Flickr Photo by Chi KingThe Federal Communications Commission is seeking public comment on how to draft America's national broadband plan. It's essential that they hear from us.

If you're an NTEN Member -- or have been lurking around for awhile -- you know that Universal Broadband Access is an issue we care deeply about.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 set aside $7.2 billion for broadband stimulus. It also requires the FCC to begin drafting a national broadband plan. The plan will help determine the future of Internet access across the country.

As organizations with a stake in the future of communications, we must ensure that the commissioners hear our call for fast, affordable, ubiquitous, and open Internet access.

You have until Friday, June 8, to file comments online at the FCC website.

I learned about the public comment period in an email from Free Press. They're doing some fabulous organizing around universal access and have provided some basic talking points for comments to the FCC. Read the quick facts below, see Free Press for more info, and comment today!

Check out this event taking place in San Mateo next month. It's free for nonprofit staff!

TPS: Broadband Innovation, taking place May 11, 2009 in conjunction with the 3rd annual Tech Policy Summit conference, is designed to assist community and business leaders by offering best practices for improving Internet access and adoption. Produced by Tech Policy Central, the daylong event will provide an in-depth look at state and federal efforts to improve broadband deployment and the call to develop a comprehensive national broadband strategy.

Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) will keynote the summit, which will also feature policy experts from AT&T, Comcast, One Economy, Connected Nation, Level 3 Communications, IBM, The Children's Partnership and the California Emerging Technology Fund, among others.

Registration is free to nonprofit, academic and government employees and the corporate rate is $195.

View the agenda and sign up online at http://events.techpolicycentral.com

Flickr Photo: mybluemuse aka PJ TaylorNTEN Discuss has been full of recommendations and interesting bits of information over the past few weeks. Read on for a summary -- and join the discussions on the NTEN Affinity Groups.

Blog Guidelines

Holly Wright was put in charge of creating blogging guidelines for her organization, Bread for the World. She asked the NTEN Discuss list for any helpful pointers they might have:

With over 100 active groups and nearly 5,000 users, NTEN's Affinity Groups platform is an incredible resource for those in the nonprofit tech community. There are a variety of discussions constantly taking place, ranging from the very basic and elementary aspects of technology in the nonprofit sector to the more sophisticated and technical.

A simple but informative discussion in the DC 501 Tech Club recently centered around different internet connections for nonprofits. Although it is only beginning to operate in most urban areas, Verizon's FIOS service received praise for its high bandwidth (up to 20Mbps). DSL was also recommended as a possibly cheaper alternative, depending upon distance to a CO. Cable was recommend multiple times as well, although participants noted that while it generally has higher possible bandwidth than DSL, its speed can vary depending upon neighborhood usage. T1 lines were said to be very expensive and generally slower (albeit asymmetric so upload and download usage do not affect each other), but extremely reliable.

The success of your work depends, in part, on making sure you deliver services in the ways your constituents want and can use. Joyce Raby, a Program Services Analyst with Legal Services Corporation, knows that technology is often the best and most efficient way to deliver services, and that you need to look at technology differently when your services are targeted to low income people.

Read on for a quick look into Joyce and her work, and learn more about this topic at Joyce’s session “How Low Income Individuals – Your Clients - Use Technology” at the NTC on Thursday. April 5th, at 1:30 pm.