MKCREATIVE

States Key To Speeding Up Citizens’ On-Line Connectivity

Welcome back from the Independence-Day Weekend. We hope yours was a festive and safe one to celebrate the birth of a new nation striving for ‘a more perfect union.’ Not perfect, but ever striving. This week, we will look at a few of the ways we might be heading toward ‘more perfect union’ and ways we might be letting ourselves down. Today: High-Speed Internet

“The Pew Center on the States” has recently published a report on how states might be the most important lynch-pins to build a ‘national’ high-speed internet network. The report can be found at the website FoundationCenter.org. The report begins by pointing out the problem to be solved, despite the fact that the sheer numbers seems impressive. “Today, broadband is available to about 95 percent of Americans. But that figure masks wide geographic, economic and demographic disparities, and many experts say both the quality and speed of service in the united States need to be improved to keep pace with other nations. and only 65 percent of Americans actually have broadband at home. The remainder— approximately 100 million Americans—say they cannot afford it, do not know how to use it or believe it is irrelevant to their lives, among other factors.” We would suggest that ‘irrelevant to their lives’ is the thorniest of possible issues, as it suggests people believe they need not access information. Imagine, in another context, 45% percent of people in the 1910s not seeing why newspapers might be relevant?

US Counties and access to high-speed internet (2008)

Ironically, the collapse of the economy has forced/encouraged states to expand coverage as means both to stimulate local economies and to entice businesses and highly-trained workers from other states. The federal government has brought assistance through stimulus grants, but these are spread rather thinly. Nevertheless, in our constitutional federal system of divided powers, we might see the greatest utility being built from the ground up rather than set from the top down.

State and local governments increasingly are looking to broadband as a way to gain a competitive advantage in a tough economy and as a means to deliver services more efficiently and effectively as budgets tighten. Their efforts also are critical to achieving the ambitious goals of the national Broadband Plan. …

Several major developments—the stimulus package, the national Broadband Plan and the Google gigabit initiative, among others—are converging to create an “environment that could evolve in many positive ways,” said Jim Baller, a Washington, D.C.-based broadband expert and lawyer whose firm, the Baller and Herbst Law Group, advises several state and local governments on broadband and is working with Google on its initiative. “We are seeing significant progress at all levels of government. many state and local governments have made a lot of progress in the last two years, and we’re likely to see a lot more progress in the next two years.”

As the map shows, urban areas on the two coasts have the densest populations and the most people using high-speed internet. Surely no surprise that these areas have the most dynamic economies. But that is not to say folks in the heartland are not aware of the benefits of an improved internet grid. Plenty of counties in the Great Plains and Midwest are also green.

Much of the Pew Report focuses on education: educating citizens on the economic and political opportunities to be had with participating in online research, communication, and outreach. “The stimulus-funded projects come with high stakes. States’ successes—or failures—will affect how they educate students, provide health care and protect the public, among other important outcomes.” Google’s project (which we announced in February) to bring Gigabit networking to a community is part of this outreach as well, for Google sees opportunity for education and outreach that also helps is own business grow. States see the need as well, of course, though they might have budgetary constraints that Google does not.

The report also calls attention to states like Missouri, Wisconsin, and North Carolina (among some others) who have notably raised the opportunity for their citizens to get access at home to the internet. These states are now striving to speed up the networks – again, aware of not wanting to fall behind in the press and competition for a smarter workforce once the hiring starts again.

Finally, the report discusses internet access and health care, a topic certainly to spark lively debate (or a deafening ‘No!’ from those who do not want to read the statistics):

Better use of broadband could improve the health care system by driving down costs and improving results for patients, the FCC says in its plan. the commission cited a 2007 study by the Center for information technology leadership that said using video consultation instead of in-person doctor visits for prisoners, nursing home residents and hospital patients who need outside experts could save $1.2 billion annually.

We’ll look at health care later in the week.

Print PDF

Popularity: 2% | Category News and Current Affairs, Technology, Technology for Education, Web and Print | | Comments Off

Written by: Christopher Gardner