Showing posts with label Benton Foundation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Benton Foundation. Show all posts

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Tim Nulty attacks conventional thinking on rural fiber, broadband mapping

Here are two reports on a panel discussion held last week in Washington DC hosted by the Benton Foundation.

In both accounts, Tim Nulty -- who's making fiber to the premises a reality in Vermont -- stands out. Nulty trashes as "nonsense" conventional wisdom that there's little demand for fiber in less densely populated areas of the U.S. and that a business case can't be made for it in this dispatch by ars technica's Matthew Lasar:

"The standard traditional wisdom is 'Oh no you can't do that; impossible,'" Nulty noted. "'Can't make fiber work in rural areas. You've got to use some half-baked technology like WiFi or something like that." Au contraire, he told the audience. "It's actually significantly easier and cheaper to do fiber today than it was to do copper when our forefathers did it in the thirties."

And Nulty's right on the money when he suggests broadband mapping is nothing but a time wasting paper chase charade that makes incumbent telecommunications providers appear to be doing something instead of actually getting fiber on and in the ground. Nulty said this at the Benton event according to Blandin on Broadband:

Sometimes these maps are used to postpone action. A map of 200K access is not that helpful. In Vermont we had towns that were officially served – but ask people if they are served and they say no. The maps help get the incumbents off the hook. Access to info is good – but not if it distracts from promoting activity.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

White paper calls on next president to form National Broadband Strategy Commission

When it comes to the proliferation of robust broadband access, the United States has relied too heavily on the private sector and has gotten less than impressive results, asserts the Benton Foundation in a white paper calling for increased public involvement by the federal government.

The paper urges the incoming administration to create a National Broadband Strategy Commission composed of members from the public, private, academic, nonprofit, and other sectors to produce "an ambitious, yet achievable, comprehensive National Broadband Strategy to deploy robust, affordable broadband to every household in America," by Jan. 1, 2010.

The commission should lay out a "roadmap and timetable" to provide all U.S. households access to "robust and affordable broadband" by the end of 2010 and "affordable access to modernized broadband networks that are as robust as those of any other nation" by the end of 2015, the foundation advises.

The foundation's recommendations are likely to be well received by President-elect Barack Obama, who said in an address last weekend that it's unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption.