In 2006, the Communications Workers of America began developing Speed Matters, a public advocacy campaign to help ensure that all citizens have equal access to broadband and other advanced communications services.
CWA is one of America’s largest unions, representing 700,000 workers in communications and information technology, media and cable, public service, health care, higher education, manufacturing, and the airline industry.
The Challenge
Corporate consolidation among Internet access providers poses economic and social risks for America. In the face of increasing corporatization in the broadband industry, the United States has slipped to 16th in the world in terms of access to high-speed Internet, making equal access an issue of international competitiveness. And at a time when an increasing share of high-value economic activity is dependent on the Internet, CWA believes equal access is also a matter of economic equity and fundamental fairness.
The Speed Matters campaign has three objectives:
- Develop a popular constituency to support CWA’s equal-access legislative goals.
- Stake out political ownership of the equal-access issue among opinion leaders and the press.
- Push Congress and state legislatures to take action on a set of specific legislative goals related to equal access.
CWA retained Blue State Digital to develop and manage the Speed Matters advocacy program, the related advertising and promotional campaign, and the Speed Matters website, speedmatters.org. http://speedmatters.org
The Program
In developing the Speed Matters website, BSD designed multiple ways for site visitors to engage personally with the content and CWA itself. Every visitor would be encouraged to provide an email address and other contact information to CWA. The site was carefully designed to mobilize supporters of communications equity to contact Congress, state legislators, and opinion leaders to press for legislative action. It was also built to be a platform for disseminating CWA’s action plan and thought leadership to opinion leaders, the press, and the public.
The constituency-building and advocacy components of the Speed Matters site are built on the framework of the BSD Tools. We supplement those components with aggressive outreach, including search engine optimization, co-registration, and a cost-effective Google AdWords campaign.
The centerpiece of the Speed Matters campaign is an Internet speed test developed by BSD in coordination with Ookla Net Metrics. This custom application, located at speedmatters.org, allows site visitors to test the speed of their Internet connection and see the results in real time. The results are also routed anonymously to a geographically indexed national database, which allows CWA to break down the data in surprising and useful ways.
The Results
To date, the Speed Matters website has recruited a constituency of more than 100,000 passionate people who support communications equity and the union’s other advocacy goals. Through action alerts powered by the BSD Tools, these supporters have regularly been mobilized to contact legislators and opinion leaders and advocate in favor of the CWA’s legislative goals. While the overwhelming majority of the email addresses were acquired via the Internet speed test, subsequent advocacy programs have proved that the list is enthusiastic and engaged.
More than 200,000 geographically indexed Internet speed test records have been collected to date, making the CWA’s Internet speed database one of the most comprehensive bodies of Internet speed data available. Analysis of the data by CWA has provided further support for its legislative goals, as the patterns evident in the data are themselves useful in fighting for communications equity.
On the strength of the Speed Matters campaign, which is still ongoing, the CWA has consolidated and enhanced its credibility on the equity issue. The union’s spokespeople are routinely consulted for their opinions on the subject, which helps to publicize the CWA’s legislative platform and increase its standing as a leader in the movement for Internet access reform.