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Broadcast v. Broadband: You Decide

Blair Levin, Executive Director of the FCC’s Omnibus Broadband initiative, will join hosts Jim Baller and Marty Stern to discuss the latest thinking on repurposing broadcast spectrum for wireless broadband as part of the National broadband Plan, and how the idea has evolved since it was raised in late 2009, including the recently proposed “Mobile Future Auction.”

Connecting America: Broadband & Economic Opportunity

By the FCC

While broadband enabled technologies have clearly brought tremendous economic benefits, the benefits have not reached enough businesses, communities and American workers. Ensuring innovation flourishes across all aspects of the broadband system—broadband networks, devices, and applications—is crucial to the future of the country. The FCC will partner with businesses, including women-owned and minority-owned enterprises, as well as investors and entrepreneurs from all backgrounds to support a flourishing digital economy, and ensure that all Americans can enjoy the benefits of broadband opportunity.

A National Town Hall on the Broadband Stimulus Program

Separate Notices of Funds Availability (NOFA) and programmatic rules have just been released for the second and final round of funding under the Broadband Stimulus with several Billions of dollars in funding available in this last round. Applications for this second round are due in just over a month, on March 15, and this interactive live workshop will provide a first look at what’s changed from the first round and what applicants need to know in putting together successful broadband grant and loan applications.

Does Broadband Boost Local Economic Development?

This report assesses whether policies to raise broadband availability will contribute, as hoped, to local economic development. PPIC analysis relies on the fact that broadband technology has diffused unevenly throughout the United States, thus allowing us to compare economic indicators between areas with greater and less growth in broadband availability. Using broadband data from the Federal Communications Commission and economic data from several government and proprietary sources, researchers examine broadband availability and economic activity throughout the nation between 1999 and 2006.

Broadband Infrastructure and Economic Growth

By Nina Czernich, Oliver Falck, Tobias Kretschmer, Ludger Woessmann

We estimate the effect of broadband infrastructure, which enables high-speed internet, on economic growth in the panel of OECD countries in 1996-2007. Our instrumental-variable model derives its non-linear first stage from a logistic diffusion model where pre-existing voice-telephony and cable-TV networks predict maximum broadband penetration. We find that a 10 percentage-point increase in broadband penetration raises annual per-capita growth by 0.9-1.5 percentage points. Results are robust to country and year fixed effects and controlling for linear second-stage effects of our instruments. We verify that our instruments predict broadband penetration but not diffusion of contemporaneous technologies like mobile telephony and computers.

Next Generation Broadband as a Municipal Utility

It is in the national interest that higher-speed networks proliferate quickly and to the greatest extent possible – and that special measures be taken to ensure that these networks can be accessed by people who live beyond the major metropolitan areas. Accordingly, it is the position of the FTTH Council that anyone who has the means and the desire to build an FTTH network should be allowed and encouraged to do so.

Harvard’s Berkman Center: Broadband policy from around the world

Fostering the development of a ubiquitously networked society, connected over high-capacity networks, is a widely shared goal among both developed and developing countries. High capacity networks are seen as strategic infrastructure, intended to contribute to high and sustainable economic growth and to core aspects of human development.

USDA: “Broadband Internet’s Value to Rural America”

As broadband—or high-speed—Internet use has spread, Internet applications requiring high transmission speeds have become an integral part of the “Information Economy,” raising concerns about those who lack broadband access. This report analyzes (1) rural broadband use by consumers, the community-at-large, and businesses; (2) rural broadband availability; and (3) broadband’s social and economic effects on rural areas. It also summarizes results from an ERS-sponsored workshop on rural broadband use, and other ERS-commissioned studies.

Economic Stimulus Analyses and Related Matters

Federal Developments 2009-2010

Round Two

Round One

Key Stimulus Websites

Original Sources

Samples of Baller Herbst Analyses