In 2006, the frenzy of “free” municipal wireless networks was in full swing. This sparked interesting debates between community activists and telecommunications companies, called telcos.
From a community perspective, the conventional wisdom was that free Wi-Fi was the way to extend Internet access to underserved communities. The question was how to pay for the wireless networks, what good would they do, and what was the best business model for sustaining and expanding them.
For telcos, the issue was how to serve markets that did not have the population density or disposable income to pay for Internet. This discussion found its way to El Paso and a small group of community-minded people decided to come up with a plan.
I was part of the original Digital El Paso team formed as an ad hoc group in 2006. Digital El Paso was aligned to city manager Joyce Wilson’s Creative Cities Leadership Project, Mayor John Cook’s Next Generation Lyceum, and the regional economic development efforts of the Paso del Norte Group, now the Borderplex Alliance.
The technology heavyweights that spearheaded the effort were Cisco and Intel. Intel provided $10,000 seed funding to cover the cost of site surveys to determine the placement of the wireless antennas.
Cisco provided technical assistance, design and engineering support. The original stakeholders who provided time, treasure and talent to fund and deploy the project were the city of El Paso, El Paso County, the El Paso Independent School District and the Housing Authority of the City of El Paso. Others in the community joined us.
The projected was intended to “Bridge the digital divide to achieve efficient government to achieve efficient government, social inclusion and economic development.”
The selected coverage area was approximately 1.5 square miles, covering open spaces in Downtown El Paso and the 79901 ZIP code, one of the poorest areas in the country.
The long-term vision and strategy was to create a “lily pad” of hotspots to expand Digital El Paso and extend service to our most vulnerable communities, many of whom had no Internet access.
Digital El Paso was unveiled at a ribbon cutting at Armijo Center in 2007, and Cisco and Intel issued a joint press release on Yahoo news.
As the project evolved we discovered that wireless was just one leg of the stool. We needed affordable personal computers and training. El Paso Community College set up an intern program, Student Technology Services, that refurbished PCs, adding a wireless card and software to computers donated by public and private sector companies.
The PCs then went to Centro Familiar Salud La Fe, where La Fe extended its community-based health care delivery model and family-centric approach to train families at their tech center. Families learned basic computer skills, email, web browsing and Internet safety. When the training was completed, they took the PCs home with them.
In 2008, Intel helped to market Digital El Paso, providing partial funding for the El Paso Collaborative for Community and Economic Development to expand a program intended to finance purchase of washing machines. We added PCs as a purchase option. At the time, PCs were about the same price as a washing machine!
The Digital El Paso Team turned its focus to grants from the national Broadband Technology Opportunity Program, or BTOP, in 2009. We conducted a Digital El Paso survey to support the request, as EPCC students polled people at Housing Authority sites. The results showed that only 35 percent of El Paso County households had high-speed Internet access, compared to over 60 percent nationally.
The Digital El Paso team worked many long hours on two BTOP grants – one for infrastructure and one for public community centers, called PCCs. In 2010, the city of El Paso was awarded an $8.4-million BTOP grant for “The Virtual Village: Digital El Paso’s Pathway to Success,” money used to ramp up public computing centers. As of June 2013, the city had deployed about 1,300 PCs in 89 public computer centers.
More than 163,000 El Pasoans took classes including computer basics, e-government, résumé writing, job searches, financial literacy, citizenship and social media, with more than 48,000 weekly visits to the centers.
Along the way, Digital El Paso has won numerous awards and recognitions. In 2008, it won the prestigious Texas Association of Government IT Mangers President’s award. The Digital El Paso Team was inducted into the El Paso Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s BizTech Hall of Fame in 2011. The project got national media coverage through online stories appearing in wirelessweek.com, govtech.com/e-government, digital communities, marketwired.com and lightreading.com.
We learned so much from the project. The magic was the public-private partnership and collaboration. Thanks to the city of El Paso and the BTOP grant, there are now 129 Digital El Paso hotspots. Two dozen locations are at city facilities like libraries and recreation centers, while 29 others include El Paso International Airport, transit terminals, city health facilities and fire stations. As you might guess, the most heavily used sites are the original Downtown hotspot and the airport. You can see a map at http://gis.elpasotexaslgov/digitalelpaso/index.html.
All the Digital El Paso and BTOP work was done without a separate budget. Each of us did this in addition to our normal day jobs. We were passionate and focused and delivered results that continue to make a difference today. Despite all this work, El Paso County continues to face significant challenges and limited access to affordable broadband. Our digital divide is still a real and significant barrier for our vulnerable populations.
And we no longer need programs to refurbish PCs. Our population is very mobile and many have smartphones. Access to affordable broadband is the key. This will give us a chance to increase educational attainment, job search and training, and engagement with municipal services.
Last year, the Digital El Paso Team added some new players as Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso joined the effort. Now the focus is the 79905 ZIP code that surrounds its main campus. There’s still a lot of work ahead for El Paso’s digital team.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Barbara Walker
Quelle/Source: El Paso Inc., 11.01.2016
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