Get Illinois Online

In the past a question has recurred regarding various events that have taken place in Illinois and elsewhere… these events are of interest and relevance to GIO… ranging from meetings of the Broadband Deployment Council and Hearings of the ICC to various Legislative Committees, or even conferences and workshops far and wide.

What I would like to suggest is that these events and the hungry GIO subscriber might be better served by inviting more bloggers to these events.

We need an effort of a bloggercorps for good-governance in Illinois.

How many GIO readers and contributors regularly blog? How many of you who don’t are of the opinion that blogging is a recreational activity for a certain generation?

The ICC is presently holding hearings on a very particular and legally "technical" question: ATT's request to be declared "competitive" in several Illinois regions. (Tonight there will be one in Skokie. Let's skip the ridiculous threshold for "competitve service" and the bigger question of whether and when such "competition" has actually benefitted communities or consumers).

My question is this: when will we begin public hearings in Illinois on the pending rewrite of of both Federal and State Telecommunications & Internet Law?

There should be (regional/local) public hearings hosted by lead government agencies such as ICC and FCC, not to mention the various relevant commissions and legislative committees. There should also be community led public forums.

Thursday, February 16 was Illinois' Community Technology Day. Our new Coalition gathered together in Springfield to publicly announce ourselves to Illinois' legislators and to affirm our commitment to grassroots values in the cause of Digital Literacy, Access & Equity.

For the full story visit ilCTC.org.

I caught this on Susan Crawford's blog....

Mission from the new site: http://onewebday.org/

The mission of OneWebDay is to create, maintain, advance, and promote a global day to celebrate online life: September 22, 2006

What can we do in Illinois around this?

Bruce Kushnick of TeleTruth.org has come up with a whopper... his new eBook claims that we've been duped for years by Telecoms and all we have to show for it is the $200 Billion Broadband Scandal you haven't heard of yet... Read Sascha Meinrath's review.

Bruce wasn't able to complie and report on the equivalent data for Illinois in this edition (or so we were informed just prior to publication)...

Illinois hosted the first National Summit for Community Wireless Networks, and we're so proud of ourselves we're doing it again. Well... almost... this time it's just across the border in St. Charles, MO. But as it's being spearheaded by Illinois' own CUWiN project, it's certain to surpass the first.

Let the Midwest lead the way!

GIO is an online listserv with the expressed goals of developing a dialogue and plan to get Illinois online. At present, Illinois ranks 33rd in broadband access among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. As of January 2005, over 18 percent of Illinois citizens have NO access to broadband services.

It’s time to consider the needs of the Illinois citizens to access cheap and available broadband services as a part of the proposed new legislation. Join the GIO discussion, and make your opinions known.