Huge US Stimulus Bill - Small Broadband Funds

February 15, 2009, 10:13 AM — IDG News Service — The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate have both passed the final version of a huge economic stimulus package, including billions of dollars for broadband deployment and electronic health records.

The House Friday afternoon voted 246-183 to approve a compromise version of the estimated US$787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. All 176 House Republicans present voted against the bill.

The bill includes $7.2 billion to help deploy broadband in rural and other unserved areas, $17 billion for incentives for health care providers to adopt electronic health records, and $11 billion to update the nation's electricity grid by hooking it up to the Internet.

Source: ITworld

Build National Broadband Networks On Community Networks As Extension Of University-campus Architecture

Exellent 'nascent' idea of Lev Gonick.

Lev Gonick is CIO of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio and Chair Emeritus of OneCommunity, a regional community network connecting 22 counties, 1500 facilities, including more than 1000 schools, cities, counties, health care systems, universities, libraries, museums and public broadcasting authorities.

"I have proposed that we model America’s broadband future on the standards and expectations currently managed and operated at many of our Universities and Colleges across the country. [...] America’s pursuit of a world leading broadband network policy framework should be an extension of the huge and robust gigabit networks developed at our world-leading universities and colleges. [...] I do not mean just a blueprint. I mean a real physical extension of the university-campus network backbone. Connecting public sector institutions into a converged and layered network focused on local community contexts and priorities enables collaboration and shared services with health care, libraries, governments, museums, p-12 education, and public broadcasting to mention just a few. In the first instance, and certainly from an technical architecture perspective, *community networks*, as we might call this model, are a more evolved and intelligent design than the way most of our public sector and commercial/consumer networks are designed. Community networks are designed as tightly bounded geographic hub and spoke (or star) configurations around local points of presence."

Source: From Digital Community to Connected Community to Digital Nation by Lev Gonick

South Korea Spends 24.6bn USD On Improving Broadband Infrastructure

South Korea to invest in fixed line broadband infrastructure; targets 1Gbps speeds by 2012

"The South Korean regulator, the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), has revealed plans to spend approximately KRW34 trillion (USD24.6 billion) on improving the nation’s broadband infrastructure. The KCC is aiming to increase speeds for fixed line broadband services to 1Gbps by 2012, with wireless services expected to offer speeds of 10Mbps by the same date. The highest level speeds are only expected to be available in the country’s larger cities however, with fixed line subscribers in smaller towns expected to have internet access at speeds between 50Mbps and 100Mbps by 2012. The KCC expects that around 12,000 new jobs will be created as a result of the project."

Source: TeleGeography

Public Sector Led Community Broadband Networks Are Taking Up Quickly In UK

LOCAL INITIATIVES ON NEXT GENERATION ACCESS IN THE UK

Published January 20th 2009

In September 2008, the Communications Consumer Panel – previously known as the Ofcom Consumer Panel - issued a position paper entitled *"What is the value of next generation broadband?"* In that paper, they stated: "Any large-scale investment programme by the private sector at this stage will be predicated on a roll-out to significantly less than 100% of UK homes. They believe that the question of how to deliver next generation broadband to homes likely to be outside such private sector investment plans cannot be left until some indeterminate point in the future; instead we must debate the issues now - and so avoid the possibility of creating a second physical digital-divide. CCP wants to encourage exploration of public sector and other non-private interventions even at this very early stage, alongside commercial developments."

In this note, the Consumer Panel has collated information on the range of local initiatives now taking place in the provision of next generation access (NGA) networks in order to indicate to interested parties just how many such schemes – almost 40 - there are and how they can contribute to the national debate on the roll-out of NGA.

Source: Communications Consumer Panel UK