Category: Advertiser

“LUS fiber means strong growth”

This morning’s Advertiser editorial lauds Lafayette’s Fiber to the Home project. It offers well-deserved high fives to Durel and LUS as movers in the project but neglects the central role played by citizen support and activism…ah well:

The path has not always been smooth, but the Lafayette Utilities System and the Durel administration have been victorious in regard to the legal scuffles and citizen opposition.

This simple formulation oddly erases the often mean-spirited and widely resented opposition of the incumbent cable and phone companies that was the real pivot point of the fight and ignores the kudos Lafayette has received worldwide for taking on the incumbents—and winning. The NATAO Broadband Hero award Durel won and the Advertiser proudly cites was, in fact, focused on just that bravery. That sentence also rewrites history in another way: Citizen opposition? Real citizen opposition was extremely limited throughout the referendum fight. The four Fiber 411 guys were pretty much the only visible opponents and their visibility was largely a creation of the media who needed someone to play the role of “she” in the “he said, she said” narrative structure of the newspaper article. (I’ve flogged this horse before. See: “How LUS Beat the Big Guys” )

Economic Development
The Advertiser gets it largely right, however, when it points out that utility revenues and cheaper prices aren’t the real point:

While generating revenue is essential to paying off the bonds and keeping up with constantly changing technology, revenue is not the basic goal.

Competition will result in better rates, but as desirable as that is, it is still not the focal point of the administration vision. The vision is one of technological leadership that will result in explosive economic growth.

Economic growth is certainly the basic emphasis of the City-Parish and motivates a substantial amount of citizen support—especially among the business community. Economic growth in the guise of “Keeping our Children Home” was a major element in the winning referendum campaign as well. The fiber project, before it has even launched, has already paid dividends in both national prestige/mindshare and in actual jobs in both the private and the public sectors.

Human & Community Development
But there is another, perhaps even larger, potential that goes beyond the immediacies of revenue and frugality or even simple economic development. Lafayette will soon be in the possession of a community-owned fiber to the home network that has few rivals world-wide. This will, potentially, make Lafayette’s people into a unique community with the widespread ability to access affordable (rather than forbiddingly expensive) connectivity. Everyone on the data network will have a minimum of 10 megs of symmetrical capacity—and a full 100 megs of peer to peer connectivity. What’s important about that is not the technical specs but the human and community ones: Lafayette’s network

  1. will be available to everyone,
  2. will have a lower price and hence greater potential for widespread adoption higher, and last,
  3. has enourmous capacity for communication between citizen-owners, and
  4. most importantly, WE will own and control this network and be able to use if for the benefit of the community, not for the profit of outside owners,.

These are the qualities that level the real challenge: to do something with this rich potential to ratchet the very definition of community up a notch. We’ve made a fair start: both the 100 meg intranet and the use of settop boxes as internet devices can be traced back to citizen-suggestions and pressure. On the evidence it seems LUS and LCG is able to listen. We can make a real difference. So…

What is next? What can we do to improve our community? There is no one else in the world that can answer those questions for us.

Network Testing & Testers

A second story fiber story on today’s front page is “LUS testing network as date of launch nears.” The focus is on the system’s beta testers—folks who are getting to test out the currently available setup and services. I’m sure that’s both fascinating and frustrating and hope that someone will tell the tale of their trials and tribulations after the system launches. LUS is getting valuable information about both the technical end of the service and about how people get tangled up in the new offerings. I’m not sure which would be more valuable.

“These citizens agreed to help us test our systems knowing we would frequently interrupt their services to add and adjust the features needed on our system before we can begin commercial operations,” Huval said…

“We’re getting positive responses, and some suggestions,” he said. “It’s also training for us so we can learn how customers will ask questions and what information they need.”

There’s also the proviso, repeated often of late, that the main holdup at this point is contracts to fill out the channel lineup. That’s been an issue for a while now. In the background is a complex set of issues about two different coops for securing channel contracts, the temporary closing of one of those coops to new members and LUS decision to forge on by cutting its own, separate deal with suppliers. In many cases, evidently, that’s lead to good deals but its a slow and painful process—and one that leads to a mesh of differing constraints on what they can and can’t do that may lead to difficulties downstream.

“LUS continues to build a fiber workforce”

The Advertiser this morning runs two front page stories on the fiber project in advance of expected news on the network later this week. The boldface, above the fold headline is “LUS continues to build a fiber workforce.” That article is pretty much a bare-bones list of project costs. The most interesting bit in the article is a listing of some of the good-paying workman-level jobs:

Of the employees, five are fiber optics technicians who make anywhere from $22.71 to $25.14 per hour. There are also four communication network technicians, all of whom make around $18 an hour.

There also are two customer service supervisors, one of whom is paid $27.25 per hour and the other who is paid $23.12 per hour. Two communications customer service representatives are each paid $14.16 per hour.

The printed version of the story (but not the online one) contains what looks to be a listing of all hourly wages of the division’s 47 current employees. The 14.16/hr is the lowest paying job on the list.

Those are good jobs—steady, good-paying Lafayette jobs. Folks should be reassured that the community network will produce a core of good-paying high-tech jobs in Lafayette solely on the basis of maintaining the network.

The rest of the story is pretty much a recounting of the contract costs. Again, the printed version has a long listing of the contract amounts and a sketchy label telling what the company supplies.

I can wish for more complete reporting….what’s missing is any context, any background, any education of the public. Providing such is the civic purpose of any newspaper.

For instance, about wages: How much money do these wages add up to? It’s common in businesse reporting to report on the total wages that a new company will bring into the local economy. Are these wages comparable to the others in the industry? To wages paid by local competitors like Cox and AT&T. How many employees of Cox and AT&T are based in Lafayette? (If the private providers refuse to reveal such information that too should be part of the reporting.)

Or about contracts: A sentence or two of background on the low-bid law governing the awarding of contracts might be useful as would be some indication of just how specialized the work is and how large this project is. This is a big enough network that there are really few companies world-wide that could tackle it. The specialized network equipment—like the IP-capable Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) is likewise only available in the large quantities required from a few companies with world-wide reach.

(Broadband Hero) “Durel details fiber project for journal”

The Advertiser reports that Mayor Durel has penned an article on our fiber project in the NATOA Journal. The National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisers lauded Durel as its “Broadband Hero of the Year” last year and the article is an apparent outgrowth of that award.

The NATAO story (not available online) celebrated the economic development potential of the new system and highlighted the 100 meg intranet according to the Advertiser.

The Broadband Hero award is worth highlighting itself. I had a post prepared on this that never made it out of the draft stage back in November and am chagrined at the omission. NATOA is a muscular association of telecom officers for public bodies that is extremely influential nationally and has lead the fight against bad laws — and kept up the pressure after the laws predictably failed—on issues like municipal broadband and state video franchises. Louisiana has first hand experience in both these areas of how badly these incumbent-written laws have been for local communities. NATOA, then, is both prestigious and determined. Getting an award from them, being invited to present at their conference, and having an article placed in their national journal bragging on your mid-sized south Louisiana city is no small thing on the national scene.

The reason for the “Hero” designation is evident from the wording of the award:

…for championing the need for robust, competitive communications services in his community; for championing the cause of local decision-making in communications; and for leading his community to counter efforts to thwart local communications initiatives.

Durel and Huval’s muscular, public, relentless defense of the fiber project was absolutely essential to its success. Many communities lack determined leaders and the award is well-deserved.

Alert: Huval to answer questions Wednesday (updated)

Alert: LUS Direct Terry Huval will answer questions in a live chat at the Advertiser’s on-line forum tomorrow evening. Take note, those of you who’ve asked questions in the comments section of this blog: you can get your answers straight from the horse’s mouth.

Particulars:

Where: online @ theadvertiser.com: Access Page
When: Wednesday, 1/14/08 starting at 6:00 PM
Mode: “Live Chat”

Huval has already been doing a great job of modeling how a really open and responsive community-owned telecom would act in the comments section of the Advertiser. He’s come on and answered questions from everyone—for pages and pages. (See, for instance: Announcement story, Advertiser Digest.) I’ve been gratified by the generally respectful tone of the commentors there; it’s a noticeable contrast to the ugly, uninformed approach that too often dominates in that and other anonymous forums. (The fact that Terry is speaking without the “protection” of anonymity seems to help. I recommend that participants who want to be taken seriously follow suit.)

Kudos to the Advertiser and Bill Decker. These Q&A sessions are proving useful to the community.

Update: 1/14/09: I just went to the access page and found an interesting and I think encouraging set of rules about the Advertiser’s “Live Chats.”

  • There’s nothing to do during a Live Blog other than read, watch and occasionally send in a comment or vote in the polling questions.
  • It’s not a chatroom. You go to largely find out what the writer has to say. An open chat with thirty or more readers turns into poor, disjointed content very quickly.
  • Your comments are published at the Writer’s discretion. The Writer can view all comments sent to them but only they can publish your comments for everyone to see.
  • Our ‘autoscroll’ feature ensures you’re always shown the newest content without having to refresh or scroll your screen. You can turn this on or off by using the controls at the bottom of the Live Blog.
  • Subtle sound effects alert you to new content as the writer publishes it. This can also be turned on or off as needed

Nice; particularly the “It’s not a chatroom” caveat. The Advertiser has already taken care of much of my concerns. The net evolves.

LUS Announces Pricing at the Council Meeting

Terry Huval made another appearance during the “President’s Address” portion of last night’s council meeting. In this one he provided more details on pricing and installation….

My trusty TiVo picked up the broadcast; it will be rebroadcast by AOC on Channel 16 Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. and Saturday at 1:00 p.m. It is also available anytime on the newly established ustream channel “lcg-council-auditorium.”

If your interested in the details (and who isn’t?) I recommend you take a look at Huval’s presentation. It’s well-organized and packs a lot of information into a small time frame. You can also check out the press release at the LUS Fiber site and pages there on video, phone and internet pricing.

Some highlights & notes of interest:

  1. There will be “no deposit, no contracts, and no charge for a standard installation.”
  2. There will be some very low prices for some cable services—lower than had been previously anounced. The basic, no-box “analog,” tier will only cost $17:00 and includes “20 channels including local channels and The Weather Channel.” (Interestingly the “analog” channels on the local system are analog largely in the sense that they don’t require a set top box: the system itself is all IP. Customers who don’t want a box and have an analog TV will have their digital signals transformed into coaxial-happy analog at the fancy box on the exterior wall.)
  3. That low price, and other low prices for local phone service and internet will be mitigated by a minimum required purchase of $44 dollars. No customer will be signed up unless they initially agree to purchase $44 dollars worth of service. That’s a marketing mistake, I believe. You want everyone to sign up, even if they are low-return initally. Of course, without a contract I don’t know what is to prevent a frugal customer from signing up, paying for one month and dropping any extra services. Frankly, I don’t see the point of this requirement. Without a contract it won’t prevent folks from doing the obvious; will give the naysayers something pretty concrete to complain about; and will be used to by the opposition to undercut the city’s otherwise legitimate claim to be lowering prices and offering poor and working people a break. (This isn’t conjecture on my part—that was the response of the incumbents to a similar condition to join Bristol VA’s municipal system.) [Yes, sure, I do understand the rationale: that fancy box on the side of the house that translates light into analog and digital cable over coax, internet over cat6, and emulates a Plain Old Telephone system is very costly…and LUS reasonably wants to recover that cost in some reasonable period. Still; IMHO, dangling unattainable low prices in front of the public is a mistake that only accountants and engineers would make. It’s logical and sensible but mistaken. Where are the political, PR, and marketing folks? LUS needs a citizen’s advisory council.]
  4. The internet service will include email, 70 megs of personal web space, Instant Messaging, personal calendaring and file sharing….pretty nifty. Making those service available universally will potentially open up a huge range of network effects akin to having universal phone service. All these are more valuable if all have them.
  5. It looks like only HD digital boxes will be deployed, some with and some without DVR capacity but all with HD. Planning for the future, I presume.
  6. There will be “an interactive TV Web Portal, Video On Demand, Pay-Per-View and Digital Video Recording.” I’m still interested in that TV Web Portal.

Still missing: a channel lineup, details on the premium channel packages and any wireless hints.

PS: The Advertiser has a short piece up this evening. Expect a fuller story tomorrow and one from the Advocate as well.

“Locals curious about fiber”

This morning’s Advertiser has a short (though front page) article on public reaction to the imminent launch of the Lafayette fiber project. It’s a color story, with not much in it but the public reactions to what they’ve been informed (and misinformed) about concerning the new system.

On the upside they get the basic reactions of people on the street pretty much right: cautious excitement.

Two things on the downside: 1) The Advertiser persists in repeating the mistaken idea that all LUS has announced so far is the prices of the three “VIP” tiers when Huval clearly has said that the prices announced for services were the same whether you bundled them together or not both in the council presentation and in their own comments pages. (Incidently, this is a feature; something to like…) 2) that bit of repeated misreporting gives the Advertiser’s coterie of local Lafayette-haters something semi-concrete, if mistaken, to whine about…every city (and every barbershop) has its little group of nay-sayers. But it is a pity that the Advertiser has chosen to give their ugliness both anonymity and a semi-legitimate forum.

Media Roundup: LUS Fiber Announcement (Update)

All the usual local media suspects weighed in with coverage of LUS’ Fiber announcements at last night’s city-parish council meeting. If you comb through the media landscape you’ll find bits from KLFY, KATC, The Advertiser and the Advocate.

If you’ve just got time for one: read the Advocate. It’s more comprehensive and is the only one to mention the announcements of features that will truly set Lafayette apart even in the rarefied ranks of fully-fibered cities. On the free internet-over-the-TV feature for digital subscribers:

LUS Director Terry Huval said the basic residential service will also allow customers without computers to have basic Internet browsing capability through the television.

“We think it may well be the first in the world,” Huval said of the television-based Web browsing capability. “It’s for the child at home trying to do a book report and cannot access the Internet today.”

On the 100 Mbps of intranet, customer to customer, connectivity:

All customers on the LUS fiber system will be able to exchange information with other fiber customers at 100 Mbps, Huval said.

The Baton Rouge Advocate also covers pricing, tiers, the launch date, and the likely first neighborhoods to get fiber.

The Lafayette Adverstiser, and local TV station KATC and KLFY restrict their coverage to pricing and rollout details, though KATC does mention the fact that LUS bragged on being the only “100 percent fiber optic network and the only customer-owned telecommunications network” in Lafayette. There’s also a bit of video at KATC.

In a story that headlines the front page the Advertiser fleshes out the details on the residential bundles; lays out the plan for business bundles, and makes clear the places where the first customers will be served.

They’re all worth a gander and report slightly different parts of last night’s ephocal announcement. Take a look.

It’s certainly a nice Christmas present for Lafayette.

UPDATE 3:35: Terry Huval, in the best tradition of local responsivness, went down to the Advertiser site and answered questions from all comers. (Starts here.) Great stuff! It takes several pages and a lot of ground is covered. This is one of the few times that reading the comments is worthwhile—and Terry does it using his real name, a rarity in the not-so-courageous atmosphere of the Advertiser site. It’s all pretty respectful, thankfully. I suspect that this is because the denizens there are stunned by dealing with someone who 1) puts their reputation on the line by using his real name, and 2) really knows what he’s talking about. That’s the natural basis for respect.

(Try getting a response, any response, from Randall Stephenson or Patrick Esser. They’re the heads of AT&T and Cox respectively. Never heard of ’em? And they’ve never heard of you or your neighborhood, nor have any idea that there is an Advertiser or an Advertiser forum. That’s my point. You’re better off with Terry. And he plays a mean fiddle, too.)

“Fiber taking shape”

The Advertiser runs up the second local story anticipating the LUS Fiber launch this morning. Like the Independent story it unfortunately leads with what isn’t known. What’s far more interesting is what is… Still, it’s hard to write a story about the product launch when there is so little to report about the product’s standard commercial details. As the story reports:

…there’s been virtually no marketing or promotions surrounding the project, and officials have been quiet on details such as the channel lineup and what kinds of pricing packages will be offered. Also unknown is exactly when in January the system will be unveiled.

Parts of the article repeats things we’ve know but that are nice to see repeated: The January launch is still on. There will be “mulit-hundred” channels—with lots of HD. On Demand and Digital Video Recording (DVR) service. There will be caller ID on screen. And internet capacity will be huge. (Though, in an obvious editing error the 10 meg minimum low-end package gets presented as the maximum offering. That’s simply a mistake on the part of the Advertiser.) We’ll have 100 megs of intranet.

With the Advertiser reportw a few more interesting details leak out. About the set top box:

A small box also will be available in which customers who do not have regular online access will be able to access some parts of the Internet through their television. Huval said some features, such as videos, may not be available, but the goal is to bring the Internet into homes that otherwise might not have it without those customers having to pay additional fees.

That makes it sound as though 1) Any telecom subscriber will be able to get a box that enables limited Internet on the TV and 2) that it will be available without “additional fees.” That sounds good!

It also looks like they are contemplating some sort of community portal:

The televisions also could have several menus for users to choose from, with some featuring community news and announcements.

Terry Huval (LUS head) also addresses the reasons why local denizens would switch saying:

“Our pricing might be more attractive to them,” he said, adding that the costs are expected to be an average of 20 percent less than current providers’ standard rates. “The quality of the product they’re going to get is going to be superior. And it’s a local operation, tailored for Lafayette. We look at what our community needs. This system is owned by the citizens of Lafayette.”

Price, quality & hometown pride. I’m not sure what other reasons there can be…. I’m looking forward to signing up when it becomes available in my section of the first build.

NADs, the Digital Divide, the iPhone and Lafayette

Food For Thought Dept.

Mike helpfully emailed a link to a Wall Street Journal article that thoughtfully rewrites a press release from Comscore, a marketing research firm which recently released a study on the influence of the iPhone on the smartphone market.

Long story short: the iPhone is a big deal and is driving some pretty basic shifts in usage patterns. This isn’t all that surprising when you realize that the iPhone is pretty much a full computer with an always-on 3G internet connection—usably fast mobile ubiquity. I recently got one to take on an extended vacation and camping trip out west and it was fantastically useful to be able to access mapping, directions, restaurant reviews—and even GPS locations while hiking far from cellular connections. I am not surprised that others find its extended all-in-one capacity both helpful and worth affording. (That trip explains the 2 week LPF hiatus for both of you that wondered.) You can do a search on the terms and find bits and pieces of Comscore’s broader analysis. (The full report is a for-pay item.)

Our Focus
But the big picture is not particularly what interests us here today. Instead we focus on the implications of these usage shifts for digital divide issues here in Lafayette.

Part of what Comscore’s data shows is that lower-income householders are 1) adopting smartphones and especially the iPhone at a rate that is growing faster than those that are more wealthy and 2) that their use of network functions like email and search are also growing faster than the wealthy as is their usage of music/mp3 functions. (As an interesting sidelight: the overall usage is actually shrinking for non-network centric uses like music listening. hmmn….)

The conclusion that the analysts reach is that folks who need to stretch the dollar are dropping telephone landlines and internet connections in favor of cellular connections when they are pressed—iPhone-like devices make it possible to gain enough of the benefits of these capacities over your cellular connection to make turning off the other services seem cost-effective. You also don’t have to pay for a separate mp3 player or computer.

The smartphone/iPhone is emerging as an all-in-one network device that is particularly attractive to those whose need to pinch pennies. It may well become the preferred NAD (network attached device) of the working stiff.

The NAD and the Digital Divide in Lafayette
Just how people attach to Lafayette’s shiny new network has been a big issue dating back to the Digital Divide Committee and the Fiber Fight. Both LUS and the city-parish council have made a strong (and specific) commitment to making sure that the benefits of the community’s network extend to all. The first and most valuable commitment to equity was to make the the network as cheap as possible and to make the cheapest levels of service much more powerful than is available from for-profit providers. LUS is clearly keeping that commitment with very low-priced, extremely high bandwidth connectivity products. But there was also a commitment to find some way to get computers into poorer people’s homes.

Closing the digital divide, digital inclusion, was never just a matter of do-gooder sensibility or even simple justice (as powerful as both are); the impulse always included a healthy dose of selfish realism: We will all advance further and faster if we advance together. A truly advanced digital community must be pervasively sophisticated. To the extent that Lafayette (and any vigorous local community) has decided to invest in a technological future for its children it cannot afford to leave any part of the community behind. No local community has the human resources to waste. No real community would tolerate it.

That was the basis for our commitment to digital inclusion. At the time it was assumed that the NAD would be a desktop computer or maybe a laptop. But the winds have shifted.

The New NADs
It now appears that the NADs used to bridge the digital divide in Lafayette will consist of some mix of 1) newer, radically inexpensive low-powered laptops (aka “net tops”, 2) wireless smartphones, and 3) the cable settop box’s rudimentary browsing and email capacities. I’ve discussed 1 and 3 pretty extensively earlier.

What’s most interesting about these 3 paths toward accessible network connectivity is not how they differ and the hard choices those differences might suggest but how they are similar and the opportunities that they offer that Lafayette is uniquely situated to grasp.

Net tops laptops, smartphones, and set top boxes are all unabashedly network-dependent devices. Without a good, fast, reliable connection to the internet they are really not very useful or valuable. With an advanced connection, however, they are transformed into powerful, amazingly cheap devices that challenge the functionality of a powerful conventional computer for most folk’s purposes. That defines the double-edged sword that inexpensive network devices represent for most people in most places: they are only as good–and as cheap–as the networks to which they connect.

The smartphone/iPhone presents a new set of challenges and opportunities for providing fair access to Lafayette’s networked future.

Smartphone Opportunities
The opportunities are pretty breath-taking: hand-held, always-on network devices like the iPhone or newer advanced Blackberries offer the possibility of leapfrogging into a future that must remain a vision in most places.

That vision is of an ubiquitous, always-accessible network that puts rich comunications—ranging from video to voice to text—and huge computational and information resources at the fingertips of users at a price point so low as to make universal use almost inevitable.

If we can line up all these elements we can be both a national and even a world leader in popular access to advanced technologies. Lafayette can be the place to explore today the consequences of sort putting massive bandwidth, new devices, network storage, and online computational resources into the hands of most people in a community. It’s a chance for our comunity to help define the future—and to make a place in that future for communities like our own.

Smartphone Challenges
The new, cheap NADs Lafayette is considering as tools to close the digital divide are all not only network-centric but network-dependent. These inexpensive devices all require two things to make them function as adequate substitutes for traditional computers: 1) an always-on, large-bandwidth connection and 2) —and this is less well understood—on line storage and computational resources dedicated to each NAD user.

We have the dense fiber backbone. And the crucial public ownership. But we need more.

1) We need, first, to make sure that we beef up the wireless network that is currently being deployed along with the fiber and offer it as an adjunct to a citizen’s network connection. We can provide wifi within our own homes by attaching it to the fiber, but on the streets and and in public places our network connectivity needs to follow us. Wifi (for other practical reasons as well as the current considerations) shouldn’t be a seperate network.

2) We need to provide substantial online storage for individuals. NAD’s are noticeably short of storage space. That’s part of what makes them light and inexpensive and hence good digital divide devices. There is no reason to have massive storage located on an always-connected device. But beyond compensating for NAD shortcomings, a central online repository will soon become a practical necessity as people move toward using multiple, differently capable devices online. It is easy to see a time in the near future when the typical user might login daily from 1) a home computer, 2) a work or school computer, 3) their personal NAD, 4) their settop box to view some net content communally or on the large screen, and 5) from a friend’s house or public space. A single, online “home” would allow everyone to use their personal “stuff” (from docs to passwords to bookmarks to online applications and beyond) from any device at any location.

3) We need to provide real network-based computational power. NADs onboard computational resources are weak. But with a robust local network there is no need for a supercomputer in your hand…just access the computational power of the supercomputers on the network. The settop box solution would be greatly enhanced by locating a linux desktop on the network. A small server farm (or a nice virtual server like the one that Abacus has) could serve out the capacity of a full computer with a full suite of powerful applications to any screen—from the settop’s TV to a NAD’s small one. The technology is currently being called “cloud computing” but it could be arrayed cheaply by any community with the will to do so.

With fiber, fiber-driven wireless, online storage, and network-based computation Lafayette could cheaply and easily meet the commitment made during the fiber fight to closing the digital divide. And it could do it in a way that would benefit every citizen no matter what their income, neighborhood, race, or level of tech savvy. Meeting above challenges would help shape Lafayette into a community with an unrivaled capacity to meet future challenges. Since everyone would benefit it would be easier to sell politically. In these hard economic times it would be a huge boon to the whole community and mark Lafayette as a progressive, self-reliant locale in which to do business.

Really this should be a no-brainer…. don’t you think?

Lagniappe:

Should you be tempted to think that this is ahead of its time or that Louisiana is behind those times:

About 25 percent of Louisiana’s 4.2 million people have a Blackberry, iPhone or similar device, which May said “is really a computer.”

That’s from an Advertiser story on the community college system reformatting online coursework to make it accessible via smart phones….since it is “really a computer” qualified students can get aid in buying a smartphone since it can be regarded as educational.

The future is just around the corner. This stuff is all in sight.