On Tuesday May 22, the second of five scheduled public hearings on the topic of broadband access in New York City took place at Brooklyn’s Borough Hall. The hearings are a product of Local Law 126, passed in 2005, which created a fifteen-member committee to hear testimony from community members and experts in all five boroughs on the topic of broadband access. Tuesday’s hearing underscored what was at stake for people with no access to high-speed internet. Students from Brooklyn’s Progress High School testified that having access to the internet was instrumental in both being able to do their school work and apply to colleges, many of which now require online applications. “Dial-up is a thing of the past,� said Yasmin Williams, a student at Brooklyn's Progress High school, who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “High speed access allows me to do research to write papers,� said Williams. “Internet access should be one of those necessities.�

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