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By the Staff of BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, March 11, 2010 – The FCC launched its consumer broadband test today, enabling consumers to test the speed and other performance measurements of their broadband connections. Users will randomly be assigned to one of two speed and measurement tests when they visit www.broadband.gov. One of the tests will utilize the open source Network Diagnostic Tool (NDT) developed by Internet2, a consortium of researchers. BroadbandCensus.com has been using the NDT speed test since February 2008. The other test, uses Ookla, Inc.'s Speedtest.net, has been used by Communications Workers of America's SpeedMatters.org web site since 2007. “Transparency empowers consumers, promotes innovation and investment, and encourages competition,” said Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski. “The FCC’s new digital tools will arm users with real-time information about their broadband connection and the agency with useful data about service across the country," he said. "By informing consumers about their broadband service quality, these tools help eliminate confusion and make the market work more effectively.” The FCC also said that it did not endorse any specific testing application. In addition to the "Consumer Broadband Test," the FCC on Thursday also launched a mobile application -- a first for the agency...

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By Lou Carlozo, Special Correspondent, BroadbandCensus.com

CHICAGO, November 18, 2009 - The title of Wednesday’s panel at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners sounded militant enough: “Broadband Plan of Attack.” Yet the speakers on hand gave the distinct impression that across public, private and academic sectors, conclusive battle plans remain to be drawn. Regulators from Washington, telecom providers and researchers agree that the push forward for wider broadband access remains both a certainty and an imperative. Yet not everyone seems to be dancing the same step just yet—a fact reflected in the frank appraisal of Robert Curtis, director of deployment for the national broadband plan at the Federal Communications Commission. While the FCC is closing gaps in its broadband plan, “There’s a heavy push to get from where we are to where we want to be in the next couple of months. I’d encourage anyone who has any input to get involved now,” said Curtis. “There’s evidence of a significant economic bottleneck, particularly between the second mile and middle mile. And there’s a middle mile gap, particularly in rural areas, where we might have broadband available, but not everyone has access to it.” Curtis added: “There’s also a last mile gap in the...

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By Winter Casey, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, November 18, 2009 - The opening speaker of a summit focused on improving broadband penetration to minority and low-income areas of the country, and criticized advocates of Net neutrality for being out of touch with the needs of minorities as he attempted to enlist the mantle civil rights leader Martin Luther King into his cause. “[L]et us remember the worlds of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., ‘All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face-to-face with another problem,’” said Julius Hollis, the founder of the Alliance for Digital Equality, in prepared remarks. “If we fail to find common-ground on the issues before the U.S. Federal Communications Commission relative to the rulemaking governing broadband adoption, the financing of broadband infrastructure and the over-arching issue of net neutrality, the long-term socio-economic chaos that will be inflicted upon our society would be far too devastating to comprehend,” warned Hollis. Hollis delivered his remarks Wednesday during his group’s 2009 Minority Broadband Summit, which was held at the Newseum with roses on the table and a view of the Washington skyline. Hollis dove into the issue of Net neutrality or whether the FCC should step in and regulate internet access...

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By Andrew Feinberg, Deputy Editor, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, November 18, 2009 - The Universal Service Fund is in need of an overhaul to equalize costs among stakeholders and modernize programs to include broadband services, a group of industry representatives and regulators told the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet during a Tuesday hearing. The hearing examined a discussion draft of the Universal Service Reform Act of 2009, authored by subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb. The Universal Service program, which existed for decades before being codified in the 1996 Telecommunications Act, is under "tremendous pressure" and requires a comprehensive effort to reform its operations, Boucher said during opening remarks. Reform is needed because new technologies for long distance voice communications have reduced the available revenue that can be tapped to fund current programs, leading to soaring costs for consumers – a projected 14 percent of revenues in January of 2010, he said. Such an increase and a maintenance of the status quo is simply "not sustainable," Boucher said. The Boucher-Terry bill would cap the high cost portion of the fund while requiring wireless carriers who participate to do so through a competitive bidding process. Such legislative...

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By Winter Casey, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, November 17, 2009 - The consulting firm Empiris LLC joined a host of cable and phone broadband network related entities on Tuesday when it slammed a recent study from Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society on broadband policy. In July the Federal Communications Commission commissioned the Berkman Center to review the existing literature and studies on broadband deployment and usage throughout the world to inform the FCC’s development of a National Broadband Plan. The FCC is sought public comment on the study through November 16. Empiris held a teleconference with bloggers Tuesday to discuss its problems with the report. Empiris argues that the study failed to provide an accurate summary of broadband policies in other countries and advances “conclusions that conflict with the evidence found in existing research.” “The central question for developing broadband services and the infrastructure required to deliver them is how to provide the requisite incentives for carrier investment in such infrastructure,” noted Robert Crandall, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and a senior expert for Empiris, in a statement. “The Berkman Study ignores this issue, focusing instead on a policy of intra-platform competition that has been thoroughly discredited in...

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By Rahul Gaitonde, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com

Editor’s Note: The following is a BroadbandCensus.com summary and analysis of the recent report, “Next Generation Connectivity,” released by the Berkman Center, and commissioned by Federal Communications Commission. WASHINGTON, November 17, 2009 – The main purpose of the report by the Berkman Center at Harvard University, commissioned by the Federal Communications Commission, was to examine global broadband policies and determine how the United States may adopt principles employed by the rest of the world as a means of expanding the current state of domestic broadband. Among nations, there seem to be two different overarching goals, ubiquity and capacity. Many European nations seem to be reaching for a goal of ubiquity rather than capacity. While they do seek to obtain high-speed connections, their first goal has been to achieve mass adoption and availability of broadband. This ubiquity was a key portion of Japan’s early broadband planning, but now it has shifted toward higher-capacity connectivity. The U.S., said the Berkman report, has never had a properly-organized and centralized plan to promote either ubiquity or capacity. However, with the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program and the Universal Service Fund, it seems like the choice is being made toward ubiquity. Open access seems to be...

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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 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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