CNT Community Wireless Work Feature of Education Campaign

CNT is one of the groups featured in a new information campaign of Consumers Union & Free Press to educate the public about and foster the development of community internet projects. Consumers Union and Free Press are promoting community internet projects, like CNT’s wireless project in Illinois, as the future of communications. As evidence of this, they note the role that wireless played in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, in which CNT played a role.
Read more about the campaign and see CNT’s featured work.

Is There a Role for Wireless Networks in Disaster Preparedness?

That was the question the New York Times Magazine explored this past weekend in its Idea Lab section. Its “Talking in the Dark” article cited CNT’s work over the past two years building wireless community networks in four Illinois communities and covered our recent activities in the Gulf, where we have been working as part of a team to reestablish communications in the region using wireless technology.
Our work in the Gulf also garnered coverage from Network World, which called it “one of the few success stories to emerge from Katrina’s demolition.”
Read the latest on our work in the Gulf region in the Wireless Community Network blog. And if you live in the Chicago region, tune into CAN-TV Channel 21 at 5 PM today for a 25-minute call-in-show about CNT’s community wireless work.

I-GO Benefits from High Gas Prices

While many residents in the Chicago region — like their kin across the country — are feeling the financial squeeze associated with high gas prices, there is one group of Chicagoans that is faring rather well right now: I-GO members. I-GO car sharing members are immune to gas prices since I-GO pays for gas — as well as insurance and maintenance. The benefits of I-GO seem to be taking hold in the region. I-GO had a record August in which new member enrollment exceeded 100, marking the first time the 3-year-old service has enrolled so many new members in any one-month period.
ABC7’s Roz Varon talks with I-GO CEO Sharon Feigon about high gas prices and future plans for I-GO.

CNT Hurricane Relief Work Continues

A small CNT team remains in the Gulf Area working to help improve the communications infrastructure there. You can get some close to real-time reports from the region courtesy of CNT staffer Paul Smith, who has been blogging from the farm of Mac Dearman in northwestern Louisiana.
You can also read some press coverage of the work in the Washington Post.
Stay tuned for more updates, and thanks to those of you who have made contributions.

CNT Takes Part in Hurricane Relief Efforts

CNT, using the expertise gained via its Wireless Community Network project, has responded to the call for help in establishing a communications infrastructure for first responders and evacuees in the Gulf Coast area following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. There is a desperate need to re-connect people with the basic resources that a communications system helps facilitate.
An initial team of CNT network engineers is on its way to Louisiana as part of an operation of the Federal Communication Commission FCC to provide the necessary broadband and phone services to people with no or limited access to their families and friends, emergency services and government authorities. CNT’s team will help deploy wireless networks that will allow evacuees and first responders carry out vital activities like emailing, making phone calls, posting pictures of missing people, requesting services and reporting on conditions in evacuee camps that are popping up across the region. The networks will be similar to those being deployed in Illinois as part of CNT’s Wireless Community Network project.

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