American Red Cross Using Technology to Prepare People for Hurricane Season

Posted: May 20, 2011

American Red Cross will be adding technology to help people and prepare them for an above-average 2011 Atlantic hurricane season.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts that 12-18 named storms, 6-10 hurricanes and 3-6 major hurricanes will occur this year. The 2011 Atlantic hurricane season starts June 1. Red Cross’ officials said that families can take steps now to create a family emergency plan.

Red Cross has developed a free iPhone app that gives the location of all open Red Cross shelters. In addition to mapping the location of a shelter, this app also shows current capacity and population. Users can download the app by visiting the Apple store and “American Red Cross shelters,” said organization’s officials.

In case families do not have an iphone, the shelter information can be obtained from

Red Cross Website by clicking on the option “Find a Shelter.”

Additionally, the Red Cross Safe and Well Web site now allows users to update their Facebook and Twitter status when they register on the site.

To read more click here.

Farmers need high-speed Internet access

By HUGH WEATHERS, S.C. Commissioner of Agriculture

Posted: Monday, August 22, 2011

Farmers need high-speed Internet access

A lot goes into keeping South Carolina agriculture strong.

That's a rather obvious statement when talking about farming, but I am not simply referring to the cost of seed and fertilizer, or hay and grain, or fuel and repair parts. I am talking about the amount of information that has to be processed monthly, weekly, daily or even hourly, such as price changes, weather forecasts, or legislative and regulatory updates.

Any farmer nowadays will tell you that critical information such as I have described must be very timely or it can impact the bottom line as much as improperly calibrating a fertilizer spreader. And timely information in 2011 and beyond is not over the telephone or the local parts store counter - it's via high-speed Internet access.

To read more click here.

Two Charleston Co. schools set to get iPads

WEST ASHLEY, SC (WCSC)
The Charleston County School Board has approved a recommendation to allow two schools to have iPad 2's in the classroom.

Right now, a kindergarten, first and third grade class at Drayton Hall are using iPads. With Monday evening's approval, all of Drayton Hall will get iPad 2's plus one more elementary school in Charleston County.

"They have made a huge difference in learning. The kids test grades have gotten much better," said Amy Winsted, a teacher at Drayton Hall Elementary.

"It saves so much paper. Eventually we're hoping to let kids take tests and quizzes on the iPads and e-mail them to their teachers," Winsted said.

To read more click here.

South Carolina Focuses On Broadband

Conferences, meetings, and workshops assess broadband’s growth across the state

By Wil Payton, Communications Specialist, Connected Nation

Broadband is a powerful, enabling technology that is fast becoming the engine of economic growth in America. Increasingly, businesses seeking to open or expand operations look to see not only whether a community has robust broadband access, but also whether potential workers have digital literacy skills and tools. The economic future of communities in South Carolina depends not only on whether robust broadband infrastructure is present but also whether businesses and individuals fully utilize that technology to grow and develop local economies.

On August 18, the South Carolina Public Service Commission is holding a Broadband Best Practices Workshop where Jerry Pate, South Carolina Telephone Association, Corey Johns, Connected Nation, Tom Fletcher, Department of State Information Technology, Dent Adams, Farmers Telephone Cooperative, Rich Schollman, Century Link, and Rick Wolfe, Comcast, are scheduled to discuss broadband availability, adoption, affordability, and best practices across the state.

Earlier this month, the South Carolina Association of Counties and the Joint SC/NC Cable Television Association conducted events to examine the current level of broadband implementation statewide.

At the December 2010 South Carolina Association of Counties Legislative Conference, Patrick Mason, co-founder of the Center for Carolina Living, introduced the term “turbo tourist” to define a person who visits one or more times to seek employment, open a business, moves to the state to purchase a second home or to retire.

“We like turbo tourists, because they spend more, stay longer, and come back more frequently than the average visitor,” Mason said. “The bad news is that they’re only about six percent of the 29 million tourist who visit each year. So, we need to target the six percent and reach out and attract our fair share of the larger number of tourist if we want to see some economic impact for all of our counties.”

The use of technology may prove to be a viable tool for converting tourists into residents.

A report by Connect South Carolina shows businesses with a broadband connection are likely to generate more revenue and jobs. South Carolina businesses with high-speed Internet connections report having median annual revenues $200,000 more than business without broadband.

While the state’s technological landscape has room for improvement, inroads have been made.

“Connect South Carolina’s research reveals that broadband-connected South Carolina businesses earn twice the revenues of those without broadband” said Ray Sharpe, South Carolina Cable Television Association executive director. “South Carolina’s cable companies are proud of the connectivity we provide that enables these businesses to succeed, grow, and create more jobs for the residents of the Palmetto State.”

Broadband Expansion Going Nowhere Fast

South Carolina Still Lags Behind in High-Speed Digital Access

BY COREY HUTCHINS | freetimes

In October 2009, the state Budget and Control Board quietly approved a $143 million contract that effectively leased out 95 percent of the state’s broadcast bandwidth — owned by the public for decades — to two private telecommunications companies for the next 30 years.

Those companies — Washington-based Clearwire and Virginia-based DigitalBridge — were expected to build out connectivity to rural and underserved areas of the state.

Nearly two years later, the strategy for expanding broadband access in the Palmetto State appears static.

To read more click here.

Targeting School Lunch Programs to Reach America’s Most Vulnerable

By Chris McGovern, Manager, Research Development, Connected Nation

Across the board, households with lower incomes subscribe to broadband at a lower rate than higher-income households. The presence of this “Affordability Gap” can have a significant effect upon economic growth and opportunity – with the economy moving increasingly online, ensuring that every American has digital skills is crucial to economic growth, education, and workforce development.

But how much of a barrier is affordability? What is the most efficient and effective way of bridging the Affordability Gap? How many non-adopting households would be motivated to adopt broadband through low-cost incentive programs or targeted discounts? Is there any defining demographic characteristic of this community that would allow policymakers to efficiently target such initiatives?

According to a report released by Connected Nation today, titled “Broadband Adoption Among Low-Income Households: Insights from Connected Nation Research,” low-income households with children are at a particularly high risk, and this lack of broadband for such a large number of American schoolchildren affects the education and social welfare of our entire country. This report finds that 32% of households with children where the annual income is less than $25,000 do not have computers in the home, and 61% do not subscribe to home broadband service. In addition, based on our surveys, we estimate that 23% of households with children eligible (or near the eligibility threshold) for free or reduced lunches through the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) do not own a computer, and 48% do not subscribe to home broadband service. If these figures are extrapolated to the nation as a whole, that would mean that approximately 2.9-3.9 million low-income households with children don’t have a home computer, and 5.5-8.1 million don’t subscribe to home broadband service.
These results, as well as a more in-depth analysis of barriers to adoption among low-income households, can be found here.

FCC: Competition is in the Eye of the Beholder

By Chris McGovern, Manager of Research Development for Connected Nation

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just released its 15th Annual Mobile Wireless Competition Report. A lot of people have been waiting with bated breath for this report to be made public, some looking for a stamp of approval for provider activities (like changes in price models and mergers) while others were hoping the report would portray wireless providers as robber barons that have successfully quashed all competition. This 308-page behemoth, though, paints a more complicated picture of a mobile wireless environment where both successes and reasons for concern can be found.

According to the report, about 92% of Americans (or about 262 million people) can choose from two or more mobile broadband providers, but fewer than seven out of ten (67.8%, or about 193 million people) have four or more mobile broadband choices. There is also a rural/urban divide, as only 69% of rural residents have two or more mobile broadband choices, and only 17.3% of rural residents have four or more options. In fact, a measurement of market concentration (the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, or HHI) finds that the wireless market is “Highly Concentrated,” with four major national providers serving over 90 percent of the nation’s mobile wireless subscribers.

Yet not all is gloom and doom. As the FCC report points out, measures of concentration are not necessarily synonymous with a non-competitive market. It turns out the United States is following a global pattern, as mobile markets in many industrialized nations have just 3-4 major providers each. In the U.S. there is little variance in competition between census tracts with different median household incomes; tracts whose median household incomes are below $25,000 have an average of 3.3 mobile broadband providers, compared to 3.7 providers in tracts with median household incomes of $150,000 or more. The consumer price index (CPI) for the cellular market has decreased or remained the same every year since 1999, while the CPI for all goods and services has increased every year but one during that time period. In addition, mobile broadband providers show evidence of both price and non-price competition, a sign of healthy competition between carriers.

I suspect that in the end everyone will pick and choose some data out of this report, depending on the argument they want to make. Are there indicators that mobile competition can be improved upon? Yes, there are. Is there evidence that points to a competitive mobile market? That’s in there, too. Does this report show a market that is too complicated to resort to bumper sticker competitive analysis? Most definitely.