her home in
bucolic Wine Country. At least she has the option of using her
computer at work, which means driving to her office to check her
e-mail.
In Jenner and other coastal areas, they’re still using dial-up
access, which is like having a car that only goes up to 5 mph.
The county estimates about 38 percent of us lack access to
broadband Internet; 40 percent for low-income households.
What the county’s resolution does is bring Sonoma County into
the California Emerging Technology Fund’s “Get Connected!” effort
that has about $60 million to spend on bridging the gap between
people who have high-speed Internet and those who don’t.
CETF is a non-profit created three years ago by the California
Public Utilities Commission (PUC) as a condition of approving the
merger of telecom giants SBC and AT&T and Verizon-MCI. The
merged companies are contributing the $60 million over a five-year
period.
“The companies were required by the PUC to set aside $60 million
dollars to help push for the closure of the digital divide in rural
and under-served communities,” said Leddy. “The primary objective
is to ensure that every person in California has access to high-
speed Internet.”
High-speed is defined as at least 200 kilobits per second.
Get Connected! is a statewide public awareness campaign
educating the under-served populations about the economic and
social benefits of broadband connectivity, said Leddy, who credited
5th District Supervisor Efren Carrillo for bringing the program to
the attention of his fellow supervisors and getting the resolution
passed.
CETF was requesting local government support in order to bring
pressure onto the state and federal governments to commit or even
mandate California to have minimum broadband levels of service,
said Leddy.
“CETF requested resolutions from local governments in order to
create the grass roots pressure,” said Leddy. “The ultimate goal is
to increase broadband deployment. The primary populations for
outreach are rural communities that lack the broadband
infrastructure, urban poor and disadvantaged communities that lack
computers and affordable connections to the Internet,” Leddy wrote
in his report to the board in May.
“According to CETF staff, grant funding has been unfocused and
there is a conscious effort to hone in on under-served
communities,” said Leddy. “In Sonoma County, the regions that will
benefit from any effort to bridge the digital divide include
portions of western and coastal Sonoma County as well as regions of
the Sonoma Valley.”
Is it possible to live without the Internet? Maybe, if you’re on
vacation.
“My cell phone didn’t work and there is no Wi-Fi,” said a man
who was recently blogging about the beauties of a camping trip to
Stillwater Cove Regional Park on the Sonoma Coast. “Exactly what I
wanted.”
