by Jonathan Rintels
CONTENTS
Reaching For The American Dream By Connecting Our Nation
Persuasive research indicates that connecting our nation to broadband will bring remarkable economic, social, cultural, personal, and other benefits to our citizens.
While stimulating broadband supply is necessary to achieving the goal of universal, affordable, and robust broadband, it is not sufficient. The NBS must also promote initiatives to stimulate broadband demand. These include programs to ensure that all Americans have access to the digital skills and tools necessary to realize broadband's enormous potential benefits. They also include initiatives that employ broadband-powered applications to address critical challenges facing our nation, including economic growth, job creation, health care, education, public safety, energy consumption, climate change, and others.
By promoting both the supply of and the demand for broadband, a well-conceived NBS will establish a "virtuous circle" in which an increased supply of robust and affordable broadband stimulates creation of applications that produce wide-ranging, valuable social benefits that then cause citizens to demand even more robust and affordable broadband; which in turn stimulates greater investment in more robust broadband; which then stimulates the creation of even more beneficial applications that cause citizens to demand even more robust and affordable broadband.
In this section, we recommend several initiatives to address our nation's critical challenges that will have the added salutary benefit of stimulating demand for universal, affordable, and robust broadband.
Economic Development And Job Creation
Universal deployment and adoption of robust and affordable broadband will stimulate economic growth and create good-paying jobs, according to several private and government studies.
- Deployment of Universal, Robust, Affordable Broadband Will Generate Billions in Economic Development and Create Over a Million New Jobs
- A National Broadband Strategy Will Spur Economic Development and Job Creation
- Recommendations
Telecommunications technology such as broadband offers a tremendous opportunity to make America healthier and allow Americans to live longer...
We must educate new generations of digitally literate citizens to ensure they are able to compete successfully in today's global workforce and participate in our increasingly knowledge-based society.
- Infuse Broadband and Technology Throughout America's Education System
- Promote Online Learning
- Teach Digital Excellence to All Students
- Recommendations
By implementing a National Broadband Strategy that includes initiatives to help Americans utilize broadband to reduce energy consumption and carbon dioxide gas emissions, the new Administration can quickly and meaningfully address the threats that energy insecurity and environmental degradation pose to our nation.
- Universal, Affordable, and robust Broadband Will Reduce Energy Consumption and Benefit Our Environment
- Telework - Saving Time, Money, and the Environment
- Smart Electrical Grid - A Broadband-Enabled, Money-Saving Collaboration.
- Recommendations
Public Safety and Homeland Security
One of the highest duties of any nation's government is assuring the public's safety and security. One vital element in providing that safety and security is a strong and resilient communications system.
- America Needs Modern Telecommunications and Information Technology to Improve Public Safety and Protect Homeland Security
- Strong Federal Leadership is Necessary to Implement a National Broadband Strategy that Will Enhance Public Safety and Protect Homeland Security
- Recommendations
Reinvigorating Democracy and Government
The ability of citizens to use YouTube, and to meaningfully engage in community affairs over the Internet, is entirely dependent on their ability to access the Internet via broadband.
Comments
I am in sync with this
I am in sync with this article but there is a missing component, the Innovative, new technology component. I looked at a lot of the RFI inputs and saw one from a company called TelePulse Technologies. They give action plans for the rural and underserved to get them up to 20Mbps and beyond without capital expenditure using their patented DTMD technology. They raise the bar for all Americans no matter where they live. This stuff is probably pretty early stage but it looks like something we should be backing because the phone companies never will and private funding won’t go for just solving a rural problem (the market size is not juicy enough). If I read the RFI response correctly the price tag could be less than 10% of what it would cost with DSL. Face it, rural customers have been lied to or ignored or told they need to be happy with some convoluted solution that gets them less than 500kbps on a good day. Let us be brave enough to attack the technology side of the problem since the major players do not seem to think it is worth their real attention.