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Thursday, November 30th, 2017

Ignored By Big Telecom, Detroit’s Marginalized Communities Are Building Their Own Internet

Author:     Kaleigh Rogers
Source:     Motherboard
Publication Date:     Nov 16 2017, 7:50am
 Link: Ignored By Big Telecom, Detroit’s Marginalized Communities Are Building Their Own Internet
Stephan:   Here is some more good news. The United States, where the internet began actually, as things have played out, has some of the worst internet speeds in the developed world, and the U.S. standing is going down year by year. In the first two quarters of 2017 the U.S. lost footing in the global race for fastest mobile internet speeds with a rank slip from 42nd to 44th in the world. Few Americans seem to realize this. It also seems to surprise most Americans to learn that there are large parts of the U.S. where internet connection is both difficult and slow -- unless you happen to live in one of those areas, in which case it is a constant irritant. Given this situation it is very good news to hear about local community efforts to make internet access if not faster at least easier or, as in large areas of Detroit, possible in the first place.

Detroit internet

Being stuck without access to the internet is often thought of as a problem only for rural America. But even in some of America’s biggest cities, a significant portion of the population can’t get online.

Take Detroit, where 40 percent of the population has no access to the internet—of any kind, not only high speed—at home, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Seventy percent of school-aged children in the city are among those who have no internet access at home. Detroit has one of the most severe digital divides in the country, the FCC says.

“When you kind of think about all the ways the internet affects your life and how 40 percent of people in Detroit don’t have that access you can start to see how Detroit has been stuck in this economic disparity for such a long time,” Diana Nucera, director of the Detroit Community Technology Project, told me at her office.

Nucera is part of a growing cohort of Detroiters who have started a grassroots […]

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1 Comment

  1. Rev. Dean on Friday, December 1, 2017 at 7:51 am

    I believe all cities should have their own discrete internet systems based on fiber optics which connects to the world wide internet at very high speeds. This would improve everyone’s ability to learn what the many great websites (like this one) have to offer.