FCC Releases Report On U.S. Broadband

It’s out now. We can see the unvarnished truth. The entire story of how the nation that invented the internet (no matter who you give the greatest credit to) became the land of low speed, and lower penetration by population, than other countries, once considered backwards.

from Betanews

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the “broadband stimulus plan,” included the proviso that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) submit a National Broadband Plan to Congress by February 2010.

With just under five months left before the plan is due before Congress, the FCC today used the results of its 26 broadband-related workshops and hearings and nearly 41,000 pages of comments to describe the current state of broadband and enable Commissioner/public feedback for review.

“We still have a lot of work to do. But with all of the data we’ve gathered in our workshops and hearings, in the record, and in our own research, we think we have a pretty good handle on the status of broadband in the US,” said Blair Levin, Executive Director of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative.

FCC’s facts about US connectivity today:

• Actual broadband speeds lag advertised speeds by at least 50%*
• Speeds slower than 768 Kbps do not qualify as “basic broadband”
• Between 3-6 million Americans are unserved by basic broadband
• 4% of Americans have no broadband access at all due to geography
• 33% of Americans have access to broadband, but have not adopted
• 66% of Americans have adopted broadband at home
• More than 70% of high school students use the Internet as primary homework research tool
• There are no broadband connection services specifically for public safety, they have been limited to commercial services
• People with disabilities use the Internet half as much as people without
• Only 29% of lower income users have made purchases online, compared to 82% of upper income users
• More than 77% of Fortune 500 companies posted jobs and accepted applications online only in 2005, and that number has only increased

According to the Commission’s preliminary estimates, it will cost more than $20 billion to provide “universal availability” at speeds between 768 Kbps and 3 Mbps, and for 100 Mbps and above, it could cost more than $350 billion. Ensuring that all areas have either multiple carriers or multiple methods of connection to prevent local monopolies will make the cost “significantly higher.” Part of this includes assessing the wireless spectrum to accommodate future mobile broadband consumption.

So, other than the monetary figures, is this news to anyone? Wait. I should say anyone who is involved with the internet, because it is all news to those who don’t use it.

What I find odd, as a person who grew to maturity without the internet, is how much it has become an accepted, and more than that, an expected notion these days. My son and daughter are expected to have internet access, and not dial-up, because their studies need it, and the frustration level with dial-up would send them into a craze, in short order. There is no way around it, and use of the internet at a library, which, here in California is strictly rationed, won’t yield enough usage time. So much is expected, yet I wonder why. It is as though the teachers would have expected my access to the Library of Congress when I was a child in the many places where my step-dad was stationed in the military, well out of reach of ‘civilization‘ as we knew it. (You just don’t have access to a good library when in a town of 800 people, and located 90 miles from a major town. This situation happened more than once, as I grew up, as missile silos tend to be far away from major cities.)

It will only get worse. We are in the information age. To bring this country into the time where we lead in every way, we need access to all accessible information. It will only come when we have that access, so we had better, as a nation, get on with it, and make sure, by means of government intervention, that all citizens have it. (It’s certain that we don’t make enough physical product to change things.)

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if only we all had one of these in our hall closet…

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Quote of the day:

We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.

- Anais Nin