Obama, Broadband and Senior Housing? Seriously? Yes. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 appropriated $7.2 billion and directed the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) to expand broadband access to unserved and underserved communities across the U.S., increase jobs, spur investments in technology and infrastructure, and provide long-term economic benefits. The result is the RUS Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP) and the NTIA Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP). BIP will make loans and grants for broadband infrastructure projects in rural areas. BTOP will provide grants to fund broadband infrastructure, public computer centers and sustainable broadband adoption projects.
We ran across a post entitled “Promoting the Use of the Internet by Seniors in Public Housing”, that pointed us to this web site. The site goes a little further in depth in providing a framework for how public housing authorities in the United States should apply for stimulus funding from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to set up a program to promote the benefits and use of the Internet for its senior housing residents. The effort should make the case for practical benefits of broadband and the Internet sufficiently compelling so that seniors would want a computer and internet connection in their individual units where the the use of the Internet should be as common place as the TV or a phone.
Taxpayer dollars at work.
For more information on this opportunity, click here.
