FCC pushes for gigabit broadband in all 50 states by 2015 | Politics and Law - CNET News: The FCC hopes the Gigabit City Challenge will further these types of efforts. The FCC hasn't committed any funds to the "Gigabit Challenge," but the agency said it will help communities create an online clearinghouse of best practices to help educate local officials and local service providers on the most cost-effective ways to increase broadband deployments.
This will require the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service be sufficiently funded with grant and loan money to help communities meet the FCC's challenge with publicly and cooperatively owned fiber to the premises infrastructure. Sharing best practices alone won't do the job considering the billions that will be needed to upgrade and replace America's obsolete copper cable infrastructure now being kept on life support with trash bags and baling wire. In 2009, the FCC estimated it would take $350 billion to construct this needed infrastructure.
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Rural America is not the only corner of a Western Democracy where the digital infrastructure promises out distanced reality. The University of Stirling in Scotland's Central Belt, only within the last five years, finished installing CampusNet sockets in every room. As for the city of Stirling itself, we don't even have cable TV yet.
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