Tomorrow, the Federal Communications Commission will deliver to Congress a National Broadband Plan setting an ambitious agenda for connecting all corners of the nation while transforming the economy and society with the communications network of the future — robust, affordable Internet.
“The National Broadband Plan is a 21st century roadmap to spur economic growth and investment, create jobs, educate our children, protect our citizens, and engage in our democracy,” said Chairman Julius Genachowski, in the press release. “It’s an action plan, and action is necessary to meet the challenges of global competitiveness, and harness the power of broadband to help address so many vital national issues.”
“In every era, America must confront the challenge of connecting the nation anew,” said Blair Levin, Executive Director of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative at the FCC, in the press release. “Above all else, the plan is a call to action to meet that challenge for our era. If we meet it, we will have networks, devices, and applications that create new solutions to seemingly intractable problems.”
Closing Broadband Gaps
Titled “Connecting America: The National Broadband Plan,” the Plan found that while broadband access and use have increased over the past decade, the nation must do much more to connect all individuals and the economy to broadband’s transformative benefits. Nearly 100 million Americans lack broadband at home today, and 14 million Americans do not have access to broadband even if they want it. Only 42 percent of people with disabilities use broadband at home, while as few as 5 percent of people living on Tribal lands have access. Meanwhile, the cost of digital exclusion for the student unable to access the Internet to complete a homework assignment, or for the unemployed worker who can’t search for a job online, continues to grow.
Other gaps threaten America’s global competitiveness. A looming shortage of wireless spectrum could impede U.S. innovation and leadership in popular wireless mobile broadband services. More useful applications, devices, and content are needed to create value for consumers. And the nation has failed to harness broadband’s power to transform delivery of government services, health care, education, public safety, energy conservation, economic development, and other national priorities.
America’s 2020 Broadband Vision
The Plan’s call for action over the next decade includes the following goals and recommendations:
• Connect 100 million households to affordable 100-megabits-per-second service, building the world’s largest market of high-speed broadband users and ensuring that new jobs and businesses are created in America.
• Affordable access in every American community to ultra-high-speed broadband of at least 1 gigabit per second at anchor institutions such as schools, hospitals, and military installations so that America is hosting the experiments that produce tomorrow’s ideas and industries.
• Ensure that the United States is leading the world in mobile innovation by making 500 megahertz of spectrum newly available for licensed and unlicensed use.
• Move our adoption rates from roughly 65 percent to more than 90 percent and make sure that every child in America is digitally literate by the time he or she leaves high school.
• Bring affordable broadband to rural communities, schools, libraries, and vulnerable populations by transitioning existing Universal Service Fund support from yesterday’s analog technologies to tomorrow’s digital infrastructure.
• Promote competition across the broadband ecosystem by ensuring greater transparency, removing barriers to entry, and conducting market-based analysis with quality data on price, speed, and availability.
• Enhance the safety of the American people by providing every first responder with access to a nationwide, wireless, interoperable public safety network.
The Plan was mandated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February 2009 and produced by an FCC task force that set new precedents for government openness, transparency, and rigor. Information for the plan was gathered in 36 public workshops, 9 field hearing, and 31 public notices that produced 75,000 pages of public comments. The debate went online with 131 blogposts that triggered 1,489 comments; 181 ideas on IdeaScale garnering 6,100 votes; 69,500 views on YouTube; and 335,000 Twitter followers. The task force augmented this voluminous record with independent research and data-gathering.
About half of the Plan’s recommendations are addressed to the FCC, while the remainder are for Congress, the Executive Branch, state and local government, working closely with the private and nonprofit sectors. The full Plan will be released to the public on Tuesday.
More information about the National Broadband Plan can be found at www.broadband.gov.
Source: U.S. Federal Communications Commission
Welcome to the 21st century.
Better late than never.
What I don’t like is the plan to pull “free” over-the-air television frequencies and sell/grant the airwaves to others. No more free TV is not good for a huge number of people. The cable/sat companies will love this.
C’mon congress, DO NOT screw this up! I believe we can do this. (before 2020)
As long as this system is in private companies hands our freedoms will not be compromised…..
About friggin’ time. We’re so behind Europe and Asia it’s not even funny….
@silverhawk, I do agree with you to some extent, but free TV has really botched things over the years. What I’d prefer instead would be a free section of spectrum that could be used by anyone to broadcast. Something like what the cable access channels were supposed to be, but actually functional….
Stupid socialists! Right, MDN?
Isnt going to matter. The bottlenecks are in the servers/routers. I’ve got 20mbps fiber and it still hangs loading sites etc. It’s great once a download link is established but for regular surfing it’s not the life altering experience people think it is.
“As long as this system is in private companies hands our freedoms will not be compromised”
lololololoLOLOLOLolololol
In future we will tell our grandsons:
“In my old days it took few hours to download .avi video. You couldn’t watch whole youtube video without waiting until it buffers…”
How?
Riiiiight. This will happen.
Put it in the pile next to moonbase.
Will the Party of NO say yes?
Uninspired and predictable.
Within 5 years? Now that would be interesting.
Why is our government so afraid to take on spectacular goals?
Boner pulled one.
“Party of know”
There. Fixed it.
By the time 2020 rolls around, these goals will be laughable. If they said this would be for next year (2011), then I’d get excited … except I doubt they could pull it off so quickly.
Way late and way over budget plus higher taxs is more like what’s going happen. By then it won’t make a difference in our lives.
“… and make sure that every child in America is digitally literate by the time he or she leaves high school.”
You would think that they would want every child to first be able to read and write.
How are you going to make every child “digitally literate” when many can’t read or write?
@macromancer
Sounds like what you need is to change your DNS to one of the free ones. Probably 10 times faster than the one provided by your ISP.
Here’s another take and some background on this whole issue. Comments there are rather interesting.
http://www.tvnewscheck.com/articles/2010/03/12/daily.4/
And the airport that serves the airlines in my city had been talking about a parallel runway since the mid 1980’s.
Let’s hope the Broadband upgrade plan has better success!
Affordable? Were all getting gouged by the cable companies for even the slowest speeds.
There was just an article or two last week showing that the US may seem to lag behind Europe. However, the article offers several metrics that we actually don’t. If I wasn’t mobile, I’d include a reference. I’d urge you to Google it.
When will we return to our free market roots and let competition handle this?
“Why is our government so afraid to take on spectacular goals?”
Romeodawg: the difference between JFK and Obamanation.
The incumbents (cable, telco, mobile) will fight this.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/community.html
Gotta make sure that ALL the people, (I didn’t say citizens), living in the USA can be got to by big government, whether they pay for it or not. Marx would have loved this.