By Michele McNeil
President Obama is expected today to announce that major corporations will commit more than $750 million to improve technology access in schools and low-income households, as part of an overall federal push to increase students’ connectivity to the Internet.
Obama is scheduled to tout those efforts in a speech at the Buck Lodge Middle School in Adelphi, Md., in remarks that will help flesh out the details of a plan he previewed in his State of the Union speech last week.
The president has set the goal of providing 99 percent of the nation’s schools with access to high-speed broadband technology within five years. Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it would expand funding on broadband through the E-rate program from $1 billion to $2 billion annually, for a total increase of $2 billion.