Category: Community Broadband

Cost of Connectivity 2013

From New America Foundation

Last year, the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute published The Cost of Connectivity, a first-of-its-kind study of the cost of consumer broadband services in 22 cities around the world. The results showed that, in comparison to their international peers, Americans in major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC are paying higher prices for slower Internet service. While the plans and prices have been updated in the intervening year, the 2013 data shows little progress, reflecting remarkably similar trends to what we observed in 2012.

Evolution and Prospects of Cable Networks for Broadband Services

In the summer of 2012, an excellent TNO report appeared, describing the evolution and prospects of Cable networks for Broadband services. In it, TNO set out how owners of a coax cable network can upgrade in steps and withstand the competition from an optical fiber network as long as possible. The provision of Gigabit broadband services is the new challenge for cable networks. With existing DOCSIS3.0 techniques, cable networks are marketing broadband services to 150 Mb/s.

Sourcewatch Background Report Website

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) publishes SourceWatch, this collaborative, specialized encyclopedia of the people, organizations, and issues shaping the public agenda. SourceWatch profiles the activities of front groups, PR spinners, industry-friendly experts, industry-funded organizations, and think tanks trying to manipulate public opinion on behalf of corporations or government. We also highlight key public policies they are trying to affect and provide ways to get involved. In addition, SourceWatch contains information about others who help document information about PR spin, such as reporters, academics, and watchdog groups.

State Developments 2012

National Broadband Plan relies on communities to drive innovation

Blair Levin is one of the premier communications strategists in the country who led in the creation of the National Broadband Plan and now serves as executive director of Gig.U. His remarks this summer during an exclusive interview remain of great value to the networking community in the Triangle, which is why it was chosen to represent the seventh day of this year’s 12 Days of Broadband.

Strategic Networks Group: “e-NC Strategy Report”

e-NC and SNG announced the findings of a comprehensive study of residents and businesses in the state of North Carolina.  In all, 30,000 households and 70,000 businesses and organizations were surveyed to uncover utilization of broadband and e-solutions statewide, with 1,492 households and 6,266 businesses and organizations responding. The e-Solutions Benchmarking and accompanying e-Strategy report from SNG was funded by a grant to the e-North Carolina Authority by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce

Eliminating the Waiting Game and Driving Network Uptake

By Doug Adams & Michael Curri, Strategic Networks Group

In working across the globe and working with multiple carriers deploying new, more robust broadband networks, Strategic Networks Group (SNG) consistently comes up against the notion that once the network is built, adoption will naturally follow. “Build it and they will come” is a school of thought that expresses the great hope that potential subscribers will naturally adopt, however this notion goes against what we have always known about technology adoption.

Innovation and Employment in the Intelligent Community

In 2013, Intelligent Community Forum will examine the relationship between innovation – one of the Intelligent Community Indicators – and employment in communities around the world. A massive body of evidence points to the fact that innovation creates prosperity. The prosperity flows from new demand – who needed an iPod or iPad until one was created? – or from empowering us to do more with the same resources of raw materials, people and money. But prosperity is not always the same as employment. In each recession of the past 50 years, job recovery has been significantly slower than in the previous recession. The recent recession in the industrialized world is only the most dramatic example of a “jobless recovery” – and that is in nations managing to post positive economic numbers at all.

Upgrading America and Achieving a Strategic Bandwidth Advantage

Upgrading America: Achieving a Strategic Bandwidth Advantage And a Psychology of Bandwidth Abundance To Drive High-Performance Knowledge Exchange

Fujitsu Conference on Paving the Road to Unlimited Bandwidth: Technologies and Applications for a Connected Age

San Jose, California June 13, 2012

Blair Levin Speech

Can’t Afford Broadband for Your Community? Think again.

By Craig Settles

I spent Monday and Tuesday this week at the Freedom to Connect (F2C) conference in DC, which was a great event on many levels. One truly cool aspect was hanging out with a bunch of advocates and doers who believe in the power of communities finding their best broadband solutions (from a myriad of public, private and nonprofit options) to address the dismal state of broadband in the US.

Primer: What Fiber Broadband Can Do For Your Community

From Broadband Communities Magazine

Fiber to the home (FTTH) has become the leading technology for next-generation communications networks worldwide. On every continent, telecom providers are building fiber optic networks. They know that only FTTH can meet the growing demand for broadband services that require delivering video to (and from) multiple tablets, computers and television sets in a home, all at the same time.