Welcome to BroadbandCensus.com

From BroadbandCensus.com Weekly Report

WASHINGTON, August 3, 2009 – Less than two weeks remain before the first round of applications are due in the federal government’s broadband stimulus grants. The key issues facing the government can be summed up in three words: data, data and data. Last week began a three-ring affair to sort out the mess that is the current state of our nation’s broadband data. In one circle is the Federal Communications Commission, which opened an inquiry concerning how it should release the key data that it has about broadband deployment – the Form 477. Specifically, the FCC was asking what it means to “aggregate” data, and whether and how confidentiality restrictions should condition its further release of this data. Initial responses were due last Thursday. Many major carrier and non-profit groups have replied. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration was also buzzing last week on the very same topic. In remarks at a Charlottesville, Va., workshop reported on by BroadbandCensus.com, NTIA chief Lawrence Strickling dusted off a lamp and let the data genie out of the bottle. “We need the data: I think it is a national imperative in which this data be collected,” Strickling said about the $350 million...

Read More »

Representatives of Amazon.com, AT&T, Public Knowledge, Technology Policy Institute and T-Mobile to Headline March 10 Broadband Breakfast Club

Press Releases

• NEW! - James Baller, President of Baller Herbst Law Group, will provide a brief summary of the progress of the U.S. Broadband Coalition before the beginning of the discussion about competition.

WASHINGTON, March 3, 2009 – The role of broadband competition is central to discussion about a National Broadband Strategy, and to the emerging process for states and companies to tap into the $7.2 billion in federal funds allocated last month for broadband services. Five top officials from the companies Amazon.com, AT&T, and T-Mobile, and from non-profit groups Public Knowledge and the Technology Policy Institute, will assemble at the Broadband Breakfast Club on March 10, 2009, to discuss "Broadband Competition: Do We Have It, and How Do We Get More of It?" The event begins at 8 a.m. Because of the public meeting on the broadband stimulus funds that is taking place at the Commerce Department at 10 a.m. on Tuesday -- immediately following the Broadband Breakfast Club -- this month's breakfast will conclude by 9:30 a.m. The speakers at the breakfast, at the Old Ebbitt Grill in Washington from 8 a.m. to 9:30...

Read More »

Blog Entries

By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, February 18, 2009 - Art Brodsky, communications director at Public Knowledge, has just posted a new piece about Connected Nation. In it, he writes:

The new stimulus package just signed by President Obama has $350 million in it for broadband mapping, yet even before the bill was signed, the danger warnings for this program are glaringly obvious: Who will control the information on broadband deployment? If the program is done correctly, then the program may bring some benefits to the effort to include all Americans in the digital economy. If not, much of the money will be wasted.

Increasingly, it is beginning to look as if the program will be done at the mercy of the big telecommunications companies, who will seek to submit the information they want to submit, on the terms and conditions on which they want to submit it.

State governments, working months before the stimulus package was conceived, are ramping up their own programs to map deployment of broadband, and are finding they are already increasingly running into conflicts over the type of data they will receive. Some states want comprehensive, granular data. However, they...

Read More »

News

Editor's Note: The following story was published in TR Daily on September 26, 2008, and is reprinted with the permission of Telecommunications Reports International, Inc. Notwithstanding the fact that content on the BroadbandCensus.com web site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License, this article is and remains Copyright 2008 Telecommunications Reports International, Inc.

By Lynn Stanton, TR Daily

State and federal government programs to develop maps of broadband service availability at a granular level must overcome objections by carriers to revealing what they view as proprietary information, although carriers may actually find the resulting maps beneficial, panelists at the Broadband Census for America Conference said today.

Speaking at the conference held at the Washington office of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Art Brodsky, director-communications at Public Knowledge, criticized the carriers’ objections to broadband mapping projects by questioning the proprietary and competitive value of information on where carriers have already deployed broadband services. He noted that carriers are not being asked about future deployment plans, which would more clearly involve competitive concerns.

Drew Clark, executive director of BroadbandCensus.com, which was one of...

Read More »

News

By Drew Bennett, Special Correspondent, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, October 7 – Congress last week passed legislation, the “Broadband Data Improvement Act,” that seeks better information about high-speed internet connections through enhanced data collection by five separate government agencies. But as passed by the Senate and the House, S. 1492 deleted all authorization of funds – an amount that had totaled $40 million for each of fiscal years 2008 through 2012 in the Senate Commerce Committee version of the legislation. Although S. 1492 was agreed to by the House, the bill undercut many of the key features of a companion House bill, the “Broadband Census of America Act,” H.R. 3919. H.R. 3919 passed the House in November 2007. It would have forced the disclosure of company-by-company broadband data. It also would have created a national broadband map under the aegis of the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, with details on broadband coverage by every broadband provider at the nine-digit ZIP code level. Both features are absent in the final bill. The Senate finally passed S. 1492 on Friday, September 26 – the same day that many state officials and academics gathered in Washington at the “Broadband Census for America Conference” sponsored by BroadbandCensus.com, Carnegie Mellon...

Read More »

The Broadband Census for America Conference welcomes the nation’s foremost broadband policy-makers and experts on broadband data collection, distribution and mapping. Also see the official conference web page at http://broadbandcensus.com/conference.

Conference Bios and Key Resources:

• Art Brodsky, Public Knowledge
  • Art Brodsky has been the communications director of Public Knowledge since February 2004. He is a veteran of Washington, D.C. telecommunications and Internet journalism and public relations.Art worked for 16 years with Communications Daily, a leading trade publication. He covered Congress through the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other major pieces of legislation. He also covered telephone regulation at the the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and at state regulatory commissions. In addition, he has covered the online industry since before there was an Internet, coming in just after videotext died but before the World Wide Web. Art was later an editor with Congressional Quarterly, with responsibilities for the daily and Web coverage of telecom, tech and other issues. Art’s freelance work has appeared in publications as diverse as the Washington Post, Huffington Post, TomPaine.com, TPMcafe and the World Book encyclopedia....

    Read More »

Broadband Census Maryland

By Drew Bennett, Special Correspondent, BroadbandCensus.com

This is the 12th of a series of articles surveying the state of broadband, and broadband data, within each of the United States. September 11 - Being a first-mover is a blessing and a curse. When it comes to state-led broadband initiatives, Maryland has been an early innovator at confronting the long road towards state-wide universal broadband access. Among the most recent accomplishments for the state was, two months ago, Gov. Martin O’Malley’s approval of a license allowing the Maryland Broadband Cooperative to begin installing broadband fiber up the eastern shore of Maryland and across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. It’s another milestone in a road that is now over a decade long. In 1998, the Maryland General Assembly created the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) “as a public instrumentality of the state” and tasked it with funding technology-focused programs and initiatives contributing to Maryland’s economic and business development. By 2002, TEDCO had completed a comprehensive state-wide eReadiness study. It led to TEDCO’s recommendation that Maryland develop a broadband task force to address deficits in broadband connectivity in rural parts of the state. The legislature accepted TEDCO’s recommendation, approving funding for the Task Force for the Development of...

Read More »

Key Academics, State Officials and Broadband Data Collectors to Speak

Embassy of Ireland to Give Luncheon Keynote Address on Publicly-Available Broadband Data

Coverage of the Broadband Census for America Conference

• Broadband Census for America Conference Web Site
• Tvol's Flickr photostream of the Broadband Census for America Conference
• "Propriety Data Cited as Challenge for Broadband Mapping," by Lynn Stanton, TR Reports
• "Regulators, Officials Debate Need for National Broadband Policy, Fund," by Carrie DeLeon, TR Reports
• "Service Providers Should Report Better Metrics, Panelists Say," by Scott Sleek, Broadband Advisory Services, Pike & Fischer
• "U.S. Copes with Broadband Statistics Void," IP Democracy
• "Guessing at data," Susan Crawford's blog
• "Experts call for broadband transparency,"by Maya Prabhu, ESchool News
• American Library Association District Dispatch

For Immediate Release

WASHINGTON, September 8, 2008 – Many of the nation’s foremost broadband policy-makers and experts will analyze and discuss best practices for improving the collection and sharing of public data about high-speed internet access at the Broadband Census for America Conference in Washington, D.C., on Friday, September 26, 2008. Panelists at the half-day conference include Rachelle Chong, California Public Utility Commissioner; broadband data pioneer Professor Kenneth Flamm...

Read More »