Thursday, November 5th, 2009
Christina Kirchner, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, November 5, 2009 - Panelists at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation on Friday agreed that price and digital literacy have created a barrier to broadband demand that can affect more than just broadband adoption.
The event was based off of a report written by Robert Atkinson, president of ITIF, “Policies to Increase Broadband Adoption at Home.” The report said that of the 92 to 94 percent of Americans have the opportunity to subscribe to broadband, only 65 percent have chosen to do so. The broadband penetration number comes from the widely-regarded random-digit-dial surveys of the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
James Prieger, associate professor of public policy at Pepperdine University’s school of public policy, cited another barrier to adoption: the price of broadband service is just too high.
Creating subsidization programs for broadband, or lowering taxes that pertain to broadbandmight be additional possibilities, he said. Prieger said that Canada had used tax credits to subsidize broadband, which could be a possibility for the United States, too.
But Prieger cautioned, “Just because you have a plan, doesn’t mean that it is going to work.”
According to panelists, another problem for broadband adoption is that consumers may not recognize that...
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Monday, October 26th, 2009
By Winter Casey, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, October 26, 2009 - Absent from the notice of proposed rulemaking released by the Federal Communications Commission Thursday is the charged term of “network neutrality” that has been discussed over the years. Instead, the paper is focused on the need to preserve an “open internet” through government intervention.
The problem is that neither the principle of network neutrality – which deals with how broadband providers may charge differential rates for preferred business customers – or the need to preserve an “open internet” are precise words. Defining either for the purpose of government rules is not an easy task.
The focus on “open internet” versus “network neutrality” in the FCC’s proposed rules and the statement released by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski makes sense given that it is easier to find supporters of the former than the latter. Still, President Obama
used the term “network neutrality” during his campaign.
Regardless of the language used, the discussion of whether the government should become more involved to support network neutrality principles has gone on for years.
“Three years ago we were having a very different discussion; we didn’t have the kinds of applications on the Internet that we have today,” said Rob...
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Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
By Mercy Gakii, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, October 6, 2009 – The United States is lagging in technology innovation, thanks to a federal policy that has not kept up to pace with the speed of innovation changes, panelists said at an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation event on Tuesday.
Unlike in the days when federal funding was used to fund research projects, innovation changed over the past 30 years. According to Howard Wial of Brookings Institution, large firms which were making initially investing in research have been doing less risky business investments, leaving innovation less funded.
“The service industry, which includes technology, is now more important to our lives than it years back, but the government has not changed in how they view this industry,” Wial said.
There needs to be a national innovation foundation which can advocate for funding which will be used for directing innovation ventures, he said. Such a foundation would also give grants to research, funding for economic based developments and support technology diffusion. It would also fund actors in technology-based institutions in order to provide trainings for the public.
“We also need an early warning system that understands connections in industries, assess the impact of technology on production. Innovation needs a...
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Saturday, September 26th, 2009
Editor’s Note: This is the one of a series of panelist summary articles that BroadbandCensus.com will be reporting from the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, September 25-27, at George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Va.
By Rahul Gaitonde, Reporter, Broadband-Census.com
ARLINGTON, Va., September 25, 2009 - In a panel about the socio-economic impacts of broadband, panelists all agreed that the overwhelming limiting factor in proving the benefits to broadband was the lack of solid broadband data.
James McConnaughey, chief economist at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, said that “Having good data leads to good policy making,” but currently that policy-makers currently lack the necessary data to allow for effective cost-benefit analysis or even general societal implication analysis.
McConnaughey also said that broadband data collected must come from reliable and neutral sources. The Census Bureau has recently reinvigorated its efforts in this field, but it cannot be the only source.
Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, called for a National Broadband Data Warehouse.” Such a warehouse would house all the data on availability and usage which was collected by the government, and any organization which is getting federal funding to aid in broadband expansion or mapping. The data warehouse was...
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Monday, September 21st, 2009
By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, September 21, 2009 – Broadband data is important for the future of our country – and public and transparent broadband data is even more important.
Today, at this moment, new Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski is making a speech in which he is highlighting the vital principle of public and transparent broadband data.
For three years now, this principle has been the core belief animating my efforts as a journalist, and as the entrepreneur founding BroadbandCensus.com. Now, as we enter the fourth year since this saga began, it’s time to take stock and reflect on what BroadbandCensus.com has accomplished.
And with One Web Week having arrived, I’d like to lay out this history from a personal perspective. In this series of blog posts, I’m going to speak about what we’ve been through, who we have worked with to advance the principles of public and transparent broadband data, and what we ultimately aim to achieve at BroadbandCensus.com.
- Part 1: The debate begins with the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2006.
- Part 2, on One Web Day: The founding of BroadbandCensus.com in the fall of 2007.
- Part 3: The Broadband Census for America Conference in...
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Friday, July 31st, 2009
By Douglas Streeks, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, July 31, 2009 – Information technology can enable 21
st century schools by creating a student-centered learning environment where students learn at their own pace and help teachers guide students as they actively pursue their own learning path, rather than simply present information to a passive audience.
That was the message of a July 2009 report issued by Ted Kolderie and Tim McDonald of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, titled “How Information Technology Can Enable 21st Century Schools.”
According to the report, the federal government and states should “establish a state-level new schools entity for innovation, with the power and authority to realize a program of school innovation enabled by information technology.”
They also urged Congress to create a "New Schools America Fund” that would encourage state legislatures to create these specialized organizations that would be autonomous from the management of traditional schools. The authors said this approach would “allow new innovative schools to be evaluated outside the framework of the federal education reform law known as the No Child Left Behind Act."
Unlike traditional schools, said Kolderie and McDonald, these new schools would be information- technology centric, allowing “the student’s interests, needs, strengths and weaknesses to drive the...
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Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
By Douglas Streeks, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, July 23, 2009 - Broadband investment, deployment and adoption in the United States will bring significant benefits to the economy, and facilitate business growth and job creation, according to a study commission by the Internet Innovation Alliance, and other groups.
According to the July 2009 study, done by Mark Dutz, Jonathan Orszag and Robert Willig of Compass Lexecon, consumers in the U.S. are receiving “more than $30 billion of net benefits from the use of fixed-line broadband at home, with broadband increasingly being perceived as a necessity.”
The study, titled “The Substantial Consumer Benefits of Broadband Connectivity
for U.S. Households,” [
PDF] examined specific ways broadband benefits consumers and it’s overall effect on the economy.
The Internet Innovation Alliance is telecom- and technology-industry supported group urging a national broadband policy.
According to the study, the benefits to consumers are “on the order of $32 billion per year,” compared to roughly $20 billion in 2005.
Based on 2009 survey data, the study estimates that a 10-fold increase in broadband speeds would yield an additional $6 billion a year for existing home broadband users.
Further, this data only takes into account the effects of fixed-line internet connections. “The sizable benefits...
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Saturday, June 27th, 2009
By Douglas Streeks, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, June 27, 2009 - Higher-speed broadband connectivity and prompt broadband investments will aid social and economic goals, Ireland’s Department of Communications Minister Eamon Ryan said in a report issued on Monday.
Accord to a report by the Department of Communications, Energy, and Natural Resources, broadband development in Ireland has been very successful so far, mainly due to increased competition between the main telecom and cable operators.
The report touted increases in Irish broadband deployment by virtue of increased competition between the main telecom and cable operators. It also said that take-up of wireless and other third generation broadband services occurred at a faster pace in Ireland than in other countries.
“In the 12 months to March 2009, mobile broadband subscriptions increased by 90.6 percent,” the report said. “Broadband take-up in Ireland is nearly at 1.3 million subscribers, an increase of almost 300,000 since” last July.
The challenging economic climate will, however, “affect the development of the networks necessary to support bandwidth-intense applications and services.” The economic environment could “provide the impetus” to the telecom sector to adopt a creative approach in order to aid economic recovery, the report said.
The government should spur private sector investment by “lowering the cost...
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