[PDF] Bringing Broadband To Rural America Report On A Rural Broadband Strategy eBook

Author : Federal Communications Commission
Publisher : CreateSpace
Page : 82 pages
File Size : 41,62 MB
Release : 2012-04-26
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781475255058

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For many Americans, a world without broadband is unimaginable. For them, broadband Internet access has transformed the way they live their lives. But we have not succeeded in bringing broadband to everyone. For years, large parts of rural America have languished on the sidelines of the digital revolution. Home to the homesteaders, pioneers, and the rich and diverse Native American cultures that contribute so much to our national identity, rural America has for most of our history been deemed too remote, too sparsely populated, or too inaccessible to be fully connected with our nation's infrastructures. As many of their fellow citizens in more densely populated parts of the country go online for work, education, entertainment, healthcare, civic participation, and much more, too many rural Americans are being left behind. Rural governments and businesses are missing opportunities to function more efficiently and effectively. Even in rural areas where broadband is available, infrastructure deployment has not kept pace with the growing need for faster and more reliable connectivity. At a time when access to affordable, robust broadband services is a fundamental part of efforts to restore America's economic well-being in both rural and urban areas, we must ensure that this capability is available to open the doors of opportunity for everyone.

Author : Peter Sternberg
Publisher : DIANE Publishing
Page : 70 pages
File Size : 39,5 MB
Release : 2010
Category : Computers
ISBN : 1437923194

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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 bus.; (2) rural broadband availability; and (3) broadband¿s social and econ. effects on rural areas. In general, rural communities have less broadband Internet use than metro communities. Rural communities that had greater broadband Internet access had greater economic growth, which conforms to supplemental research on the benefits that rural bus., consumers, and communities ascribe to broadband Internet use. Illustrations.

Author : Christopher Ali
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 307 pages
File Size : 36,22 MB
Release : 2021-09-21
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 0262367084

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An analysis of the failure of U.S. broadband policy to solve the rural–urban digital divide, with a proposal for a new national rural broadband plan. As much of daily life migrates online, broadband—high-speed internet connectivity—has become a necessity. The widespread lack of broadband in rural America has created a stark urban–rural digital divide. In Farm Fresh Broadband, Christopher Ali analyzes the promise and the failure of national rural broadband policy in the United States and proposes a new national broadband plan. He examines how broadband policies are enacted and implemented, explores business models for broadband providers, surveys the technologies of rural broadband, and offers case studies of broadband use in the rural Midwest. Ali argues that rural broadband policy is both broken and incomplete: broken because it lacks coordinated federal leadership and incomplete because it fails to recognize the important roles of communities, cooperatives, and local providers in broadband access. For example, existing policies favor large telecommunication companies, crowding out smaller, nimbler providers. Lack of competition drives prices up—rural broadband can cost 37 percent more than urban broadband. The federal government subsidizes rural broadband by approximately $6 billion. Where does the money go? Ali proposes democratizing policy architecture for rural broadband, modeling it after the wiring of rural America for electricity and telephony. Subsidies should be equalized, not just going to big companies. The result would be a multistakeholder system, guided by thoughtful public policy and funded by public and private support.

Author : Jon M. Peha
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 50,8 MB
Release : 2016
Category :
ISBN :

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Roughly one-third of households in rural America cannot subscribe to broadband Internet services at any price. This puts many rural communities at a disadvantage with respect to economic growth, job creation, educational opportunities, health care information, commerce, and more. Internet users in urban areas are also adversely affected by the exclusion of so many rural households. For example, e-commerce merchants can attract fewer customers, online universities can attract fewer students, and users of e-mail, Internet telephony, and videoconferencing can communicate with fewer friends and business associates. Government can facilitate the expansion of broadband infrastructure into unserved communities through a suite of interrelated policies. Appropriate changes in spectrum policy would reduce the cost of building new broadband wireless systems in rural areas. These potential new wireless providers could then compete with existing telephone, cable, and cellular companies and other organizations for the obligation to bring broadband to an unserved community in return for a one-time subsidy. Defining this obligation in a highly flexible form and making it tradable on an open market would minimize the cost of infrastructure deployment and thereby reduce the subsidies needed. Attaching very lightweight restrictions on subsidy recipients could protect consumers from monopoly providers that might be tempted to limit their customers' choice of content or applications. Allowing and encouraging local government agencies to play an active role could encourage providers to deploy infrastructure by guaranteeing future revenues and ensuring access to critical resources. Collecting better information on availability of broadband services nationwide would allow both policymakers and potential service providers to better identify the communities that need service. Together, these mutually reinforcing policy reforms would allow government to move the United States closer to the goal of universal access to broadband Internet by harnessing market forces without competing with market forces.

Author : Gregory L. Rohde
Publisher :
Page : 80 pages
File Size : 38,19 MB
Release : 2000-05-01
Category :
ISBN : 9780756701192

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Advanced telecomm. services are just beginning to be deployed on a broader basis, although they are still primarily avail. only for bus. and urban users. Most Amer. with access to the Internet still connect through a telephone voice circuit. This report is intended to provide an initial assessment of the availability and rate of deployment for rural and non-rural areas to help gauge whether all Amer. are benefiting from advanced capabilities. Discusses: capability and avail. of advanced telecomm. facilities; rates of deploy.; capability of enhancements and feasibility of alternatives for rural broadband; and effectiveness of existing mechanisms in promoting rural deployment.

Author : Hanns Kuttner
Publisher :
Page : 24 pages
File Size : 24,54 MB
Release : 2012
Category :
ISBN :

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Historically, waves of new technologies have brought Americans higher standards of living. Electrical service and hot and cold running water, for example, were once luxuries; now their absence makes a home substandard. Today, technologies for accessing the Internet are diffusing at an even faster rate than those earlier innovations once did, bringing with them commensurate transformations of Americans' way of life. Technologies that increase the speed at which data can be transmitted have had powerful effects. Most importantly, they have transformed the Internet from a tool used by a narrow group of academics and technicians into a means of interaction used by a large majority of Americans. However, Americans have not universally benefitted from better Internet access. Geography, especially the divide between rural and urban America, determines how much some Americans can benefit from the Internet. Networks have not been as extensively developed in rural areas as in urban areas. Some people in rural America still have dial-up as their best available, affordable technology, a technology that offers five percent of the capacity for what the FCC has said is the broadband threshold. Others have service that reaches the broadband level, but still does not offer the "lightning-fast" speeds advertised by Internet service providers in urban areas. Accordingly, the nation faces a "broadband gap," not only with regard to the lack of access in rural areas to service that meets the broadband threshold, but also with regard to the lack of availability of faster service between urban and rural America. This report identifies opportunity costs that arise from this gap. These costs exist today, but the pace at which data transmission capability is growing means that the inequality between the technology being newly deployed and the technology that was deployed a decade or more ago is increasing. Networks that connect research institutions in the United States can move 100,000 times more data per unit of time than the dial-up connections that some Americans still must use. The technology gap is not a fixed deficit that once filled, stays filled. The technology gap will be larger--much larger--in the future, along with the information and technology gap, unless significant action is taken to overcome it. (Contains 2 figures, 1 table, and 19 footnotes.).