In an effort to be a better neighbor and citizen, I have been pushing myself to actually read some public service announcements that are emailed to me. The one from my city’s public library included a request for Bellinghamsters to complete a survey about broadband service.
Until 2015 such a thing would have elicited a “Meh! They are nucking futz! I’m not going to waste my time.” Then I was hired by the WA Dept of Social and Health Services (DSHS), and that began to change.
I’m not easy to bamboozle over the phone and I know when I’m hearing a lie. When people could not complete their benefits renewal because they only had crappy wifi on a “free phone” *, I began to take it personally. Clients might spend all day at a local coffee shop because that was the only place they could get a signal.
Not just that: Applying for a job means electronic application. You need an email address and a phone number. To have those things, you need internet access. And that means having a device capable of getting online, with sufficient speed to be useable. How do you do that without a smartphone at a minimum?
* free phone is a used or dated smartphone provided for no cost to citizens on public benefits. It’s got a meager package of minutes, might not have a voice mail service, eats thru a battery like you would not believe.
[Author’s Subconscious: Please give us a moment to get the author back on track.]
OK, I’m going to focus on broadband. This is a term that’s sometimes used as though everyone knows what it is. “In the context of Internet access, broadband is used to mean any high-speed Internet access that is always on and faster than dial-up access over traditional analog or ISDN PSTN services.”
Except for advanced seniors, everyone I talked to during my service in WA was using/had used broadband to either apply for benefits or continue eligibility. If you lived in an area with spotty service (WA has some mountains...an understatement), you might have to drive to a local town that has a cafe with free wifi, so you can fill out the electronic questionaire instead of being on hold for an hour waiting on an interview. If you were too close to renewal and we had not gotten your written/electronic form, we could not even conduct the interview portion of certain benefits. But you could go online, fill in & submit the form, call us and get back in line for your interview.
Sure would be nice to have reliable broadband internet. Why can’t a rich country like the United States not have that? If enough of us say something about it, things might change.
I had the opportunity to take a survey. Part of the request to fill it in said, “The purpose of the broadband survey is for the City of Bellingham to assess current use and access to high-speed internet as well as provide information about future opportunities to increase access. All residents are strongly encouraged to participate, including those without current internet access. The survey, which is for the person in each household or business who determines the internet service, should take ten to fifteen minutes to complete.”
Why in the world did they include those without current internet access? Because at the library, you can use the internet-connected computers for free. Highspeed.Internet.Access. All you need is a library account, you log in, and go online for your allotted time. Find a job; communicate with friends; study; renew benefits; get your phone messages through an internet phone number.
At the end of the survey, the last item requested your thoughts about broadband. Thanks to my ongoing education here at DK, I had some words:
“Treat it like a public utility. It's almost impossible now to apply for a job without internet access. People who don't have phones can have a message-only phone number, accessible via the internet. It should not be [about] what people are willing to pay, but by how much do we want the community to prosper? Especially now with online learning, telemedicine, Zoom, etc, our future society will not be able to function correctly without it (or roads, bridges, electricity, water, public health, all the other things necessary for a functioning city to have).”
If you have a chance to take a survey like this, consider that most people won’t, so your voice will have a greater affect on the outcome. In my case, it might only be for my city, but next time the county? state? I’m hopeful that many small positive inputs will add up to a huge boost. I encourage everyone to take the time to do that survey if it comes your way (whatever topic it may be that benefits your community).
