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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 Winter Casey, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, October 28, 2009 - Many think of oil and paper industries as enemies in the war against climate change. They think of sport utility vehicle drivers and excessive paper use as contributing factors to global warming. But what about the carbon footprint of the information technology industry: the personal computers, e-mails, spam messages and electricity required to support internet infrastructure?

Information Technology Feeds Off Electricity

Information technology companies and products thirst for electricity. A 2007 study from Garnet found that the global information and communications technology industry accounts for roughly two percent of global carbon dioxide emissions through the use of PCs, servers, cooling, fixed and mobile telephony, local area network), office telecommunications and printers. According to another 2008 study, “the amount of electricity used by servers and other Internet infrastructure has become an important issue in recent years.” The research by Jonathan Koomey, currently a visiting professor at Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, found that aggregate electricity use for data centers, or facilities used to house computer systems and associated components such as storage systems, “doubled worldwide over the period 2000–2005. Almost all of this growth was the result of growth...

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By Christina Kirchner, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, August 27, 2009 – Experts speaking at the Federal Communications Commission’s August 27 broadband workshop on technology applications puzzled over the reasons for the United States’ lagging internet speed vis-à-vis other global competitors. Tim Napoleon, chief digital media strategist for Akamai Technologies, said that Seoul, South Korea, has the fastest average broadband service of the world, with average speeds of 11 Megabits per second (Mbps). With the speed of broadband affecting the applications on certain devices, the devices and the applications it utilizes must change in order to reap the benefits of faster internet connections. “There are issues concerning the connectivity of networks for devices,” said Evan Young, senior director of product telemarketing of TiVo. “One of these issues is the access of signal for using the networks.” Young said that when certain devices are only provided with certain networks – for example, the iPhone only uses AT&T wireless network –the consumer’s choice of services is limited. Devices connected to fixed and mobile wireless networks have an average speed of 3.8 Mbps, he said. With a connection speed that is lower than the average, watching videos or listening to music clips takes time people cannot afford, panelists said. Nor can the...

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From BroadbandCensus.com Weekly Report

WASHINGTON, July 27, 2009 – The National Broadband Plan took a Great Leap Forward last week as the Federal Communications Communication accepted reply comments on Tuesday (first-round filings were due June 8) in its mammoth proceeding. By February 17, 2010, the FCC is charged with producing this national plan, and it appears to be taking this responsibility very seriously. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has recruited Blair Levin, himself a contender for the top FCC slot, to run this plan, and the agency appears to be gearing up to run full steam through August with a series of public workshops. In the reply comments filed last week, a divide was apparent between providers, who urged the FCC to be cautious in its scope, and tech companies and content providers who appeared to be the agency’s key cheerleaders in its ambition to bring cheap, universal broadband throughout the nation. [more...]

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By Douglas Streeks, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, July 15, 2009 - Widespread broadband deployment and adoption is essential to economic recovery as well as social justice, House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C. said Tuesday morning at the July BroadbandCensus.com Breakfast Club. The recovery package planning process has been "one of the most rewarding experiences" Clyburn has had since joining the Congress, he said. But while Clyburn compared the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act to the New Deal programs of the 1930s, he soberly noted that many of the programs instituted by President Roosevelt left out minority communities like those he represents. “If you go back, you will notice most of the communities that I represent were left out," he said. Broadband access in particular could help rural America in areas like health information technology, Clyburn said. If broadband deployment isn't done correctly, any national health care strategy will fail, he said. Clyburn’s daughter Mignon Clyburn, formerly of the South Carolina Public Service Commission, has been nominated by President Obama for one of five slots on the Federal Communications Commission. Mignon Clyburn’s Senate Confirmation hearing is scheduled for Wednesday. Following introductory remarks was a panel discussion on “How the FCC's National Broadband Plan Will Affect Spending.” The event was...

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House Majority Whip Clyburn, D-S.C., Will Headline July 14 Panel on Role of FCC's National  Broadband Plan in the Broadband Stimulus

Press Release

WASHINGTON, July 9, 2009 - House Majority Whip James “Jim” Clyburn, D-S.C., has confirmed that he will speak at the Broadband Breakfast Club this upcoming Tuesday, July 14, 2009, hosted by BroadbandCensus.com.  The event will take place at Clyde’s of Gallery Place, beginning at 8 a.m. Clyburn, a former chair of the House Democratic Caucus, will be speaking on the Federal Communication Commission's national broadband strategy, and its role in the $7.2 billion federal broadband stimulus. A full breakfast is available beginning at 8 a.m.; the program will begin shortly after 8:30 a.m. With the release of the NoFAs for the National Broadband Plan, the current focus of the current Broadband Breakfast Club series is how the broadband stimulus dollars will be spent. The July 14 event will address the formation of the National Broadband Plan by the Federal Communications Commission, currently underway, and how it will impact federal broadband stimulus spending. Other confirmed speakers include:

• Paula Boyd, Regulatory Counsel from Microsoft
• Michael Calabrese, Vice President for the New America Foundation
• Barbara Esbin, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Communications and Competition Policy,...

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By Ryan Womack, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, June 30, 2009 – Even though it has been nearly a decade since effective pro-privacy legislation had been passed by Congress or pushed by the Federal Trade Commission, Center for Democratic Technology President Leslie Harris expressed optimism on the subject on Wednesday. ”While the stars aren’t in perfect alignment, they are moving to the right place,” Harris said at a press briefing. She was referring to a number of technology companies, including HP, eBay, Google, Intel, Oracle, and Microsoft that she said had came out in support of privacy regulation. Plus, House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee Rick Boucher, D-Va., is interested in moving privacy legislation. CDT emphasized the importance of privacy rules protecting against online behavioral targeted advertising, and against violations of electronic personal health records. CDT Chief Operating Officer Ari Schwartz said that “behavioral advertising issue has really become a privacy cause of the left.” He also noted concern about the merger of Google and DoubleClick in 2007. And he noted how broadband providers were seeking to engage in deep packet inspection, potentially violating the privacy of internet users. Schwartz said he expected the Internet Advertising Bureau to weigh in on privacy issues, too. Schwartz offered five areas in which privacy...

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By Ryan Womack, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, June 12, 2009 - More than two-dozen separate organizations joined to reinvigorate the public library as a community "watering hole" for broadband access as the  Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition held a launch event Thursday at Washington's  Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library . The coalition grew out of a realization that the Internet is now a  "fundamental cornerstone of modern education, learning...and the dissemination of information of free speech,” said director Jim Windhausen. The goal of the coalition is to direct Broadband Technology Opportunity Program funding to  anchor institutions in unserved areas, particularly  schools, libraries, and health facilities. While Jenni Terri of the American Library Association said that the economic stimulus funds are “only seed money,” ALA's hope is that the coalition can stand for the long term as a continual advocate for universal broadband. Libraries are  “interconnection points" that should be treated as integral "linchpins  of connectivity," said Microsoft Regulatory Counsel Paula Boyd. And hospitals will be a growing consumer of high-speed networks as telemedicine becomes more widespread in the American health care system, said American Hospital Association Senior Associate director of policy Rod Piechowski. With growing demand, BTOP funding can allow health care providers to show...

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