Broadband Equipment Archives - Digipreneurship University is a fast track collaborative learning platform.

Digipreneurship University Celebrates More than a Decade of Broadband Education for Seniors

Mar 26, 2022 | Broadband Equipment

In 2010;when we first launched the Digipreneurship Internet Safety and Digital Literacy Series at Fresh Ministries’ Beaver Street Enterprise in Jacksonville, Florida it was obvious that more adults over 50 would need hands-on and remote learning support to effectively connect with friends, safely shop online, do business, and when attempting to find relevant information for online banking and medical assistance. important for seniors to remain connected, entertained and active through the use of technology, During this critical time of cyber security, we understand the extreme importance of internet safety for youth, adults and seniors to exercise caution at all times on their smartphones, lap or desktop.

None of us are exempt from Internet scams, but unfortunately, many scammers specifically target senior citizens. Senior citizens are often at an increased risk for Internet scams and fraud due to a variety of unique vulnerabilities, particularly in low income neighborhoods.

Over the years we have partnered with many of the world’s leading tech brands to meet the challenge of the broadband gap head-to-head, including Sprint, Best Buy, Habitat for Humanity, The Figgers Foundation, and so many more. Post-Covid the risk for seniors over 50 years of age who rely on smart devices and smart TVs have increased significantly, So much so that we recently applied to partner with AARP to help launch a new Tech Smart initiative aimed at online safety for seniors over 50 with the launch of Senior Planet Community — a social platform built by and for older adults.

Other Key Internet Safety Tips for Seniors:

Don’t trust a link sent to you by someone you do not know, and DO NOT click on it.
Never trust an email asking for account information or credit card information.
If a deal is too good to be true, IT IS NOT TRUE!
Never send money to another country, state, or a stranger.
The best scams warn of fraud and offer to help save you from fraud. If you are concerned your computer, email, or online account has been compromised reach out to someone you find that is reputable – don’t trust someone who reaches out to you.
If you did not enter the lottery or a sweepstake than you did not win a lottery or sweepstakes. Do not believe that if you give a little money to claim your prize you will get a lot of money back – true lottery winners do not need to pay anything up front to claim their winnings.

Get federal help to pay for your internet

Jan 12, 2022 | Broadband Equipment, Digital Divide

Recently Florida broadband has received an upswing in remote learning as people can now get federal help to pay for their internet.

AT&T and Cricket Wireless are opening enrollment as part of the Affordable Connectivity Program, allowing low-income families to have more cost-friendly access to broadband.

Those eligible can get up to $30 off their internet bill.

$14-billion is being set aside for the program.

The link to sign up and see if you’re eligible is HERE.

IQ Fiber moving into new Jacksonville, Florida headquarters

Jan 11, 2022 | Broadband Equipment

by: Max Marbut Associate Editor

IQ Fiber is leasing the former iMethods office space at 8787 Perimeter Park Blvd. for its Jacksonville headquarters.

The company will move to the space in early 2022, according to a Dec. 20 news release.

“We have been ramping up quickly, growing our team and completing our network design,” said IQ Fiber CEO Ted Schremp in the release.

“Selecting and securing adequate office space for our rapidly growing operations was paramount to building our company foundation as we focus on serving customers in early 2022.”

CHINT Properties owns the 6,600-square-foot location that will house IQ Fiber’s management, engineering and customer contact divisions.

IQ Fiber, launched in September 2021 with the closing of its initial private equity funding, is a residential fiber-optics internet provider with a target of serving more than 60,000 homes in Northeast Florida in the first phase of its infrastructure deployment.

The company is finalizing its network plans and will begin infrastructure projects in several neighborhoods in Jacksonville that currently do not have fiber-based broadband service.

IQ Fiber also is expanding into neighborhoods in Clay, Nassau and St. Johns counties, the release said.

New bill prioritizes high-speed internet for broadband infrastructure

Aug 14, 2021 | Broadband Equipment

Making sure that every American has high-speed internet access is goal for broadband infrastructure

“Access to broadband today will have the same dramatic impact on rural communities as the rural electrification efforts in the last century,” Clyburn said in a statement. “When I formed the Rural Broadband Task Force, our mission was to address the digital divide. The disparate effects of that divide have been amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic and exposed the urgency of ensuring universal access to high-speed internet.”

Clyburn’s proposal won immediate support from Democratic commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission, including acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, as well as a wide variety of industry groups and advocacy organizations.

“For the last year the conversation around closing the digital divide has centered on short-term, urgent solutions necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic,” John Windhausen Jr., executive director of the nonprofit Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition, said in a statement. “While these efforts are critical, we also need long-term solutions to address the enormous inequities in our broadband landscape so we are better prepared for the next crisis.”

So far it isn’t clear exactly how Democrats plan to move their infrastructure bill through Congress. Party leaders have left open the possibility of bypassing the Senate filibuster by passing the infrastructure package through the budget reconciliation process, similar to last week’s relief package, but they say they first want to appeal for Republican support.

Broadband, especially in rural areas, is a longtime priority for Republican lawmakers, but they have their own ideas for how it should be deployed. Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, earlier this month announced legislation that would use proceeds from an FCC spectrum auction to establish a rural broadband fund worth up to $65 billion.

“This legislation would preserve valuable resources to expand broadband access in unserved areas, secure the nation’s communications supply chain, and promote the development of next-generation technologies,” Wicker said in a statement.

New Infrastructure Bill to Address Digital Disparities

Jan 31, 2021 | Broadband Equipment

Teenagers in lower-income households have fewer desktop, laptop, and tablet computers to use at home than their higher-income peers, according to a new study. And those disparities may influence more than how teenagers socialize, entertain themselves, and apply for college or jobs.

At a time when school districts across the United States are introducing digital learning tools for the classroom and many teachers give online homework assignments, new research suggests that the digital divide among teenagers may be taking a disproportionate toll on their homework as well.

Only one-fourth of teenagers in households with less than $35,000 in annual income said they had their own laptops compared with 62 percent in households with annual incomes of $100,000 or more, according to the report, to be published on Tuesday by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit children’s advocacy and media ratings group based in San Francisco.
Only 54 percent of teens in lower-income families have a laptop in the home, compared with 92 percent of teens in higher-income families.
One-fifth of teenagers in lower-income households reported that they never used computers for their homework — or used them less than once a month. One-tenth of lower-income teenagers said they had only dial-up web access, an often slow and erratic Internet connection, at home. None of the higher-income youths said they had only dial-up access, according to the report.

Vicky Rideout, an independent researcher and consultant who wrote the Common Sense Media report, said the disparities in teenagers’ technology access amounted to “digital inequality.”

In households without regular computer or Internet access, she added, some teenagers resort to doing their homework on smartphones. Just 51 percent of lower-income teens have their own smartphones compared to 78 percent of higher-income teens.

“There’s a really big difference between trying to type an essay for school — or do research on the Internet — on a smartphone or using a computer,” Ms. Rideout, the director of VJR Consulting, a research and policy firm that works with nonprofit groups, said in a phone interview. “We need to make sure that technology does not exacerbate the disparities between the haves and the have-nots, instead of ameliorating them.”

The study comes as regulators at the Federal Communications Commission are exploring the idea of subsidizing broadband access for low-income households — in part to address the digital homework gap faced by students who lack home Internet access.

Although previous research studies, including work by Ms. Rideout, have reported significant differences in media use by children in different socioeconomic and demographic groups, the Common Sense Media study provides an unusually comprehensive and detailed overview of digital technology use in an increasingly smartphone-reliant society.

The survey asked a nationally representative sample of more than 2,600 8- to 18-year-olds in the United States to report how much time they spent — and how much they enjoyed — watching TV and videos, playing games on different devices, reading, listening to music and using social media.

Teenagers spent an average of about six and a half hours on any given day exposed to screen media, including television, computers, tablets and smartphones, according to the study. And tweens, which the study defined as children 8 to 12, typically spent about four and a half hours a day on screen media, the report said.

(The survey counted each activity separately. So if a teenager was multitasking by, say, watching videos on a tablet for an hour and simultaneously using social media on a smartphone, the study counted those activities as two hours of total media exposure).

The study found some overarching themes. Teens and tweens, for instance, generally reported spending much more time watching television than they did on social media.
The study also analyzed the differences in children’s media use based on entertainment prototypes — such as mobile gamers, social networkers and heavy consumers of television and music — and by race, gender, household income and parents’ level of education.
The stark differences in daily activities among teenage and tween subgroups are likely to spur further research into the implications of such divergent media access and use.

“The reason that we need to be concerned about disparities here is that technology and media are now part and parcel of growing up in America,” said Ellen Wartella, the director of the Center on Media and Human Development at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. A professor of communication, she has conducted research on children, media, and race.

“When there are disparities, even if it’s a question of how smart your phone is, teens and tweens may not have access to what they need — not just for school, but for other parts of their lives as well,” Dr. Wartella said. “They aren’t able to participate in the way that more wealthy teens and tweens are able to.”

The study also found that, while black teenagers and teenagers in lower-income households had fewer computers at home, those who did have access to smartphones and tablets typically spent more time using them each day than their white or higher-income peers.

Black teenagers spent a daily average of eight hours and 26 minutes on screens for entertainment purposes, according to the report. That was two hours and eight minutes more than their white peers. Within that screen time, black teenagers spent most of their time — an average of about four hours daily — on smartphones, compared with about three hours for Hispanic teenagers and two hours for white teenagers.

Teenagers in lower-income households typically spent about eight hours on daily screen media use compared with less than six hours for those from higher-income families, the report said.

Dr. Wartella said the reported differences in media use among the various teenage and tween subgroups raised new questions for researchers. “What specific content are these user groups exposed to?” she said. “What impact does it have on their social relationships, their attitudes, and their knowledge?”

She concluded: “We don’t know enough about that.”