Welcome to BroadbandCensus.com

By Lou Carlozo, Special Correspondent, BroadbandCensus.com

CHICAGO, November 18, 2009 - One striking sentiment dominated this week’s convention of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners: The federal government remains on nearly as steep a learning curve on crafting the future of broadband as many state agencies, and the best work ahead will likely get done when public and private concerns team up. “Of course more needs to be done, and they’re still learning [in Washington] how to reliably and effectively get the funds out,” said David Svanda of Svanda Consulting in Clarksville, Md., and a past president of NARUC. “It’s an ongoing learning process, and they clearly have their feelers out to learn more,” said Svanda. “I think they’ll take very seriously what they hear here. You couldn’t have two better people on the case.” By “they,” Svanda meant Larry Strickling, of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and Jonathan Adelstein, of the Rural Utility Service. These two key Obama administration broadband players have only been on the job only since the summer: the Senate confirmed Strickling in June, and Adelstein in July. They have their hands full intrying to figure out how to distribute $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus funding by September 2010. Are Strickling...

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By Andrew Feinberg, Deputy Editor, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, October 9, 2009 - An advisory board to the Federal Communications Commission consisting of state utility regulators has developed a new web portal for tracking and referencing broadband expansion projects nation-wide. The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act has allocated more than $7 billion towards broadband deployment and adoption projects, and the site, http://broadbandbestpractices.org, provides an easily searchable database for programs being established across the country. Users of the site will be able to research different projects and add their own information to collaborate on letting the best projects rise to the top, said the Federal-State Joint Conference on Advanced Services in a press release. The site will be maintained by the National Regulatory Research Institute, an independent research agency specializing in utility regulation. "BroadbandBestPractices.org will be the place to go for those responsible for pursuing greater broadband deployment in their State,” said NARUC President Frederick Butler. “The site will be an interactive, dynamic atmosphere that will embody the spirit of Web 2.0: Collaboration.” And State Chair of the Joint Conference Larry Landis said the site will be a "crucial resource" for State commissions as they determine how best to utilize ARRA grants. “The intent is to provide...

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News

By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, March 16, 2009 – As the Obama administration on Monday begins poring over the nitty-gritty details about how they will be spending $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus funds, individual states are grappling to find their own best strategies to tap the funds. At the public meeting on March 10, officials at the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration made clear that the broadband grants – unlike the past several decades’ trend toward “block grants” – will not be channeled through states. Rather, with the exception that at least one grant be awarded within each state, the NTIA’s broadband grants will up for grabs by the most qualified applicant. But that hasn’t discouraged representatives from states and state groups. In fact, many are quite pleased with the way the broadband stimulus program is taking shape, and are eager to have their voice heard in the next phase of the broadband stimulus process. Among their grounds for optimism:

• States and their political subdivisions are themselves eligible to receive grants through the various broadband programs of the NTIA and the Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities Service.
• States have the on-the-ground knowledge about particular communications needs that positions them to play the kind of coordinative and...

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News

By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com

November 11 – State telecommunications officials concerned about the universal deployment and use of high-speed internet services joined together at a San Jose conference on Thursday to compare notes, plot strategy and encourage programs and activities that will lead to better broadband nationwide. The states represented at the conference, the broadband summit of the Federal Communications Commission and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, were from Alaska, California, Iowa, Indiana, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Tennessee. The FCC-NARUC joint summit meeting was the first in three years – or the first since the last sputtering of the legal battles precipitated by the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Those fights concerned whether state regulators should have a say in setting competition rules for telephone services. By the end of 2004, federal courts had sided with Bell companies in urging federal regulation of telecommunications, cutting state regulators out of interstate communications. Internet services have generally also fallen in that category, often hamstringing the efforts of state regulators to act on broadband access within their states. This focus on federal telecommunications policy is one reason why it is the notion of a national broadband strategy that has been the talk of Washington policy circles in the...

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Press Release

Executive Director Drew Clark to Provide Legislative Update on Broadband Data Improvement Act

WASHINGTON, November 3 - Drew Clark, Editor and Executive Director of BroadbandCensus.com, will speak in Silicon Valley on Thursday, November 6, at the summit on broadband data sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. Clark, the journalist who launched BroadbandCensus.com in January 2008 as a means of providing the public with an objective measure of where broadband is available and which carriers offer it, was invited to speak at the "Broadband Summit: Connecting America." The joint FCC-NARUC summit is co-located with the Wireless Communications Association Symposium and Business Expo in San Jose, Calif. Clark will provide a "Legislative Update: Broadband Mapping Bill," from 12:40 p.m. to 1:10 p.m. He will speak in particular about the Broadband Data Improvement Act, S. 1492, which passed Congress and was signed into law by President Bush on Friday, October 10. He will also address other versions of broadband data legislation. Clark's remarks at the conference will be preceeded by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate, Indiana Utility Regulatory Commissioner Larry Landis, California Public Utility Commissioner...

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Blog Entries

By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, November 1 - BroadbandCensus.com applied on Saturday for a News Challenge grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The application, which can be viewed online at the newschallenge.org web site, lays out a plan of action for the future work of this web site. Here's the text of the application:

Project Title:

BroadbandCensus.com is Crowdsourcing Internet Access Community-by-Community: It's the Building Block

Requested amount from Knight News Challenge:

$900,000

Expected amount of time to complete project:

1 [year]

Total cost of project including all sources of funding:

$1,100,000

Describe your project:

You are probably reading this on a computing device. You probably have either a wired or a wireless internet connection. You probably have broadband access. What else do you know about your broadband connection? How well does your connection work? Is your carrier limiting your bandwidth? Do your neighbors have the broadband speeds and services that they need to connect to you? BroadbandCensus.com wants you to know everything about your broadband options. We want communities to know. The internet is international, but all broadband is local. BroadbandCensus.com understands this. We are building the knowledge base about broadband – through data, news and now through video. Just as the market for...

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Broadband Census Indiana (Sidebar)

By Drew Bennett, Special Correspondent, BroadbandCensus.com

Editor’s Note: BroadbandCensus.com has been surveying the state of broadband deployment and broadband data within each of the United States and its territories. Click here for the Indiana article. As part of BroadbandCensus.com’s goal of mapping out broadband speeds, prices, availability, competition and reliability, BroadbandCensus.com recently sponsored (with Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Texas at Austin and Virginia Tech’s eCorridors Program) the “Broadband Census for America Conference” on September 26, 2008. Indiana Utility Regulatory Commissioner Larry Landis was one of the speakers at the event. The spring 2009 conference, “Broadband Census for America: The New Administration,” is tentatively scheduled for Friday, March 27, 2009. October 22 - Indiana Commissioner Larry Landis is one of the most knowledgeable state utility regulators on telecommunications and broadband. In 2005, Landis was named to the Federal-State Joint Conference on Advanced Telecommunications Services, of which he is now State Chair, by Michael Powell, then-chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Last year he was appointed to a second four-year term on the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission by Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels. Through his service with the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), Landis has been a first-hand...

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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 Carrie DeLeon, Telecommunications Reports

A national broadband infrastructure fund should include the involvement of state regulators and focus not only on the extension of broadband service into unserved areas, but also on the adoption rate of broadband service by consumers, according to California Public Utilities Commissioner Rachelle Chong. During a keynote address this morning at the Broadband Census for America Conference in Washington, Commissioner Chong advocated for the implementation of a national broadband infrastructure fund, and suggested that the Universal Service Fund be reformed to shift the focus from traditional wireline to advanced services. “More assertive national leadership on broadband policy is not only necessary, but critical,” Commissioner Chong said. In addition, the former FCC regulator said that while some states, including California, have been successful in their efforts to map broadband data, a national mapping of broadband data could be helpful to states by enabling them to compare their...

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