A Light in Digital Darkness: Public Broadband after Tennessee v. FCC

Ten years ago, the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee built its own high-speed Internet network, and today Chattanooga\u27s publicly owned Internet infrastructure (\u27\u27public broadband or municipal broadband\u27? is faster and more affordable than almost anywhere else in the world. In this Article, I make the case for why other communities currently underserved by private broadband providers should consider building their own high-speed broadband networks and treating Internet as an essential public service akin to water or electricity, and I explore means by which these communities can overcome the legal and political hurdles they may face along the way

The Zoning in and the Zoning out of the Elderly: Emerging Community and Communication Patterns

Increasingly, senior only residences are zoning seniors out of mainstream residential areas and into segregated living and mature communities. Senior gated communities are variations on a theme of gated communities in which lifestyle is packaged and sold. Active adult retirement communities exclude the young and offer active lifestyle living, with diverse levels of senior living choices. Such an approach contrasts with policies designed to encourage aging in place. It is also distinct from Golden Age Zoning districts designed to allow affordable housing for senior citizens in a public/private partnership. Some towns have zoned public parks to establish areas for children distinct from the elderly. Simultaneously, more and more older adults are embracing the modern media environment. According to the Pew Research Center, baby boomers and seniors are the fastest growing group of social networking website users to connect with family, friends from the past, and seeking information and support with medical issues. This paper explores the person/place relationship and issues associated with design for the social needs of an aging in a media filled world

Town of Sandown, New Hampshire annual report fiscal year ending December 31, 2001.

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire

SATMED: Legal Aspects of the Physical Layer of Satellite Telemedicine

In 2003, Paul Hunt, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights\u27 Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, presented a report on the global availability of health care. Special Rapporteur Hunt argued that states are obligated to implement a right to health. Included in this right is the obligation to ensure that no international agreement or policy adversely impacts upon the right to health, and that .. . international organizations take due account of the right to health, as well as the obligation of international assistance and cooperation, in all policy-making matters. One area Hunt left unexplored in his report was the effect of international telecommunications law on the right to health, particularly with regard to satellite technologies that have the capacity to greatly improve the accessibility, availability, acceptability, and quality of care in developing countries, especially in rural areas.Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)- together with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)--encapsulates an individual right to health care and corresponding state obligations to ensure the availability of health facilities and technologies. As this Note will demonstrate, however, international telecommunications law protects state sovereignty and explicitly authorizes states to erect barriers to satellite-based telemedicine, a technology that could provide access to medical professionals on a nondiscriminatory and cost-effective basis to patients otherwise lacking access to health care. Despite the international community\u27s recent recognition that space technologies contribute to the realization of economic, social, and cultural rights, it has failed to reconcile the right to health care and the authority of states to exclude the underlying technology necessary for telemedicine and telehealth. Thus, the international community has not fulfilled its obligation to avoid adverse conflicts between other areas of international law and the right to health. This Note argues in favor of an international undertaking that corrects these inconsistencies by ensuring that patients, particularly those in rural areas, have access to the telecommunications infrastructure necessary to receive the health care benefits of telemedicine technologies

Keeping Promises: Municipal communities struggle to fulfill promises to narrow the digital divide with Municipal Community Wireless Networks

Some public elites assert that the digital divide is a serious social problem and that governments must intervene by affording wireless solutions to improve this social ill.  Few studies, however, examine the relationship between the claims-making activities around such interventions, specifically in reference to closing the digital divide, and the perceptions of the actual impact of those initiatives on this divide.  We bring together two data sets.  The first dataset is from a previous study examining the public rhetoric surrounding these initiatives vis-à-vis the digital divide.  The latter is part of a much larger study on the network’s impact on the divide.  We conclude that these networks are necessary but insufficient in bridging the gap