Internet Archive bestows golden pipes on public housing

The inventor of the Internet Wayback Machine is delivering free broadband net connections to San Francisco public housing projects, giving residents significantly faster access speeds than anyone else in the city.

The Internet Archive - a San Francisco-based not-for-profit famous for recording internets past - has already provided 100Mbps links to the residents of one 240-unit public housing complex, and it plans to wire another 2,500 units over the next eight months.

"We are pleased to be the first non-profit organization to bring public housing online," said a canned statement from Internet Archive Founder Brewster Kahle. And they're very pleased to bring them online at 100 megabits a second. City residents with, say, a Comcast cable connection are down at 6Mbps.

Brewster and his archivists are providing their ultra-high-speed links by way of San Francisco's municipal fiber optic network, which happens to runs through the public housing projects they plan to serve. This fiber network then taps into the Internet Archive's very own switching center.

"We are excited to see much faster access to the Internet as a way to experiment with advanced applications, and are pleased that the underserved get first access to advanced technology," Brewster added. And he hopes the underserved will chose to experiment with the Internet Archive's massive collection of moving images, live music, and other audio. ®