Government Technology

According to a 2017 Federal Communications Commission Broadband Deployment Report, 92 percent of the total US population has access to both fixed terrestrial services at 25 Mbps/3 Mbps and mobile LTE at speeds of 5 Mbps/1 Mbps. But for those living in rural areas, only 68.6 percent of Americans have access to both services, compared to 97.9 percent of urban dwellers."These are big challenges that call for another rural electrification administration approach.

Delaware will build on its existing fiber network and a successful wireless broadband pilot with a Request For Proposals (RFP) aimed at eliminating so-called “broadband deserts” over the next 24 months. Gov. John Carney (D-DE) announced that the state will release an RFP in August seeking private-sector partners to expand wireless broadband in rural Kent and Sussex counties, and in “desert” areas.

Whenever a city wants to install high-speed Internet — be it for economic development, cost-savings for emergency responders or local schools — it must first answer a question: low or high? If a city puts its fiber cables underground, it has to close down traffic, pay the cost of digging equipment and endure the risk of unexpected obstacles like a hidden sheet of rock. If it decides to string up the fiber along utility poles, it has a lot of legal maneuvering, negotiations and paperwork ahead of it to secure permission — before it signs on to pay a leasing fee that never goes away.

Sacramento (CA) expects to soon be the first city in the nation with commercially available 5G telecommunications networking. City officials see big promise in the emerging technology. “Smart city stuff, IoT, autonomous vehicles: We will use it for all of those things,” said CIO and IT Director Maria MacGunigal.  Yet MacGunigal isn’t primarily focused on the whiz-bang municipal impact of 5G. “The use cases will change 100 times,” she predicted. “What we do know is that we will need the infrastructure, so we want to build it and build it well.