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Mozilla Awards Last Gigabit Community Fund Winners but Keeps Gigabit Focus After six years, the Mozilla Foundation on Monday handed out the last 14 prizes of its $1.2 million Gigabit Community Fund, wrapping up this portion of its ongoing effort to support and demonstrate the benefits of high-speed broadband networks. The Gigabit Community Fund, launched in 2012, was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and U.S. Ignite. It was designed to financially support education organizations in at least five cities annually with broadband networks of at least 1 Gbit/s. Winners used these high-speed networks to test out technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, 4K video and artificial intelligence. "We committed to supporting promising projects in gigabit-enabled US cities -- projects that use connectivity 250-times normal speeds to make learning more engaging, equitable and impactful," wrote Christopher Lawrence, vice president of Leadership Network at Mozilla, in a company blog last year. "Mozilla Community Gigabit Fund cities are selected based on a range of criteria, including a widely deployed high-speed fiber network; a developing conversation about digital literacy, access, and innovation; a critical mass of community anchor organizations, including arts and educational organizations; an evolving entrepreneurial community; and opportunities to engage K-12 school systems." This year's 14 winners include: Lafayette Gigabot Coding Initiative, Virtual Reality Ecoliteracy Curriculum, A Community In Motion and New Hope STEM Club Gigabot Project in Lafayette, La.; Giga-Scapes, Gigabit Residencies, Real Time Wetland Restoration Mapping and Analysis, Educational Equity VR and Opening Access to Virtual Worlds of Eugene, Ore.; Cross-Community Kvasir-VR of Lafayette, and Chattanooga, Tenn.; Networking the Classroom of the Future of Chattanooga and Austin, Texas; Path to Python of Austin and Eugene; LOLA-Enabled Puppet Theaters of Chattanooga and Kansas City; LOLA in Lafayette Pilot Program, Lafayette and Chattanooga.
One of many children who benefits from Mozilla-funded Gigabots project in Kansas City.
(Source: Mozilla) "There was a real sense that local solutions and local communities in the US had a lot to offer in terms of tapping into the real original promise of the internet -- to make information accessible and open to all," Mark Surman, Mozilla Foundation executive director, told VentureBeat. Today, of course, more cities and towns have gigabit access courtesy of Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 service providers, as well as utilities, municipalities and co-ops. Mozilla will not create another Gigabit Community Fund, Surman said, but the developer does plan to increase Internet connectivity, especially among traditionally unserved and underserved regions.
The road ahead Those interested in entering either or both of the challenges, which offer two $1-million prizes, can request more information here. On the political front, Mozilla advocates for rules that make it easier for cities to develop their own municipal networks -- a process sometimes fraught with legal issues, including outright bans on this capability in some urban regions and states. "Where there are people who do want gigabit, that do want high speed, and can't get it, that’s the thing we all have to step up and tackle," Surman said in the article. Related posts:
— Alison Diana, Editor, Broadband World News. Follow us on Twitter @BroadbandWN or @alisoncdiana. |
In a flurry of activity throughout the week, Donald (DJ) LaVoy, Deputy Under Secretary for Rural Development at the US Department of Agriculture, and his team spent about $145.8 million in the non-urban or suburban areas of seven states.
Calix reported revenue of $120.19 million – up 4% – in Q4 2019, putting a bounce in the step of company president and CEO Carl Russo and a shine to Calix's ongoing transition from hardware vendor to a provider of platforms enabled by cloud, APIs and subscriber experience.
Looking to curtail e-waste and improve the bottom line, BT will require customers to return routers and set-top boxes, although subscribers will not have to pay a fee when they receive regular broadband equipment.
The industry standards organization is looking to ease operator pain from residential WiFi, while it also sees initiatives in connected home and other projects bear fruit.
Deploying DOCSIS 3.1 across its entire footprint gave Rogers Communications the ability to offer speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s,
contributing to a broadband segement that generated about 60% of the Canadian operator's $3.05 billion (US) in Q4 cable earnings.
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