From BroadbandCensus.com Weekly Report
DALLAS, May 4, 2009 – Regulations have not yet been issued regarding the federal government’s program to invest $7.2 billion in broadband networks, but experts inside and outside of government took their best shot at explaining the program’s contours at the Broadband Properties conference here.
The conference brought together many of the network builders likely to benefit from such investments. The experts addressed the core broadband program being jointly administered by the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities Service.
Speaking at the conference, Ken Kuchno, director of the Broadband Division of RUS, outlined the elecommunications
programs within USDA’s current budget: $690 million for its traditional loan program focused on rural carriers; $400 million for its broadband loan program, which was initiated as part of the 2002 Farm Bill; and $13 million under its so-called Community Connect program. That Community Connect window closes June 19, and the rules were announced next week.
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Friday, March 20th, 2009
News | NTIA-RUS Forum | Day 4, Session 3
By Jesse Masai, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, March 20, 2009 – Debate about the broadband divide in America resurfaced at a Thursday afternoon public roundtable about how the federal government should spend $7.2 billion in broadband.
Thursday was the fourth of six days of public hearings by the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities Service, and the afternoon discussion, about rural and unserved areas, was the final panel focus on the broadband “have-nots.”
Other topics – including interconnection obligations, the role of the states, and broadband mapping – will be considered in a public forum in Washington on Monday. Tuesday, the final day of public hearings, will raise the subjects of compliance, selection criteria and community economic development.
In his second appearance in the public forums, Geoffrey Blackwell of Chickasaw Nation Industries, Inc., and chairman of the National Congress of American Indians’ telecommunications subcommittee, said broadband technology needs an "evolving" and "scalable" definition.
Blackwell said the government and non-governmental organizations have a historic and strategic chance to meet the needs of unserved and underserved areas.
Eric Peterson, executive director of the Rural Cellular Association, said broadband technology should be advanced so as...
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Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
News: Special Election Day Report
By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com; and Drew Bennett, Special Correspondent, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, November 4 – The Federal Communications Commission on Monday deleted one of the four big-ticket items that it planned to tackle at its Tuesday open meeting, but resisted pressure to spike a rule that would force broadcasters to share the vacant spaces between television channels.
In pulling FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s plan to overhaul both the universal service fund and inter-carrier compensation system – or the rates that telephone companies pay each other to connect calls – Martin ran up against a four-commissioner revolt against his plan.
In dueling press releases on Monday, Martin blamed his fellow commissioners for seeking a one-month delay of the plan. He said that they will not “be prepared to address the most challenging issues” come December.
The other four commissioners – two Republicans and two Democrats – cited the need to circulate the comments more widely. “Any reform proposal [must] receive the full benefit of public notice and comment – especially in light of the difficult economic circumstances currently facing our nation,” said the four commissioners.
But Martin hasn’t backed down yet from his goal to force broadcasters to share the “white spaces”...
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Thursday, July 17th, 2008
Blog Entries
By Drew Clark, Editor, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, July 17 - Communications Workers of America this past week teamed up with a group of telecommunications companies, cable operators and non-profit groups to push for Congress to pass broadband data legislation.
In a Friday letter and a Monday press release, the groups wrote "to express [their] strong support for Congressional action to promote greater availability and adoption of broadband high-speed Internet services."
They want "a national policy" to encourage more broadband deployment, and they cite economic statistics about broadband's potential.
And, as a first step, these companies and CWA want Congress to pass the Broadband Census of America Act, H.R. 3919, or the Broadband Data Improvement Act, S. 1492.
Curiously, last month another large coalition announced a similar campaign. They call themselves Internet for Everyone.
Led by Google and the non-profit group Free Press, the organization boasts some the Internet's leading luminaries, including Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig and internet "co-father" Vint Cerf, now at Google.
"Broadband’s potential to unleash innovation, promote free speech and encourage learning makes this technology the key to the future success of the U.S. economy and American democracy," read the group's first position paper. "But to unlock broadband’s limitless potential, it must be universally...
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Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
Commentary
The following commentary appears in the current issue of Opastco Advocate, a monthly newsletter published by the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies. Reprinted by permission.
By Drew Clark, Executive Director, BroadbandCensus.com
Most Americans who have high-speed Internet can’t imagine life without broadband. How could you connect to the Internet of today without it? In today’s world, broadband is as basic as running water and electricity. And yet the U.S. is falling behind globally. As a technology reporter, I’ve been writing about the battles over broadband and the Internet for nearly a decade in Washington. Yet there is one fact about which nearly everyone seems to be in agreement: if America wants better broadband, America needs better broadband data.
That’s why I’ve recently started a new venture to collect this broadband data, and to make this data freely available for all on the Web, at http://BroadbandCensus.com.
The information and news that is available for free at BroadbandCensus.com is more important now than ever before. The FCC has just made important changes to how it will collect data from carriers. The agency may make even more significant changes in the near future. Public and private sector groups...
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Monday, July 14th, 2008
News
By William G. Korver, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, July 14 – A study about broadband adoption by the Phoenix Center is a better gage of United States deployment than the higher-profile reports of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Republican Federal Communications Commissioner said Monday.
FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate said that the Phoenix Center study, unlike those of OECD, considered the availability of wireless technologies known as Wi-Max and Wi-Fi, and hence provided more complete data about broadband.
The U.S. boasts more than 66,000 Wi-Fi hotspots, more than any other nation in the world, Tate said.
The Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies is an academic research organization supported in recent years by Bell telecommunications companies.
Take spoke on Monday at the annual convention of the Organization for the Promotion and Enhancement of Small Telecommunication Companies (OPASTCO), available via a telephone bridge.
In addition to failing account for the wireless technologies, the OECD does also not appropriately consider household sizes and broadband investments by schools and libraries within its figures, Tate said.
Although critical of OECD numbers, which show that America is in 15th place for broadband deployment among OECD member nations, she agreed that the U.S. has “room to improve.”
Under...
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