Access to high-speed broadband seen as necessity for economic progress
The White House is throwing its support behind the continued expansion of high-speed broadband services, noting access has become a “necessity for economic progress.”
President Barack Obama today plans to provide details on efforts to increase broadband speeds across the country, a move that includes several new initiatives and follows up on his previous comments in support of greater government regulation of broadband services.
Obama’s latest broadband plans include a call to end laws in some states that he said dampen broadband competition; plans to host a summit of city officials and researchers looking for ways to tap higher broadband speeds in order to fuel economic growth; a Department of Commerce initiative designed to promote broadband deployment and adoption; a new grant and loan program targeting rural broadband deployments; and a call for the federal government to “remove all unnecessary regulatory and policy barriers to broadband build-out and competition.” Obama also said he is establishing a new Broadband Opportunity Council that will include more than one dozen government agencies with a goal of speeding up broadband deployment and promoting broadband adoption.
“Americans in even our busiest cities often find only one or two providers offering broadband service, and often none providing them with fast, fiber-optic connections – despite the fact that many cities are already equipped with fast fiber-optic broadband,” the White House noted in a statement. “At the same time, in too many places, residents do not have access to broadband in their home, or their speeds continue to lag while their monthly bills continue to grow.”
Obama is set to announce the new initiatives during a speech in Cedar Falls, Iowa. The speech will include steps he plans to discuss during his upcoming State of the Union address.
The president’s broadband push follows recent Federal Communications Commission activity surrounding its Connect America program, designed to expand the availability of high-speed broadband services. The FCC last month updated the standards for Connect America funding to require companies deploying services to provide fixed broadband download speeds of at least 10 megabits per second and 1 Mbps upload speeds. The previous requirement, set up in 2011 as part of universal service reform, called for 4 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds.
Most of the talk surrounding the expansion of high-speed broadband has centered on wired services, bolstered by recent initiatives to rollout technology supporting download speeds up to 1 gigabit per second. Current wireless technology based on the LTE standard has shown the ability to provide speeds up to 50 Mbps in some markets, though spectrum constraints can limit overall capacity and performance.
• The FCC’s ongoing Auction 97 proceedings continued to sputter along this week, with the latest rounds garnering just a handful of new bids.
Through this morning’s round 214, the spectrum auction had totaled $44.693 billion in total potential winning bids. The latest round included just six new bids totaling $1 million. The FCC late last week boosted bidding activity to 14 rounds per day, with each round lasting just 10 minutes. The increase did result in a sharp rise in the number of bids in the first, shortened round of activity, before action settled back down.
Auction 97 is set to conclude when there are no bids in a single round. License winners won’t be known until after the auction concludes. Participants in Auction 97 include Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile US and Dish Network.
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