S Korea Goal: 1gbps to the house

South Korea sets 1 Gbps residential broadband access goal - FierceTelecom

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Digital Divide, Minnesota...

» Nearly 30% of Minnesotans lack broadband

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NTIA Data (So Far...)

So I've spent the weekend sinking my teeth into the National Broadband Map. More to the point, I've been figuring out what the data contain, what's not there, and what can be said about the findings. Bottom line: there's a lot to sift through. One big lacuna: there is one (big) .txt file that list that contains all of the identified Community Anchor Institutions (CAIs) in the country. And the lat/long fields are pretty much useless. So step one for mapping the CAIs is geocoding them . But I've got a couple pics of Philly worth a second look, such as the above bandwidth map (which displays the maximum download speed aggregated to the census block level). Note: providers report that just about all of Philly has 50-100 mbps available.

High-speed Woes in China

NYTimes: China Rail Chief’s Firing Hints at Trouble

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Policy Innovation

So the Obama FCC is certainly working diligently to find room for expanding spectrum at the margins:

The core of the plan would ask, though not require, local TV stations to give up a chunk of the broadcast spectrum assigned to them by the Federal Communications Commission. The chunks would then be auctioned off to wireless companies with the donating broadcaster getting a piece of the of proceeds. In effect, it’s an effort to get the most out of our broadband spectrum, which is a limited quantity.

The big questions remain unanswered. How many local broadcasters will play along? Will the $30 billion that auctions of available spectrum are projected to generate over the next decade actually materialize? Regardless, the administration is rolling out an impressive national strategy for broadband development based on leveraging existing policies and institutions (viz., the rejiggered Universal Service Fund) and exploring tweaks such as this latest announcement.

With next week's release of the National Broadband Map, it's heady days in the broadband world.

National Infrastructure Bank....hmmmmm

Interesting idea coming from Geithner, given that funding is always prone to the vicissitudes of partisan brinkmanship:

The Obama administration's budget proposal due out next week will call for creation of a national infrastructure bank that selects major projects for federal backing, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Wednesday.

Geithner said it would support projects that produce significant returns on our investment, allow Americans more choices in their modes of transportation, and better connect existing transportation networks.

FCC Poised to Restructure Universal Service Fund

This is big:

The federal government spends more than $4 billion a year, collected from phone bills, to subsidize phone service in rural and poor areas. Now, it's considering ways to give those places more for the money: high-speed Internet connections instead of old-fashioned phone lines.

The Federal Communications Commission is set to vote Tuesday to begin work on a blueprint for transforming a subsidy program called the Universal Service Fund to pay for broadband.

This is a big deal and an important shift in emphasis. Right now, of course, we still need to invest in rural telephony. But it seems likely that the continued structure of the USF may in fact provide disincentives to expanding broadband service. Providers receive federal subsidy to (re)invest in conventional wireline service. But the FCC has proclaimed that broadband will be the telecommunications platform of the future; restructuring the USF is a step toward realizing that vision.

Legislative Wrangling

So ATT is working with its friends in the state legislature to scuttle a BTOP funded middle mile project in SC:

“They have been invited to the table and offered a piece of the pie,” [Oconee County administrator] Moulder said. “They’ve chosen to see us as competitors, when we had hoped they would see us as partners.”

A familiar pattern.