Tag Archives: TV

Speakupaustin: a major MSA and local government transparency

The

Austin reporting program is in addition to
the posting a City Council agenda more than a week in advance


(here’s the 28 Feb 2013 agenda already on 16 Feb 2013)
and
including the entire board packets

with working papers and other backup documentation
with the minutes.
Austin

televises and webcasts its meetings live,
with close captioning and transcripts online.
They don’t limit the number of citizens who can speak,
or the subjects they can speak on, and they televise and webcast
all of them as well.
Plus citizens can speak on specific agenda issues,
and Austin

has an online forum for citizen suggestions on which citizens can vote
on the ones they like.

Is there still back-door politics in Austin? For sure.
But you can see a lot more of what is going on in Austin
than they can about the local governments here,
and citizens have a lot more input.

If Valdosta and Lowndes County
(and Hahira and Lake Park and Dasher and Remerton)
want to be treated like a major MSA,
they might consider following Austin’s lead.
Instead of decreasing citizen input by exiling
all citizen speakers to the end of a meeting and limiting the number
who can speak, while not even putting board packets online,
consider continually increasing local government
transparency and citizen input.

-jsq

Energy efficiency rebates, Austin, Texas



The central city of a major MSA,
Austin, Texas, publishes its own video reporting on
local issues, like this one on local energy efficiency.

AustinEnergy has brought back its best offer ever deal,
which allows customers to receive both rebates and a loan
to make energy efficiency improvements.
The rebates can total as much as $3200,
and can cover as much as a third of the cost of the improvements,
including the air conditioning unit.
Remaining costs after the rebates can be financed through a
low interest loan through the Austin Credit Union.

The best offer ever is financed in part by a $10 million
better buildings grant from the U.S. Department of Energy….

Here’s

the video:

Continue reading →

Japan’s Softbank buys Sprint because CEO Son says U.S. networks too slow

U.S. car manufacturers decades ago milked profits out of poor technology
and got outcompeted by Japan on both quality and price.
The same thing is happening right now with fast Internet service.
We may not have to wait for Verizon and AT&T to get around
to offering

affordable fast 4G LTE Internet service:
Sprint may do it first, now that Japan’s Softbank is stepping in.

Roger Chang wrote for CNET News 15 October 2012,

Japan’s Softbank poised to supercharge Sprint network:
Softbank CEO complains that U.S. networks are too slow, and with his $20 billion bid for Sprint, he aims to do something about that.



Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son isn’t impressed with the high-speed
wireless networks in the United States.

“Everytime I come to the U.S., I say ‘Oh my God, the mobile phone
network is so slow,'” Son said during a conference call with
analysts today.

Now, Son is in a position to change things to his liking after
Softbank and Sprint Nextel agreed on a deal in which Softbank would
take a 70 percent stake in the U.S. carrier.

Sprint, which has struggled as a distant No. 3 carrier behind AT&T
and Verizon Wireless, could get a boost from the deal, in which
Softbank spends $12.1 billion to buy the controlling stake and
another $8 billion in investment into the company.

What’s he aiming at improving?

Continue reading →

4G LTE Internet services costs too much, can come down

More people would buy 4G LTE if the price was lower,
which we know is possible because it is 2 to 10 times lower in Europe.
And then a lot more people around here would have fast Internet service.

Kevin J. O’Brien wrote for the NYTimes 15 October 2012,

Americans Paying More for LTE Service


Vodafone LTE
A comparison by Wireless Intelligence, a unit of the GSM
Association, suggests that being in the biggest LTE market has not
brought low prices to U.S. consumers.

According to the study, Verizon Wireless, which is a joint venture
of Verizon and Vodafone, charges $7.50 for each gigabyte of data
downloaded over its LTE network. That is three times the European
average of $2.50 and more than 10 times what consumers pay in
Sweden, where a gigabyte costs as little as 63 cents.

Standard business practice:
sell a new service for as much as the market will bear,
and come down in price over time.
Except in the U.S. there isn’t much of a market,
with only 2 or 3 wireless carriers offering 4G LTE,
as the article notes:

Continue reading →

VZ 4G vs. AT&T DSL, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2012-09-08

It turns out you can’t yet buy

Verizon’s HomeFusion Broadband 4G wireless Internet service

in Georgia.
(You can buy it in Tennessee.)
However, in Georgia, you can buy one of several 4G LTE devices
that have most of the same capabilities.
For example, I have here a

Verizon Jetpack™ 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot MiFi©,
which is about the size of a pack of cards.
A few minutes ago I compared its speeds directly with AT&T 3Mbps DSL.
Here are the results.

The MiFi I’ve got is a slightly older model of the one pictured
above, because for years


AT&T DSL: 2.66Mbps down 0.31Mbps up

AT&T DSL

VZ 4G: 10.88Mbps down 7.14Mbps up

Verizon 4G

I’ve been using it and its predecessors
on road trips, for Skype, web browsing, blog posting, etc.
It’s also come in very handy as a

plan B home Internet access method
on the many occassions when AT&T’s DSL has flaked out.
Mostly I did not use it for uploading videos or watching them much,
because until recently it was relatively slow,
using

EVDO technology at about 1Mbps down and 0.7Mbps up.
Suddenly, the MiFi has gotten much much faster, ten times faster,
because Verizon has turned on their 4G LTE service in Lowndes County,
at least for mobile access.

The tables show results using

SpeakEasy Speedtest a few minutes ago.

Megabytes/sec Megabits/sec
down up down up
AT&T DSL 2.66Mbps 0.31Mbps 322KB/sec 38KB/sec
Verizon 4G 10.88Mbps 7.14Mbps 1360KB/sec 893KB/sec

Verizon’s 4G LTE is way faster,
as in

Continue reading →

4G data caps and prices

It may be

fast,
but there are some drawbacks to

4G wireless Internet access,
namely data limits and significant prices.
Here’s

Verizon’s table for their
HomeFusion Broadband.


Monthly Data Allowance Monthly Access
10GB $60
20GB $90
30GB $120

I would bet the other companies’ caps and prices are pretty much the same.
For web browsing, you’ll probably never run over that lowest 10GB/month limit.
So if you want to tweet or facebook or tumblr or email with your friends,
4G probably will work fine for you.

If you do a lot of Skype or listening to music over the net,
you might run over.
If you watch a lot of videos, or you want to do video conferencing,
you can definitely run over.
Here’s Verizon’s

table of estimates, and they have a calculator along with that:

Email (Text Only) = 10 KB



Typical Web Page Lookup* = 1MB

Audio Streaming = 51 MB/hr

Video Streaming (Standard Def) = 500MB/hr

Video Streaming (HIgh Def) = 1.6GB/hr

Digital Photo Download/Upload (Hi-Res) = 5 MB

4G VoIP = 67MB/hr

4G VoIP with Video = 254MB/hr

1 MB = 1,024KB

1 GB = 1,024MB

Videos of a single VLCIA meeting can run 2 gigabytes,
and there are lots of other meetings going on around here.
Not every local elected or appointed board has 5 minute meetings
like the Lowndes County Commission.
Many run for an hour or more.

Even though I’m a pretty intensive Internet user, I’m considering getting
4G home service.
Someday AT&T may get around to running fiber for their uverse service
out here in my sparsely populated area of the county,
and then we might be able to get

3-24Mbps down (and unknown speeds up)
for $38 to $63/month.
Some year.
Or never, if wireless speeds continue to leapfrog even fiber speeds.
OK, real fiber speeds such as in Finland, Japan, France, Korea, or dozens
of other countries are 100Mbps or up, but U.S. telcos and cablecos
are not going to offer speeds like that
until they’ve milked every penny they can get out of slower speeds first.
Not to mention what the U.S. carriers are really selling with fiber is TV,
which is a dying broadcast medium, fast being left in the dust by the
participatory social Internet.
Who do you know under 30 who gets their news from TV anymore?

Anyway, I don’t know whether 4G Internet service would work for you,
but at least it’s another option.

-jsq

Who gets to serve on the Brooks County School Board —VDT

The VDT caught up with the TV stations today on the Quitman 10 story,
and provided updates and context they did not.

David Rodock wrote on the front page of the VDT today,

Gov. suspends `Quitman Ten’ officials,

On Tuesday, Deal issued his order prior to the Brooks County Board
of Education’s first meeting of 2012. Dr. Nancy Whitfield-Dennard,
Elizabeth Diane Thomas and Linda Faye Troutman were notified of this
suspension at approximately 4:30 p.m., according to sources.

That’s a bit more context than

the TV stations provided.

The VDT also says who gets to serve instead:

Following the governor’s suspension this week, Brooks County school
board member Brad Shealy, who is also an assistant Southern district
attorney, was appointed to serve as president of the board with
board member Larry Cunningham serving as vice president. Shealy
served many years as the school board president prior to
Whitfield-Dennard being named president last year.

That seems to be

the same Brad Shealy who used to be chairman
until the recent election.

The VDT adds this context:

Continue reading →

Gov. Deal suspended 3 Brooks Co. School Board members

The two local TV stations have an update on the Quitman 10:
the governor has suspended the three who were elected to the Brooks
County School Board.
If the VDT has covered this, I must have missed it.
(OK, I should look at
today’s paper….)
There’s also nothing about this on the

Brooks County School Board website.

Jade Bulecza wrote for WALB yesterday,

Governor orders Brooks Co. School Bd. suspensions



Superintendent Debra Folsom got the governor’s order Tuesday
suspending the three board members.

“This is all new territory for us,” said Folsom. “We’re consulting
our attorney to see what the next steps we will take to fill the
positions.”

December 20 a review commission made up of the attorney general and
two school board members from across Georgia were appointed by the
governor to review the case.

“They heard evidence from the prosecution and from the accused and
the conclusion of that they made a determination and forwarded that
to the governor’s office whether to suspend or not to suspend the
three school board members,” said South Georgia District Attorney
Joe Mulholland.

December 30, the review panel unanimously made their decision.

That would be the same Joe Mulholland

who’s been on TV saying things like

Continue reading →

T-SPLOST Lunch and Learn today at SGRC

There’s a Lunch and Learn about T-SPLOST at noon today at the

SGRC offices:

327 W. Savannah Ave

Valdosta, GA 31601

Phone: (229)333-5277

FAX: (229)333-5312

Corey Hull says they’re almost full.
However, the presentation is

already on the SGRC web pages.
The City of Valdosta will be videoing the event.
Once Corey knows when it will be televised on the City’s TV channel,
SGRC will advertise that.
There’s also some unknown level of possibility that the videos
may be made available on the web.

-jsq

“I have seen cameras here at this building when it concerns football” — George Boston Rhynes @ VBOE 29 August 2011



If TV cameras show up for football, why don’t they show up
“when the people come together on issues such as this,
not just black folk, not just white folk, but all Americans
are here tonight because of our concern”?

George Boston Rhynes made three points:

Continue reading →