Angelinos for Equitable Accesss to Technology

Yesterday, I met with Davis Park and Daniel Mayeda, who organize together under the banner of Angelinos for Equitable Accesss to Technology (AEA2T). AEA2T was involved in fighting for the public interest in the California state franchising process.

Currently, they are proposing to city and county officials that LA use a portion the PEG funding that the California state franchising law provides to build 30 Community Media Access Centers (CMACs) to create community content for public access cable and Web distribution sites. They are proposing a model of smaller, cheaper, more nimble facilities that respond to the particular needs of populations of smaller geographical areas than the standard PEG access center model which typically provides one (sometimes) large facility for each service area. They offer a San Francisco facility as a model: http://communitymediacenter.net/.

Davis also told me about Little Tokyo Community Wireless, a service of the Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC), that provides free hot spots all over Little Tokyo. LTSC has a number of low and mixed-income buildings in the area and use a fiber line running into one of these buildings as their wi-fi network's access point to the Internet.