Lobbyists converge on broadband Web battle

The Hill

The FCC proposal to bring broadband under tighter regulatory control has triggered a fierce lobbying battle in Washington.

Tech companies, cable firms and phone service providers have upped their lobbying spending. Top technology CEOs have stopped by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s office to express their point of view. And companies that have never hired lobbyists in the past have set up K Street accounts for the first time.

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Bahrain (and 8 other countries) have more connected homes than U.S., study says

Los Angeles Times

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Canada is better than us at something.

Our neighbor to the north is tied for third among countries with the top home Internet penetration rates, with 86% of adults reporting Web access in their homes, according to a Gallup poll published Wednesday. The United States is in 10th place with 81%.

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Pelosi links broadband policies to Democrats' manufacturing efforts

TheHill.com

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday that federal efforts to expand broadband access to all Americans play an "essential" role in breathing life into the nation's manufacturing sector, which she described as a key Democratic goal.

She told the Communications Workers of America that that expanding broadband access to all Americans is a priority akin to healthcare reform.

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Sanders: Stimulus funds had big impact in Vermont

Times Argus

In an effort to get a handle on the overall effect of the federal stimulus program on Vermont, U.S. Sen. Bernard Sanders’ office has been working to get a rough idea of what the massive program meant in the Green Mountain State.

The end result is a survey of the dozens of programs in the $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that could amount to as much as $1.3 billion – and perhaps 7,000 jobs by the report’s estimate – for Vermont over a period stretching two years.

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COLUMN: The long strategy

New York Times

I was a liberal Democrat when I was young. I used to wear a green Army jacket with political buttons on it — for Hubert Humphrey, Birch Bayh, John F. Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt. I even wore that jacket in my high school yearbook photo.

It’s a magic green jacket. I can put it on today and, suddenly, my mind shifts back to the left. I start thinking like a Democrat, feeling a strange accompanying hunger for brown rice.

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Making money in the middle mile

Connected Planet

The RUS’ Broadband Initiatives Program and the NTIA’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program have awarded 47 middle-mile projects totaling $1.3 billion to date. These awards are intended for the extension of the information superhighway to underserved or unserved parts of the country, mainly in small towns and rural areas.

The term "middle mile" is relatively new to the telecom lexicon. We already know middle mile as the interexchange or interoffice network or, in some cases, the backhaul network. It’s all the same.

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Peggy Timmerman: Rural business owners need high-speed Internet

Wisconsin State Journal

A recent letter bemoaning the use of tax dollars as stimulus funds to provide high-speed Internet in rural Marquette and Adams counties is a perfect example of the rural-urban divide in this country.

Unfortunately, our government was slow to realize that Internet access should have been regulated and treated as a utility from the outset. (Remember the Rural Electrification Program?)

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Speed limits changing on information superhighways

Creston News

PRINCETON, Mo. — The communities of Lorimor, Murray and Thayer, along with surrounding rural areas, are part of an extensive plan to expand broadband Internet service in Iowa and Missouri.

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development awarded Grand River Mutual Telephone Company $40.9 million in loans and grants stemming from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act federal stimulus package to upgrade Internet capabilities in three service areas encompassing more than 4,000 homes.

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Good news all around for telehealth projects

IT Business Edge

The Federal Communication Commission’s plan to bring broadband to rural health care facilities is good news for people who live in remote areas. But it also could be a sign of changes to the Universal Services Fund (USF), a longstanding system aimed at subsidizing phone services in remote locales.

Computerworld does a good job of explaining what’s going on. The basic idea, which virtually anyone would find laudable, is to provide broadband, and with it advanced diagnostic, telehealth and other services, to more than 2,000 facilities that are far from cities or suburbs.

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Rural broadband: Miles to go before we sleep

GoingWiMax.com

As the United States recovers from the great recession, it is even more critical to focus on broadband deployment to ensure that Americans have the necessary tools to compete worldwide. This is the first of a series of articles that addresses broadband deployment, with recommendations for its improvement. This article focuses on rural broadband deployment.

Broadband allows users to reach the Internet at higher speeds than they could with traditional modems.

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NTIA gives broadband grant to group for deaf

PC World

The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has awarded a $15 million broadband grant to Communication Service for the Deaf, a nonprofit focused on providing deaf and hard-of-hearing U.S. residents with communications services.

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Expanding Broadband initiatives

By Gary Audin
Delphi, Inc.

The cause of expanding broadband/Internet wired and wireless services has received new emphasis by the federal government. The more there is available broadband access at affordable rates, the better for the economy, affecting consumers, businesses, governments and educational institutions.

A recent article in the New York Times, "High Speed for the Sparsely Wired", July 9, 2010, focused on the expansion of broadband/Internet services to the those living with slow dial up access or none at all.

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Stimulus projects bringing broadband to disconnected people

Rochester (Minn.) Post-Bulletin

Government stimulus spending is a contentious issue right now in Washington. But the $7.2 billion in the last stimulus package for extending high-speed Internet access is just beginning to be spent, and the beneficiaries could not be happier. Cynthia K. Wegener and her husband, owners of a farm and horse-breeding business in western Kansas, will be able to upload a photograph of a horse to show a potential buyer in seconds, not the 20 to 30 minutes they now need with dial-up service.

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Unraveling Ohio's new phone rules

Columbus Dispatch

Back in 1989, if you made a phone call, Ma Bell probably put it through.

Things have changed since then, and last month, the state law that governs telecommunications in Ohio changed, too.

The Ohio Telecommunications Modernization Act - "common-sense regulatory reform," in the view of Gov. Ted Strickland - takes effect Sept. 12. It replaces legislation that's been on the books since 1989, the last time telecom regulation was comprehensively considered. That's light-years ago in terms of changes in the industry, with more people migrating from landlines to cell phones, and more companies bundling phone service with cable TV and the like.

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Rural areas will get high-speed Internet access

Dayton Daily News

A $30 million federal stimulus award to improve high-speed Internet access could transform the way some rural schools educate students.

Western Ohio is the first region in the state to win federal stimulus funding to increase broadband access in rural counties. Earlier this month Gov. Ted Strickland announced $30 million in funding that could bring a total of 300 jobs to 28 of the state’s western counties including Greene, Miami, Preble, Warren and Clark counties.

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Rural K-12 schools, colleges to get broadband

Columbus Dispatch

A state public-private partnership has been awarded $30 million in federal stimulus money to extend broadband service to 28 western Ohio counties that have been underserved.

"A strong technology backbone is essential for our rural communities to be competitive in business and for our students to take advantage of digital learning," Gov. Ted Strickland said in a written statement.

The money will be used to build more than 700 miles of high-capacity fiber that will directly link rural and underserved communities, including K-12 schools, state and local government offices, health-care facilities, community colleges and universities.

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White House pledges another $800 million for broadband stimulus

engadget.com

Usually, when we see "stimulus" and "broadband" in the same sentence it's because someone turned off our Google SafeSearch filter, but today we have one such item that is totally safe for work.

According to Information Week, the $7.2 billion in broadband grants and loans that we've already seen will be buttressed by an additional $800 million.

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Firm to boost broadband access around Dayton

A western Ohio broadband company received a $30 million federal stimulus award Friday.

Com Net Inc. of Wapakoneta received the award from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to add broadband access in 28 western Ohio counties and create more than 300 jobs, according to a press release.

The money will be spent to build more than 700 miles of high-capacity fiber cables. Most of the jobs are in construction to lay fiber in the ground, said a Com Net spokesperson. Then the access to the fiber will be sold to local distributors to take to consumers.

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Government awards $795 million in broadband stimulus' second round

With a focus on filling the so-called "middle mile" broadband gaps in rural communities, the Obama administration announced they have awarded $795 million in grants and loans in the second broadband stimulus funding round.

Included in the initial list is second-time winner Zayo Bandwidth. After initially winning a $25 million grant to connect 21 Ivy Tech Community College campuses to the I-Light network in Indiana, Zayo's latest $13.4 million grant will be used to build out about 300 miles of new fiber network in Minnesota.

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State gets $30M broadband stimulus grant

Business First of Columbus

A public-private state partnership has been awarded $30 million in federal stimulus funding for a project to extend broadband access in Ohio.

The Ohio Middle Mile Consortium, a group of broadband providers around the state, sought the grant on behalf of the state.

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Feds announce latest round of broadband stimulus projects

President Obama announced today $795 million in USDA and Commerce Department grants and loans under the stimulus to bring high-speed Internet service to unserved or underserved areas. The projects (PDF) are expected to create 5,000 jobs up front and spur economic development in some of the nation's hardest-hit communities, according to a White House news release.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said late Thursday the grants from his department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration would build the "middle mile" connecting communities to sources of broadband, while Agriculture Secretary Vilsack said the money from USDA's Rural Utilities Service would connect end-users like homes, hospitals and schools to the middle mile.

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