Subject: [NEXTEL-1] AP - "Projects gets urban dwellers on the Web with wireless technology"

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 00:48:15 -0500

-------- Original Message --------
From: Anthony Townsend <[email-masked]>
Subject: AP - "Projects gets urban dwellers on the Web with wireless technology"

http://digitalmass.boston.com/news/2003/02/19/projects.html

Projects gets urban dwellers on the Web with wireless technology

By Theo Emery, Associated Press, 02/19/03  

  BOSTON -- The wireless signal was there, but the connection wasn't. 
The technician sat by the apartment window with a laptop balanced on 
his knees, configuring the computer to pick up the encrypted wireless 
reception from a rooftop antenna a half a block away.

"How's the signal?" asked the apartment's resident, Nakia Keizer, 24, 
watching from a sofa.

"Not bad," said Kevin Bowen, the technician.

Not bad at all, considering that the wireless "hotspot" around Keizer's 
apartment was intended not for cafe-hoppers and Internet hackers with 
money to burn and hours to spare, but for urban public housing 
residents who only a few years before had been fighting roof leaks and 
overflowing sewers.

Camfield Estates, a recently rebuilt 102-unit public housing 
development in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood, has neatly trimmed bushes 
and groomed grounds, but what also sets it apart from other low- and 
mixed-income developments is hidden behind its walls, atop its roof, 
and in the airwaves around the complex.

For the past two years, Camfield has been the site of an ambitious 
project that works to bridge the "digital divide" between 
less-than-affluent Americans and those with easy access to technology.

Called the Creating Community Connections Project, it has given 
residents free computers to connect to the Internet using high-speed 
cable modem lines hard-wired into every home. Residents gather at a 
community computer room that teems with neighborhood children after 
school, and take free classes teaching everything from how to plug in a 
mouse to setting up Web sites.

The project, paid for with a $200,000 grant from the Kellogg Foundation 
and other funding sources, is now taking another step. Now that 
Camfield's Internet provider has ended its two-year commitment to 
offering discounted cable modem access, the project's organizers will 
soon give residents the option of hooking onto the Internet via a 
wireless "hotspot."

The "Wi-Fi" -- or wireless fidelity -- system transmits and receives 
data from four barely visible antennas atop the development's main 
building. With a card that can be installed into desktops or popped 
into laptop expansion slots, residents will be able to log onto the 
encrypted system from anywhere within Camfield.

Residents will soon be able to purchase the wireless cards at a 
discount from the company that installed the system. The cards, which 
can cost up to $100 retail, will be free for elderly residents and 
cheap at a discounted $60 for other Camfield residents. After that, 
logging on will be free for the residents.

While wireless zones are popping up around the country in airports, 
coffee shops and malls, technology experts say it's extremely unusual 
for such a network to explicitly serve the poor.

Anthony Townsend, a New York University professor and a co-founder of 
NYCwireless, an organization that advocates for wireless networks, said 
that many federally funded housing developments have neighborhood 
computer centers, but Camfield is the first that he knows of to have a 
wireless network.

"It's something that's going to be replicated elsewhere, but this is, I 
think, the first example of a project like this emerging out of the 
community, rather than being required by a grant," he said.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology doctorate students Richard 
O'Bryant and Randall Pinkett asked the Camfield tenants if they wanted 
to host the project. O'Bryant, the son of a well-known school committee 
president in Boston, he was motivated by the desire to provide poor 
communities equal access to technology.

"The federal government wants to make low-income communities more 
self-sufficient. They set up empowerment zones, they set up family 
self-sufficiency programs, but there really isn't a component there 
that relates to technology, and being able to access information 
through use of technology," He said. "If you really want to make 
low-income communities self-sufficient, you've got to make this 
particular resource available to them," he said.

After school one day, the Camfield computer room -- a community 
computer center which is also open to residents from throughout the 
area -- boiled with exuberant schoolchildren playing games and surfing 
the Internet.

Garfield Williams, 25, who teaches classes to adults and children alike 
in the busy computer center, said that the project has kept kids out of 
trouble, connected infirm residents with medical information, and 
helped to improve resident's skills.

"You're not used to seeing something like that in the urban community 
-- high-speed wireless access in the residents' homes. I think it'll be 
something that takes off. People will look at it from the outside and 
say 'Things are really going on down here. They're really serious,"' he 
said.

Keizer said that the technology experiment has been a boon for him. A 
Camfield resident since his teen years, he's found that much of what he 
does -- whether staying in touch with family, doing research, or 
e-mailing professors -- is easier with the technology at his fingertips.

"Computer information and technology -- you can't have anything without 
it. It's central to what goes on in the world today," he said. "That 
has to be available. It changes lives, I feel like. It has for me."

The technology gap has received increasing attention over recent years. 
U.S. Department of Commerce data from 2000 indicated that 86.3 percent 
of households making $75,000 or more had Internet access, compared to 
12.7 percent of households earning less than $15,000 a year.

While the federal government claims the digital divide is narrowing, 
consumer and public interest advocates say it remains a problem. Amanda 
Lenhart of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a nonprofit think 
tank that researches Internet use, said that although more people are 
going online, gaps remain.

"Many people point to issues of democracy and public participation and 
dialogue, and having access to what the Internet brings is really 
important," she said. "I can tell you that the digital divide still 
exists. ... There are still great problems with getting online."
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On the Web:
http://www.camfieldestates.net/

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