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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.

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.

Peregrine an economic windfall for the Cedar Valley

Peregrine Financial announced its intention to move the company headquarters from downtown Chicago to the Beaver Hills area of Cedar Falls. The project is expected to have a total economic impact of $124 million per year, thanks in large part to the Peregrine executives who are expected to move with the headquarters and their average yearly compensation of approximately $200,000 each.

Major Metro Cities, Mayors Call For National Broadband Action

The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) on Monday, June 23, unanimously passed a resolution calling for broadband deployment action at the national level. The resolution was co-sponsored by Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Miami Mayor Manny Diaz and calls on the Administration, the U.S. Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to develop a national broadband policy that makes high speed internet connections to cities a national imperative. The resolution also called for measures to preserve the ability of local governments to provide broadband services within their communities.

US Conference of Mayors Resolution 104

BE IT RESOLVED that if U.S. cities are to thrive as engines of economic growth and be globally competitive in the 21st Century, then the Administration, Congress and the FCC should take action now to develop a comprehensive national broadband policy that includes high speed broadband deployment to cities as an imperative;

New America Foundation event on Capitol Hill to introduce Baller Herbst paper

Although the U.S. once led the world in Internet deployment and innovation, our nation continues to plummet in international rankings in terms of broadband adoption, speeds and costs. As a result, there is growing support for an affirmative national broadband policy to promote more affordable and ubiquitous access to high-bandwidth connectivity. 

Mighty, Mighty Broadband” (in Wilson, NC)

By Fiona Morgan

Sanborn and Gentry Buchan live in a 1920s bungalow less than two miles from the center of Wilson, a city of 50,000 people a half hour east of Raleigh. The mother of a 2-year-old son, Gentry works from home as a sales rep for a cell phone company. Sanborn is home when he’s not traveling as a tobacco buyer, a rare job these days, but one that used to offer reliable work in Wilson, once a major world tobacco market.

NewNetworks on industry “Skunkworks”

Are any of these names familiar to you: TRAC, APT, Issue Dynamics, USIIA, New Millennium Research Council, BellSouth, Verizon, SBC, Pac Bell, United Church of Christ, USTA? – Washington is filled with astroturf groups that keep telling everyone they represent the public interest, but in reality represent the phone companies who pay them well. And Issue Dynamics, run by Sam Simon, has organized multiple groups for the Bell phone companies, all tax exempt, and all in an attempt to make regulators and the press believe that they have your best interests in mind.

Slate: Jump-starting our tech policy

Perhaps the only thing that’s actually improved over the last eight years under President Bush is technology (if not tech policy). In the sense that Nixon presided over an age of great films like The Godfather, the Bush era was also the age of Wikipedia, search engines, YouTube, and Facebook. But the Bush system of benign neglect can only go so far, leaving plenty to fix as soon as the next president takes office.