Internet access

See the following -

Brazil's Internet Gets Groundbreaking Bill Of Rights

Aviva Rutkin | New Scientist | April 25, 2014

Brazil's internet now has its own bill of rights. On 23 April, the country's president, Dilma Rousseff, signed the Marco Civil da Internet, a bill that sets out new guidelines for freedom of expression, net neutrality and data privacy for the country's 100 million internet users.  

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How Can Chatbots Help Us Respond to Humanitarian Crisis?

Jean-Martin Bauer, Lucia Casarin, Alice Clough | ICT Works | August 31, 2017

At the moment, The World Food Programme (WFP) and the wider humanitarian system are #FightingFamine in four countries. In Somalia, Yemen, North-Eastern Nigeria and South Sudan 20 million people are on the brink of starvation. Our recent study “At the Root of Exodus” found that high levels of food insecurity lead to higher levels of migration across borders; UNHCR estimates that there are 65.6 million people forcibly displaced worldwide. The stakes are high, we need all the information we can get...

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Internet For All: Alliance For Affordable Internet Founded

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols | ZDNet | October 7, 2013

The newly formed Alliance for Affordable Internet will attempt to drive down Internet prices throughout the developing world. Read More »

Library, Higher Education Organizations File Net Neutrality Comments With FCC

Krista Cox | Association of Research Libraries | July 18, 2014

Today, July 18, 2014, ARL, together with 10 other library and higher education groups, filed comments with the FCC on net neutrality (PDF). These comments largely expand on the points made in the Net Neutrality Principles jointly filed by library and higher education groups on July 10, going into greater detail and making specific suggestions to strengthen the proposals made in the FCC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking...

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Moving Counter-Clockwise: Lessons from Hurricanes, Floods and Earthquakes

The plethora of natural disasters raises all sorts of complicated but expected issues – from discussions of the legitimacy of global warming to the adequacy (or lack thereof) of on the ground relief efforts. One would have thought that post-Katrina, we would be ready, willing and able to provide immediate relief to those in need of disaster relief...despite capacities, we have been stunningly slow in moving these new services into disaster areas. Instead of technology advancing the ball, it is as if we are moving our clocks backwards. Sure, in the absence of cell towers, creative workarounds have been enabled like ATT&T facilitating communications to/from the mainland for its customers.

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Osijek’s MeshPoint Gets an Award for the Best Humanitarian Technology

Vedran Pavlic | Total Croatian News | June 21, 2016

MeshPoint has been named the best startup project in the category "Best Humanitarian Tech of the Year", which made it the top humanitarian technology product in the competition with 11 other teams at The Europas contest. This startup project was developed based on the experience gained when these Slavonian volunteers brought to the refugees the devices for free wireless internet, as a part of the Open Network...

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Participants at Arab Health 2016 Show the Way for Health IT

Arab Health is the largest healthcare exhibition and medical congress in the Middle East, and arguably the second largest one in the world. It took place from January 25 to 28 at the Dubai International Convention & Exhibition Centre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). This conference attracted about 150,000 visitors from a region half a billion people call home: this covers Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco and a lot of other countries. Why all these people attend Arab Health? Let me give you a couple of examples... Read More »

Why Are There No Big Cities with Municipal Broadband Networks?

Emily Badgers | The Atlantic Cities | March 4, 2013

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance recently compiled this map of all the communities in the country that control their own access to the Internet. At best count, there are about 340 of them with publicly owned fiber-optic or cable networks, serving either all or parts of town. In these places, those residents and businesses served don’t have to spar with telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast... Read More »