The blog of Eric Lee - web design and internet consulting for the trade union movement.
Broadband internet opens new possibilities for unions
More than three million homes and businesses in the UK now have broadband access to the Internet, with 40,000 new connections being made every week. By the end of 2005, it should be possible to connect every home in the country to a high-speed version of the net.
The very rapid uptake of broadband Internet by British consumers has implications for organisations which use the Internet, many of which are adapting to the new possibilities.
For example, it is now possible to hear reliable, high-quality audio streams through the net. After years of hype, Internet radio has become a reality.
Just one service – live365.com – is currently broadcasting 22,000 stations online. Compared to that, the digital radio sets that so many Britons received for Christmas, with their promise of up to 40 stations, seem rather limited.
The costs of setting up an online radio station are minimal. Going the full commercial route, the cost of a server and bandwidth would be around £100 a year. At those prices, it will not be long before there is a proliferation of trade union-based online radio stations, with even local unions beginning to broadcast content.
A pioneering effort in trade union use of Internet Radio was the launch a couple of years ago of WINS, the Workers Independent News Service, located at http://www.laborradio.org/. Based in Madison, Wisconsin, WINS provides daily labour news headlines and features, both through the net and, using the same technology, to radio stations which then re-broadcast the material.
In South Africa, labour radio production began as early as 1997, and Workers World Radio Productions, based in Cape Town, has recently been promoting the idea of international cooperation between union radio stations using the Internet.
And in February 2004, LabourStart will be formally launching its own station, http://radio.labourstart.org.
Just a few years ago, if unions wanted to broadcast audio, they had two choices – purchasing advertising on existing commercial stations, or getting air time through interviews. Setting up a union radio station was unthinkable.
Today, if British unions wanted, they could each (or collectively) have a radio station of their own, broadcasting their own news and views 24 hours a day, accessible to all those millions of people who now have broadband Internet.