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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Friday, January 23rd, 2009
News
By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
January 23, 2009 - The government of Ireland on Thursday announced a "National Broadband Scheme" to deliver broadband throughout the island nation, investing €223 million (U.S. $362 million) on high-speed internet infrastructure.
Ireland currently has over 1.2 million subscribers to broadband, according to the government of Ireland, which provides a detailed map of broadband availability by location, by company and by speed.
The National Broadband Scheme will provide broadband to the remaining 10% of Ireland's population -- or approximately 33% of the area of the country. (
See Ireland's map.)
Under the plan, Ireland aims to have 100% coverage by September 2010, with half of the area under the scheme will be covered by the end of 2009.
The Irish government's announcement comes at a time when the United States Congress is considering a potential U.S. $6 billion investment in broadband infrastructure as part of the stimulus package.
See BroadbandCensus.com's Broadband Wiki for coverage.
With a population of 4.2 million, the $362 million Irish investment amounts to a per capita investment in broadband of $87 per Irish citizen. If the $6 billion figure passed by the House Appropriations Committee continues, the proposed investment would amount to...
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Tuesday, October 7th, 2008
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...
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Monday, September 8th, 2008
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...
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Thursday, August 7th, 2008
'Broadband Census for America' Conference to Focus on Sharing Publicly-Available Broadband Data
Save the Date Announcement
Editor's Note: The agenda for the Broadband Census for America Conference was released on September 8, 2008, and is available at http://broadbandcensus.com/blog/?p=569. Please visit the page for fuller details about the conference program.
WASHINGTON, August 7, 2008 - BroadbandCensus.com, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Texas at Austin's Robert S. Strauss Center, and the Virginia Tech eCorridors Program invite government officials, academic researchers and other key stakeholders to a half-day conference on collecting and sharing public data about high-speed internet access.
The conference, “
Broadband Census for America,” aims to assemble state, local and federal officials engaged in gathering and mapping information about broadband availability, competition, speeds, prices and quality of service. Academic researchers will lend their perspective on the importance of universal broadband data.
Keynote speakers scheduled to address the conference include:
- Eamonn Confrey, First Secretary, Information and Communications Policy, Embassy of Ireland. Mr. Confrey has confirmed as the luncheon speaker on “Mapping out Broadband for Consumers: The Irish Experience.”
- Massachusetts Representative Ed Markey*, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. (*Invited to present opening keynote.)
The conference will also feature two...
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Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
News
By William G. Korver, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, July 29 – Basing telecommunications policy around the faulty ranking system of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development would lead to an “ill-defined national broadband strategy,” officials from the Phoenix Center think tank said Monday.
Decrying the widespread assumption that America has fallen behind the rest of the world in broadband penetration, George Ford and Lawrence Spiwak criticized the OECD's ranking system at a luncheon in the Rayburn House Office Building.
The current OECD system ranks measures broadband penetration on a per capita, and not a per household basis, which has led to countries with smaller household sizes moving up in the chart since 2001.
People do not buy broadband connections, Ford said; rather, households and businesses buy broadband conections.
Moreover, said Ford and Spiwak, countries that have risen in recent rankings – Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Netherlands – are small and do not have large rural areas where broadband deployment remains a challenge.
Additionally, many countries that were near the top in broadband rankings in 2001 have since fallen, said Ford. “Miracle” Japan has dropped in the OECD ratings, for example. In spite of having 100 Megabit per second-capable broadband networks, Japan ranked behind the U.S....
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Monday, July 28th, 2008
Blog Entries
By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
A recent post to the Open Infrastructure Alliance mailing list:
WASHINGTON, July 28 - I am heartened to see the very active discussion that is now taking place around the issue of “public-private partnerships.”
And David Reed’s comments raise the issue of the lack of transparency, which is of particular concern, particularly when the public-private partnership aims to speak for the “public.”
I’ve recently started up BroadbandCensus.com, a web service devoted to providing, for free, public information about not only broadband availability — but also about broadband competition, broadband speeds, and broadband prices. You can read more about us at
http://broadbandcensus.com/home/aboutus
BroadbandCensus.com is produced by Broadband Census LLC, a private company that I set up in order to run the web site, and to make it available to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License. Our license ensures that all public entities, academic institutions, and others, may make non-commercial use of the contents of our web site — for free — so long as they provide attribution. We receive no funding from broadband providers, but are supported by contributions from the Benton Foundation, and under a contract with the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
On...
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Friday, July 18th, 2008
Regulatory Filing
Editor's Note: The following is the regulatory filing made by BroadbandCensus.com in the Federal Communications Commission's inquiry about how to best map out information about local broadband. Footnotes are available in the PDF version of file. (The link is at bottom.)
By Drew Clark, Executive Director, BroadbandCensus.com
COMMENTS OF BROADBANDCENSUS.COM IN RESPONSE TO THE FURTHER NOTICE OF PROPOSED RULEMAKING
I. INTRODUCTION
BroadbandCensus.com respectfully submits these comments in response to the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“Further Notice”)1, released June 12, 2008, in the above-captioned proceeding of the Federal Communications Commission (“Commission”). We respond to the invitation for comment on Section IV(B) of the Further Notice.2
BroadbandCensus.com is a new, free web service that allows the public to share and learn information about where individual broadband companies provide service. In taking the Broadband Census, consumers enter their ZIP+4 codes, identify their carriers, rate their services and conduct a free broadband speed test. Doing so enables them to compare their actual internet speeds against what their carriers promise.3 They are also invited to make comments, which are posted on the web site of BroadbandCensus.com, about the service quality of their broadband provider.
BroadbandCensus.com is a consumer-focused service with an aim to better inform the public and policy-makers...
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