Closing the Broadband Opportunity Gap with Comcast

Comcast's $9.99 Internet for low-income families

See about Comcast’s new program, Internet Essentials. http://www.internetessentials.com/ . They will provide broadband internet access for $9.95 per month to families whose children qualify for free or reduced lunch and will offer and internet-ready computer to the families for $150.00. It’s called the Internet Essentials that was launched a few months ago. 

Some of their accomplishments in the few months since it started are in a progress report progress report .  

According to Comcast they inform In a blog post, that they listed a litany of achievements in the first six months of the program including:

• Publicized the program across more than 4,000 school districts and over 30,000 schools, which have approximately 3.5 million National School Lunch Program (NSLP) families, of which 2 million qualify for free meals under the NSLP and, therefore, are eligible for Internet Essentials;
• Worked with more than 3,000 partners, including governors; mayors; local, state, and federal legislators, and community-based organizations, including churches, libraries, and PTAs, to promote InternetEssentials and engage eligible families in their communities;
• By the end of 2011, over 10,000 individuals and organizations had registered for the Partner Portal, the portal had experienced over 100,000 unique visits, and partners had requested 11.5 million pieces of promotional collateral —all at no charge to the partner organizations.
• Offered approximately 300 in-person digital literacy training sessions with more than 1,250 individual attendees;
• Empowered nearly 100,000 Comcast employees to directly connect eligible families in their communities;
• Connected over 41,000 families (an estimated 160,000 Americans) to the power of the Internet in their homes, some for the very first time; an distributed over 5,500 computers at less than $150 each.

This could be an opportunity for many of our students so pass the information to your neighbor so they can take advantage of this.