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By the Staff of BroadbandCensus.com

The U.S. Broadband Coalition's report on increasing broadband adoption and use got a boost on Wednesday as its working group racked up an endorsement from the Joint Center for Political Economic Studies Media and Technology Institute. The working group report presented - but did not endorse - a number of policy options for increasing broadband adoption among minorities. THe U.S. Broadband Coalition, a group comprised of more than 160 different stakeholders from industry, labor, and government, released its original report last month, but withheld the section drafted by its Adoption and Use Working Group until now in order to make use of more accurate data. Joint Center CEO Ralph Everett said the coalition should be commended "for recognizing the positive impact that rapid broadband adoption can have on our economy and highlighting ways to accelerate the process.” The report is available at Read More »

By the Staff of BroadbandCensus.com

Access to high speed Internet in the European Union is growing with 80 percent of broadband lines now having download speeds of 2 megabits per second or greater, according to a report published Wednesday by the European Commission. In July 2009, 24 percent of the EU population had a broadband access line subscription marking a 21.6 percent increase from July 2008, the report found. The research also found a 54 percent increased of mobile broadband penetration since January, which means the EU currently has a penetration rate of 4.2 percent per 100 citizens. “Vibrant high-speed broadband markets in a competitive single telecoms market are a strategic priority in the European Digital Agenda that is currently being prepared in the Commission. High-speed internet broadband, whether via fibre networks or wireless, is a pre-condition for a strong digital economy in Europe and for European leadership in new technologies and applications,” said EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding in a statement. She expects a new and pro-competitive regulatory framework for Europe's telecoms markets to drive the roll-out of high speed internet in member states. The report found 40 percent of the population in Denmark and the Netherlands have a broadband...

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By the Staff of BroadbandCensus.com

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday released the agenda and speakers for its upcoming workshop, “From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” The workshop has been organized to consider the emerging issues of an increasingly internet oriented society. As more consumers turn to the internet for news and information, print news organizations have begun to struggle with the declining ad market. Besides the simple economics of the matter, as online news expands many wonder how the two news formats can successfully coexist. “The workshop will consider a wide range of issues,” stated an FTC news release, “including: the economics of journalism in print and online; the wide variety of new business and non-profit models for journalism online; factors relevant to the new economic realities for news organizations, such as behavioral and other targeted online advertising, online news aggregators, and bloggers; and the ways in which the costs of journalism could be reduced without reducing quality. The just-released agenda will feature a diverse group of speakers to discuss these topics. These participants include Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of News Corp. and Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post. Other panelists represent groups...

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By the Staff of BroadbandCensus.com

NBC.com on Monday launched a new fan platform that offers its users a variety of exclusive services including NBC content and communication tools. The announcement was made by Stephen Andrade, Senior Vice President, Digital Development and General Manager, NBC.com. The NBC.com Communicator offers tools including a computer-to-computer voice calling system over internet protocol and a texting service. The services and programming are free. "This new effort gives our users a powerful, easy to use set of communication tools integrated with the best of NBC programming," said...

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By Winter Casey, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, November 17, 2009 - An upgrade to a high-performance computing system housed by the Department of Energy has created the fastest supercomputer in the world, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory announced Tuesday.

"Supercomputer modeling and simulation is changing the face of science and sharpening America's competitive edge," said Secretary of Energy Steven Chu in a statement. "Oak Ridge and other DOE national laboratories are helping address major energy and climate challenges and lead America toward a clean energy future."

The upgrade of the supercomputer, known as Jaguar, was funded by $19.9 million provided through the economic stimulus package enacted by Congress earlier this year. “Jaguar is the scientific research community's most powerful computational tool for exploring solutions to some of today's most difficult problems,” according to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is research facility managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy.

Jaguar is currently being used to explore solutions for climate change through simulations and to study potential new energy technologies. “Researchers anticipate that this unprecedented growth in computing capacity may help facilitate improved climate predictions, fuel-efficient engine designs, better understandings of the origin of the universe and the underpinnings of health and disease, and creation of...

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By Eli Evans, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, November 16, 2009 – A working group of the non-profit U.S. Broadband Coalition on Friday released a report in which the group called for the federal government to “play an active role in stimulating adoption and use of advanced broadband connections.” The group, one of six committees of the U.S. Broadband Coalition – which had gathered more than 160 organizations to push for a national broadband strategy – presented its finding at the Federal Communications Commission, after introductory remarks by Blair Levin, director of the FCC’s national broadband plan. The coalition’s leadership spoke very positively about the prospects of inter-industry cooperation and identifying points for possible improvement. But the group generally avoided specifics about what should be done to fix these problems. The FCC’s Levin pointed out, “Our work is about gathering data…we’re not talking about solution sets right now, we’re putting that off until December.” The U.S. Broadband Coalition presented its report on September 24, 2009, but the Adoption and Use Working Group sought further time to collect its thoughts into an extensive 54-page report on the subject. In addition to promoting federal involvement in broadband adoption, the group urged “federal and state support should include programs, grants,...

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By Winter Casey, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com

November 16, 2009 - Speaking in a country known for its internet censorship policies and heavy-handed government involvement in communications technologies, President Obama repeatedly took the time to voice his support for an “open internet” in Shanghai on Monday.

“So I'm a big supporter of not restricting internet use, internet access, other information technologies like Twitter. The more open we are, the more we can communicate. And it also helps to draw the world together,” said Obama.

“And so I've always been a strong supporter of open Internet use. I'm a big supporter of non-censorship. This is part of the tradition of the United States that I discussed before, and I recognize that different countries have different traditions. I can tell you that in the United States, the fact that we have free Internet -- or unrestricted internet access is a source of strength, and I think should be encouraged,” he continued.

Obama delivered his remarks to four hundred-plus Chinese youth as well as thousands of others who attended the event virtually through events organized by the U.S. Embassy and Consulates. The question related to Internet use was delivered by U.S. Ambassador to China Jon...

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By Christina Kirchner, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, November 16, 2009 – The difference in the adoption of high-speed internet technology between the technological savvy and the unsophisticated may not constitute a digital divide so much as a lag between lower- and high-income groups, according to experts assembled by the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. In a report by Kevin Hassett and Robert Shapiro, “Towards Universal Broadband Flexible Broadband Pricing and the Digital Divide,” the authors honed in on the effects broadband pricing. They presented their research at a Friday morning event. “The percentage of homes connected to broadband service increased from 33 percent in spring 2005 to 63 percent in spring 2009,” said the report. According to John Mayo, executive director of the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy, the deployment of any technology that has this type of increase rate appears to have a success story, but “the deployment has not been uniform.” Broken down into the categories of wealth and race, Hassett and Shapiro found that the use of broadband was more common in the past for people of higher income than it was for people who were poorer. “The factors that drive technological advances are price decreases,” Shapiro said. In addition,...

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